Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports
Last year, Andre Ellington was a rookie running back and may have taken the fantasy football world by storm had the Arizona Cardinals coaching staff given him an expanded role in the offense. Ellington had a decent rookie season on paper, but his average yards per carry of 5.5 was quite impressive. According to Pro-Football-Reference, Ellington finished the fantasy season with 126 points in standard scoring leagues, ranking him as the 24th best running back in the 2013 fantasy season. Those numbers are even more inflated in PPR leagues due to the Cardinals employing him as their passing down back. Not too bad for a 6th round rookie out of Clemson, right?
In the 2014 fantasy football season, owners may try to look for the “next Andre Ellington” of fantasy football. The type of player who would fit that mold would have had a successful college career but not be receiving a lot of attention from pundits and scouts because he will not necessarily be a higher draft pick. The player that has the ability to fill that role in this years draft is Baylor running back Lache Seastrunk.
Seastrunk will be viewed by many teams as a supplemental back, who can provide a small but hard runner through tackles and shiftiness and vision when given open space to work with. There is no way that he will be considered a polished player coming out of college, as he lacks the size and pass blocking ability to be a bell cow for an NFL offense. Any player who finishes his college career averaging 7.4 yards per carry and fewer than 300 carries would have me interested in taking a late round fantasy draft pick.
The potential for Seastrunk to make an impact wherever he ends up this season is there, so fantasy owners should be willing to take a risk and think outside the box in their drafts. This is a player who may be worth taking a chance on.
Alexander Muir is a writer at Rant Sports.com. Follow him on Twitter @AmuirAlex, “Like” him on Facebook or add him on your network on Google.
