D'Andre Swift - Worth the Gamble?

August 31, 2021

D'Andre Swift is a tough player to value for fantasy football drafts. Eli Grabanski analyzes Swift's profile and whether the running back is a good fantasy value pick.

Today's fantasy football profile will take a look at second-year running back D'Andre Swift of the Detroit Lions by looking at his positives, his concerns, and a variety of other important information in determining his fantasy outlook for 2021.

Swift has been a difficult player to assess because of the injuries last season and throughout training camp.

Without further ado, let's dive in!

The Positives With D'Andre Swift

• Dual-Threat: In 13 games last year, Swift had 114 carries for 521 rushing yards and eight rushing touchdowns on the ground and caught 46 passes on 57 targets for 357 receiving yards and two receiving touchdowns through the air. He also averaged 1.69 yards per route run (6th among RBs) according to PlayerProfiler. He’s showed that he’s capable both on the ground and through the air so if he can build on his snap share of 49.1% (30th among RBs) and an opportunity share of 48.3% (31st among RBs) there’s quite a big ceiling here.
• Anthony Lynn, RB Whisperer: The Detroit Lions will have Anthony Lynn as the team’s new offensive coordinator. Anthony Lynn's offenses with the Chargers tended to utilize their running backs more than most other teams. In fact, there was a stretch where his offense had both Austin Ekeler and Melvin Gordon as fantasy relevant back in 2019 - Ekeler finished as RB4 (RB6 in fantasy PPG) and Melvin Gordon finished as RB23 (RB15 in fantasy PPG) in PPR according to Fantasy Pros. Across 78 games as an offensive coordinator or head coach, Lynn’s tailbacks have averaged 22.81 carries, 101.26 rushing yards, 0.82 rushing touchdowns, 6.71 receptions, 8.50 targets, 57.15 receiving yards, and 0.35 receiving touchdowns per game. He's one of the best in the business for running backs.

• Offensive Line Play: The Detroit Lions actually have a pretty good offensive line, ranking 13th on PFF at the end of last year and being projected as the 10th best offensive line according to PFF going into 2021. Drafting Penei Sewell seventh overall in the 2021 NFL Draft was a great move and should provide a good boost to Swift & the rest of the Lions' offense.

The Concerns With D'Andre Swift

• Jamaal Williams: While Adrian Peterson and Kerryon Johnson are gone, the Lions did sign former Green Bay Packers running back Jamaal Williams. Jamaal Williams has been pretty darn good as a complimentary back to Aaron Jones the last few years and has seen 100+ carries and 25+ receptions in each of his first four years in the league. His ability means that the Lions don’t have to run Swift into the ground, and he could be a bit annoying for anyone rostering Swift in their fantasy leagues.
• Bad Team/Offense: The Lions are projected to win only five games next year according to VegasInsider, which is the second-lowest in the NFL (only above the Houston Texans). The team appears to have downgraded at quarterback going from Matthew Stafford to Jared Goff, and they only ranked 20th in yards and 20th in points last year already according to Pro Football Reference. This could be a rough year for the team and limit the number of scoring opportunities for Swift.
• Lingering Groin Injury: Swift has been dealing with a lingering groin injury this offseason, and there's a possibility it impacts his play at the start of the 2021 NFL season. His head coach Dan Campbell recently said, "We don’t know if he’s going to be there. We don’t know if he’ll be there. We don’t know, even if he is, how much we’re going to get out of him. And until we get him out to practice on a consistent basis, we won’t know that. So that’s just really the truth of it. That’s where we’re at." The best ability is availability, so if Swift's injury lingers into the regular season you may want to look elsewhere.

Additional Info

• D’Andre Swift finished as the RB20 in standard, RB18 in 0.5PPR, and RB18 in PPR in total fantasy points last year according to Fantasy Pros.
• D’Andre Swift posted a 69.4 PFF grade in 2020.
• D’Andre Swift fumbled three times on 160 touches (fumbled on 1.88% of touches) and had five drops in 2020 (drop % of 8.8%) according to Pro Football Reference.
• The Detroit Lions haven’t had a 1000 yard rusher since Reggie Bush in 2013.

Personal Thoughts

D’Andre Swift is one of the most polarizing early-round RBs in the fantasy for the 2021 season. He’s going off the board as RB19 on ESPN (43.7 overall), RB15 on NFL.com (35.64 overall), and RB21 on Yahoo (41.5 overall). His upside is through the roof given his age, pass-catching ability & usage, offensive line, and coaching, but he also has one of the lowest floors of any top-20 running back given he’s on a team that may struggle to score at times and could utilize Jamaal Williams more than we expect.

I’m personally on the more optimistic side of Swift - he only played about 50% of the snaps last year and was top 20 in all formats. I also think that while Jamaal Williams gets a fair amount of usage, it will be in more of a ‘Latavius Murray’ type of role with Swift being utilized more like a poor man’s Alvin Kamara. Overall, I think he’s going to be a pretty good value at his current ADP as long as we get a report that he's good to go for the start of the season.

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