Chris Thompson - 2020 Fantasy Football Sleeper

Andrew Ericksen makes the case for Jacksonville Jaguars running back Chris Thompson as a late-round RB draft pick in your fantasy football drafts this season as a sleeper and undervalued draft target in PPR leagues.

UPDATE 8/31: On Monday August 31st, Leonard Fournette was officially released by the Jaguars. You can read the full news and analysis here. More updates will be provided shortly.

Chris Thompson has been one of the most format-dependent running backs in fantasy football since he first earned significant playing time in 2015. When healthy, he’s regularly been a solid option as a flex in PPR leagues, but in non-PPR, he’s primarily been a borderline waiver wire player.

Before fracturing his fibula in Week 11 of 2017, Thompson was on pace for an elite PPR season. Despite playing in just 10 games that year, he compiled 510 receiving yards and averaged a lofty 13.1 yards per reception. Todd Gurley (12.3) and Alvin Kamara (10.2) were the only other running backs who averaged double digits in yards per reception that year. Only Gurley, Kamara, Christian McCaffrey, and Le’Veon Bell finished the 2017 season with more receiving yards amongst running backs than Thompson’s 510.

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Track Record

This year, Thompson enters his first season with the Jacksonville Jaguars, after seven years with the Washington Redskins. While there are a lot of questions pertaining to what his workload will look like in Jacksonville, there’s no question that his ADP of around 226 enables some sleeper appeal in PPR formats this year.

Over the last three years, Thompson has averaged 3.94 receptions per game and 6.92 yards per target. These are impressive clips when compared to how the top receiving running backs in the league performed last year. Only eight running backs averaged over 3.94 receptions per game last year. Of those eight running backs, only two (Christian McCaffrey and Austin Ekeler) averaged more than 6.92 yards per target.

While Thompson’s production dipped from 2017 to the two following years, the dip only seems so significant because his 2017 campaign was so exceptional. There’s plenty of data to suggest that Thompson still has the ability to break out as he did in 2017 if his workload is big enough. Thompson’s reception percentage of 77.8% in 2019 was actually slightly higher than his 76.5% clip in 2017. He also posted a modest RTG (NFL Passer Rating when targeted) of 95.8 in 2019. As a comparison, Kamara posted an 89.2 RTG in 2019.

With 42 receptions over 11 games and 9.0 yards per reception in 2019, there’s very clearly still a lot Thompson can offer.

The Jay Gruden Effect

Thompson’s signing with the Jaguars was a rather unsurprising move considering the Jaguars brought in Jay Gruden, Thompson’s head coach in Washington for six years, to serve as the team’s offensive coordinator. Gruden’s been heavily credited as the primary proponent of Thompson’s fantasy emergence. So while many pass-catching specialized running backs might be risky to count on after a team switch, the presence of Gruden makes Thompson an outlier.

Thompson regularly saw around 30 snaps per game the past three years in Gruden’s offense. He had five or more targets in each of his first five games last year before a toe injury in Week 6 that would cause him to miss the team’s next five games. Thompson’s reunion with Gruden was very intentional on the part of Gruden and the Jaguars, so it’s safe to expect Thompson will be involved in the Jaguars’ offense and in their passing game particularly. It’s just a question of how involved he’ll be, which brings us to our next topic…

The Competition

Leonard Fournette was a workhorse for the Jaguars in 2019, totaling 265 rushes for 1,152 yards and 76 receptions for 522 yards on 100 targets. He would have been a solid RB1 in all formats if it weren’t for his shockingly low touchdown total, just three total on the season.

With Fournette being cut by the Jaguars in late August, a ton of carries and running back targets are now up for grabs.

Second-year running back Ryquell Armstead, who didn’t flash a ton of upside in a limited sample size as a rookie, is Thompson's primary competition for running back touches. Armstead averaged 3.1 yards per carry over 35 carries in 2019 and added 14 receptions for 144 yards on 24 targets. Armstead only caught 29 passes during his four years in college at Temple, so it’s safe to say that he’s far from the pass-catching specialist that Thompson is.

Armstead might be the team's primary rusher this year, but Thompson certainly figures to be the primary pass-catching back and he should see at least four or five carries per game as well.

The Verdict

Thompson is currently about the 60^th running back off the board, with an ADP of around 226. In PPR leagues, that’s a fantastic value. His ADP should continue to rise following the release of Fournette, but if you can grab him before things get too out of hand, go for it. Thompson has the potential to be a solid flex play in PPR with a chance to regularly catch four or five passes per game in Gruden’s offense.

He doesn’t have low-end RB1 or high-end RB2 upside, but so few running backs taken outside of the top 150 do. Many fantasy owners are going to be resistant to drafting Thompson because of his recent injuries, the team switch, and the general perception that he’s faded the past two years after his 2017 breakout. Use that to your advantage. Don’t reach on him, but add him to your queue to draft him as a late-round flier in PPR leagues. In half-point PPR, he’s worth consideration as one of your last picks in a deep league. In standard leagues, he can be left undrafted.

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