Gus Edwards and Ravens RB updates

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills

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I’m not going to be as high on Gus Edwards for these final few drafts weeks as I keep seeing from other people. He’s a very good player who is going to be an efficient runner in this offense, as he’s always been, and will probably score a decent number of touchdowns. The receiving isn’t going to be strong — he’s been a decent receiver efficiency-wise but has 18 total receptions across three seasons.

The touchdowns also aren’t guaranteed — he has 10 on 414 career carries. I expect that rate to spike as Mark Ingram and J.K. Dobbins, who is expected to miss the season, have both posted strong TD rates in this offense, and some of that is likely to shift Edwards’ way for 2021. But the Ravens might acquire another back, or they might use one of the guys they have in tandem with Edwards. Nothing they’ve done with Edwards over three years, and even as we consider his contract extension this offseason, suggests a player with a real ceiling outside massive efficiency.

My Stealing Bananas podcast cohost Shawn Siegele sometimes puts this in terms of RotoViz’s fantasy expected points metric. Last year, Edwards averaged 7.1 total EP (meaning both rushing and receiving) per game. That means, based on his touches and where they occurred on the field, he was expected to score 7.1 PPR fantasy points on average. For his career, we’re talking 6.4.

Edwards was more efficient than that workload, and certainly that EP number is going to be higher in 2021, but his involvement in terms of total snaps and touches has been consistent enough that his EP is a major red flag. It should have been higher previously. What are the paths to, say, 15 EP? Are his career-high 13 targets from last year going to balloon to 50? Is he suddenly going to be a 20-plus carry back every week with a huge green zone role?

What’s the case for taking Edwards ahead of the scrap-heaped Josh Jacobs? Efficiency is part of it, sure, since Edwards has averaged over 5.0 yards per carry every season, and Lamar Jackson’s presence is going to ensure Edwards continues to be an efficient rusher. But even with Kenyan Drake in Las Vegas, Jacobs has to have a solidly higher rush attempt expectancy, which offsets some of the YPC argument. And Jacobs is good, too, with reasonable efficiency of his own, a strong TD-scoring history, and much more receiving than Edwards in his profile even if Jacobs’ usage in that area is still weak.

I can’t even make a case for Edwards over A.J. Dillon, and based on the reactions I’m seeing on Twitter that would shock almost everyone. To be clear, Edwards is likely to outscore Dillon. But we don’t draft running backs in the dead zone based on floor. That’s a lesson the whole industry had seemingly started to understand this offseason, at least until they reacted to this latest news. That type of pick, in almost every circumstance, is a “small win, big miss” pick. If we use something like best ball win rates as a proxy for the relative value of picks, even when that pick hits the “small win” side of the equation is posts a poor win rate because there are certain to have been better picks in that draft range at a position like WR, or perhaps TE. Based on what I’m seeing, Edwards is going to go around where Stefon Diggs and Darren Waller were going in drafts last year, and outside some legitimately tiny upside scenarios for Edwards where he’s a monster, even a good season from Edwards is going to be bad relative to whoever the actual breakout, league-winning types are that go in that draft range. Why would you cap the overall upside of your roster with that pick, ever?

To get back to the Dillon comp, at least with Dillon the receiving is unknown, and we have some small positive notes there. And at least with Dillon, there’s a path to even more upside if Aaron Jones were to miss time. Again, in most scenarios, Edwards is now going to outscore Dillon. But that gap isn’t going to be huge — Dillon might get 150 carries, Edwards might get 200 or 250, but the high-value work will be a question for both of those workloads, and we’re probably talking an expected gap of two or so fantasy points per game. And then there are scenarios where Dillon smashes Edwards if Jones misses substantial time and he has an early-career-Eddie-Lacy-in-GB type season.

Now I’m admittedly very high on Dillon, as I have been all offseason, so maybe he isn’t the right person to make this comp with. Maybe I’ve missed something here with Edwards, and maybe he belongs higher than this. But everything I look at suggests to me Edwards is going to become almost the single easiest fade in drafts the rest of the way. I’m hearing he should go in the first five rounds, and that might make him the clearest example of a dead zone back this year. I’m mostly speaking in terms of expecting his role to actually grow — if it does, he still might not be very good — but there are also scenarios where Baltimore mostly just replaces Dobbins’ role with their other guys. They paid Edwards when they thought they’d have Dobbins. They like him in the role they have for him. There’s no absolute certainly Edwards is going to suddenly go from three seasons where he’s carried the ball a remarkably consistent number of times in each — 137, 133, and then 144 last year — to over 200 rush attempts. I do think it’s a very strong likelihood he sets a career high, and obviously we get a 17th game and Ingram was already gone and he was probably expected to pretty easily set a career high already. But Baltimore is a team with playoff aspirations that has favored committees before and with Edwards’ lack of HVT usage the only way I see him as a top-25 back is if we’re saying their response to Dobbins’ injury is to really lean into Edwards and trust he’ll hold up for 17 games plus the playoffs as the clear lead guy. What evidence do we have of even that? And again, that probably isn’t enough! I can get like 90% of this profile with Devin Singletary late. I’m lost.

I did move Edwards up a good amount, but I can’t get him any higher than RB29. That’s one spot ahead of Raheem Mostert, and I mean I guess I’d take Edwards ahead of Mostert? But why are we talking like he should go ahead of guys like Myles Gaskin who have legitimate three-down upside scenarios, despite obviously more risk? Why especially would you ever take him over Javonte Williams? You don’t draft RBs with high-leverage picks for floor outcomes.

Ty’Son Williams vs. Justice Hill

The rest of the backfield is of far more interest to me at what their prices may end up being. Early reactions are heavily favoring Ty’Son Williams as the camp star, and it’s even come from very good beat reporter Jamison Hensley.

Jamison Hensley @jamisonhensley

If Dobbins is out for the season, Ravens’ top two backs are Gus Edwards and Ty’Son Williams https://t.co/PX7RECb0aB

Adam Schefter @AdamSchefter

J.K. Dobbins currently is undergoing his MRI, but the expectation going in was that he had suffered a season-ending knee injury, per sources.

Williams is a 220-pound back who played at three colleges and was never particularly productive. That said, he was once a four-star recruit out of high school and transferred twice presumably due to playing time issues, then started his final collegiate season with BYU in 2019 hot — he rushed for 236 yards on 43 carries with three touchdowns in three games — before unfortunately tearing his ACL in just his fourth game there.

Meanwhile, there’s Justice Hill, who fantasy drafters seem to have soured on after a couple years of hype. The thing about Hill is that the hype was warranted — he was a major producer at Oklahoma State where as a true freshman he relegated senior Chris Carson to backup duty. He went on to a monster sophomore year and was on his way to backing it up before his junior year was cut short by injury. He’s a smaller back around 200 pounds but ran a 4.4 40-yard dash and provides athleticism that Edwards and Williams can’t match.

Hill reportedly struggled early in camp, then hurt his ankle in the first preseason game and hasn’t been right since. It’s not clear whether he’ll be good to go for the season. In his absence, as the Ravens’ other excellent beat reporter Jeff Zrebiec said in The Athletic, “Williams flourished, exhibiting a hard-running, downhill style that fits extremely well in a Greg Roman offense.”

I very much buy what all the beats out of Baltimore are selling — Ty’Son Williams appears to be a player who looks very good in this offense and could be a solid contributor for the Ravens. Here’s the thing, though — that description, and his 220-pound size, speaks to a RB that is a redundant piece to Edwards. Now you’re talking about Edwards and Williams like Mark Ingram and Edwards used to co-exist in this offense.

If we go back to 2019 — before the Ravens selected Dobbins — Ingram and Edwards flourished as the main backs, and Ingram had a big season that people seem to be pointing to as Edwards’ 2021 upside. There are two issues with that logic. First, the offense was historic, and Ingram scored 15 TDs in 15 games in large part because he caught five touchdowns on just 26 receptions, a ridiculous rate. Second, despite running white hot in terms of production relative to the value of his role, Ingram still wasn’t as good as people remember he was — he finished RB11 in PPR with 16.2 points per game, hardly a league-winning ceiling outcome. He was very good, but a “small win,” even when everything from the offensive explosion to his massive TD rate broke his way. This all gets back to what I was saying about Edwards above — there are also negative outcomes here like injury and something other than ridiculously strong efficiency, and those are not going to be baked in for Edwards if he’s going in Round 5.

But Ty’Son Williams is also a very real issue for Edwards. If Williams is viewed this positively, and because he’s a straight line runner in the mold of Edwards, it very much seems like the Ingram-Edwards split in 2019. Williams would certainly hold value in that scenario as a late-round pick, much in the way Edwards did this year before Dobbins’ injury, although his upside would also seemingly be capped by role and usage, and we don’t have the same track record we have with Edwards.

That leaves Hill, who is the real target here. Hill actually possesses a skill set that is unmatched in this backfield. Maybe the Ravens can never actually rely on him, but they’ve seemed to like him enough to stash him and keep him around through multiple offseasons despite strong RB depth. Back in 2019, during his rookie season, Hill was underwhelming relative to breakout RB expectations as Ingram and Edwards dominated the backfield, but he did total 58 rushes and eight receptions. Last year, as the No. 4 RB, his usage was more sparse, but one would expect in a backfield that is now led by Edwards and where Williams is the secondary straight-line runner, Hill could carve out a third role — when healthy — as a space back with explosiveness.

It’s a pure upside play, certainly, but the upside will be that he’s actually good, and he winds up essentially beating out Williams over time to be the secondary piece behind Edwards. That’s probably the optimal setup for Baltimore, despite the current reality that Williams is the backup that is healthy and generating buzz while Hill can’t even get on the field.

I’ve moved Hill up to RB51 and dropped Williams right behind him at RB52. I think both make sense as later-round RBs, and that Williams will wind up being the one whose ADP settles higher in the short term, so Hill is a guy you can wait a bit longer on and take an upside swing at. If I were drafting today, I wouldn’t mind grabbing some Williams exposure before people react — he’s still going as late as the 20th round in some drafts.

And of course, as with every RB injury, there still remains the obvious possibility that the Ravens will bring in a free agent. Who that player is will matter, and if it’s a high profile name like the Todd Gurley reference that’s been thrown around, that free agent will be only mildly interesting — cost will be important — but he will likely block Williams and Hill to some degree.

At any rate, Edwards is a very tough pick right now, and Hill is my favorite of the upside backups because his skill set will presumably give him more of an opportunity to add something the other backs can’t.