The 2023 NFL season is right around the corner and that means fantasy football draft season is upon us. If you’re here, you’re probably seeking out draft advice for your best ball league. Well, you’ve come to the right place!
As a quick refresher, best ball is really simple. You draft a roster of players and the highest-scoring players are assembled as your starting lineup for the week. That means there’s no strategizing about who to start and who to bench. Your best-performing players get counted toward your point total. It’s that simple! Because of its format, best ball also incentivizes you to take some risks in later rounds of the draft by selecting players who you think have tremendous upside. If they go off in certain weeks, that’s a huge benefit to your roster. If they don’t, then they’ll most likely just be slotted onto your bench. It’s a low-risk, high-reward proposition.
Below, we’ll go over some of the sleeper names at running back you should be considering during your best ball drafts.
Rachaad White, Tampa Bay Buccaneers
White’s stock is rising heading into his second year in the league and this could be the last team that you could categorize him into the sleeper category.
Within the mess that was the Bucs’ offense last year, White managed to get plenty of valuable snaps as a rookie. The Arizona State had 129 carries for 481 rushing yards, 50 receptions for 290 receiving yards, and three touchdowns on the year. With no Leonard Fournette to sit behind this season, he is the undisputed RB1 heading into the new campaign and has the potential to make a jump as the team’s primary backfield option. After you secure your top RB options in your best ball drafts, buy low on White and reap the rewards later.
Isiah Pacheco, Kansas City Chiefs
Another up-and-coming running back who won’t be in sleeper territory soon is Pacheco, who came out of nowhere to play a huge role in the Chiefs’ Super Bowl run last year. The seventh-round pick from Rutgers finished the year as the team’s top rusher, breaking off 830 yards on 4.9 yards per carry and five touchdowns. That was good enough to land him as the 34th-ranked fantasy RB, which is impressive for someone who was fighting for a roster spot at the beginning of the year.
With a full year under his belt, Pacheco is poised to get even more touches within the explosive Chiefs offense this season. That means he could threaten to break 1,000 yards and is someone you should be eyeing in the middle-late rounds of your best ball drafts.
Zach Charbonnet, Seattle Seahawks
Charbonnet was selected by the Seahawks in the second round of the draft this past April and has the potential to split carries with second-year starter Kenneth Walker III.
At 6’1”, 220 pounds, he has really good size for a tailback and that should allow for him to be durable and reliable when taking hits throughout the year. He posted back-to-back 1,000 seasons at UCLA and could be viewed as a potential draft steal for Seattle at the end of the regular season. The Seahawks are primed to have one of the most explosive offenses in the entire league this season and given Pete Carroll’s love of the run game, that could mean plenty of work for the rookie tailback. Charbonnet is bound to have a few games where he goes produces great numbers in fantasy and that’s worth taking a flyer on him in your drafts.
Chuba Hubbard, Carolina Panthers
You may look at the Panthers signing Miles Sanders in the offseason and think that Hubbard will once again receive only a smattering of touches as a backup. I disagree.
Hubbard has been a reliable hand within the chaos that has been the Carolina offense for the past few seasons and always seems to be on the verge of breaking out. He averaged 4.9 yards per carry last year and that skill to pick up yards will make him a valuable asset. With the team breaking in a rookie quarterback in Bryce Young, they’ll most likely need both Sanders and Hubbard to shoulder the weight of the offense while the No. 1 pick gets his bearings. Hubbard’s potential makes him worthy of a late-round pick in best ball.
Zamir White, Las Vegas Raiders
Circumstances can lead to tremendous opportunity and that’s where White finds himself heading into this season. Josh Jacobs failed to reach an agreement with the organization on a new, long-term contract and there’s a chance that the 2022 NFL rushing champion could hold out of training camp and beyond. If that is the case, then White will be slotted into the role of RB1 in Vegas.
The second-year tailback out of Georgia saw limited action as a rookie last year, taking just 17 carries for 70 yards through 11 games. That is by no means anything to write home about, but hey, they had Jacobs toting the rock. Even before Jacobs’ potential holdout, reports indicated that White was in line to get more work this season. You could very well see him pop on your fantasy radar really soon.