Terminating James Conner as Your RB1

September 25, 2019

Pittsburgh Steelers running back James Conner has been disappointing up until Week 4 of the 2019 NFL season. Antonio Losada examines Conner's fantasy football value and decides whether he can produce RB1 value or if he should be traded away.

What a rollercoaster of a year for Pittsburgh so far. The Steelers finished the 2018 season with a Week 17 win over the Bengals, but still fell short of the postseason. By the time that game was played, Antonio Brown had at least one foot out the door in Pittsburgh. Le'Veon Bell had just completed his quest for a full-season holdout and was heading toward New York. 2019 would mark the first time in five years the franchise wouldn't automatically be in Super Bowl contention.

Fast-forward to September and it was Ben Roethlisberger, the remaining stalwart of this offense, who fell injured in Week 2 of the 2019 season. Easy math: The top-three players (each at a different all-important offensive position) of the team were gone in no time.

But fear nothing, Steelers! You know what happened in 2018 when Bell refused to play. Second-year phenom James Conner stepped up, took on Bell's duties, and finished the season with 973 yards on 215 carries for 12 touchdowns. He even showed his receiving abilities by adding 497 yards on 55 receptions with a score through the air. So, given that season-long performance and the current state of the Steelers, it would be okay to think of Conner as a league-leading running back playing in Pittsburgh, right? Well, we might be wrong about it and it could be time to sound the alarms before it's too late.

As Conner Came...

There is no reason to bash Conner from the get-go. How many players have stepped into a hole as massive as Le'Veon Bell left in Pittsburgh by holding out a season? Not only that but how many produced to the extent Conner did?

The best we can do, although one-to-one comparisons are never great, is to compare Bell's 2017 season to Conner's 2018. In 2017, Bell played 15 games, attempted 321 runs and rushed for 1,291 yards and nine TD; he added 655 yards through the air on 85 receptions with two touchdowns. In 2018, Conner played 13 games, attempted 215 runs and rushed for 973 yards and 12 TDs; he added 497 yards through the air on 55 receptions with one touchdown. Not a carbon copy, but still pretty solid numbers for Conner.

Looking at a broader picture, from the team perspective, Pittsburgh actually benefited from Conner being the RB1 instead of Bell. Without getting into all the details, here is the comparison between the games Conner played in and logged more than eight carries ("In Split"; includes all of his 2018 games) and those he didn't ("Out of Split"; includes all of Bell's 2017 games).

With Conner on the field instead of Bell, Pittsburgh only scored 0.06 fewer points per game, which is virtually nothing. With him, though, the offense was boosted more than three points on average.

In terms of fantasy football, Conner was a blessing for those who didn't trust Bell coming back and either drafted Conner or picked him from waivers where available. Conner became a league winner at a peanuts-low-price, finishing the year with 280.0 PPR points and as the fantasy RB6, even despite missing three games. His pace per game would have put him at around 345 PPR in a full 16-game season, which would have had him finish the year as the seventh-best player overall league-wide in PPR.

Obviously, Conner entered this year's fantasy drafts with a second-round ADP at most, being widely ranked as a top-10 player among all positions. Now, three weeks into the season, things are not looking good for Conner owners.

...Conner Went?

With three weeks already in the rearview mirror, we're still hesitant in terms of cutting bait on some of our players. We have seen a good chunk of what each player can do in his environment, and have an idea of what we can expect from them going forward. And getting back to James Conner, the drop in everything is just plain obvious.

Getting back to the splits app on RotoViz, we can compare what Pittsburgh as a team is doing in 2019 (left) compared to 2018 (right).

The Steelers have had a bad start of the season. They're conceding six more points per game while scoring more than 10 fewer per contest. They project to 4.5 wins instead of last season's 9.3, and although they have maintained their pass-heavy profile (68:32 pass/run split), the numbers are considerably lower due to the problems of the team as a whole keeping possession.

As per Conner himself, the drop all around his numbers is notable, too.

Bell was an elite-level talent. Irreplaceable, although some folks say he wasn't and Conner proved it. To an extent, yes, he proved the team could succeed with Bell, but he still fell short of Bell's production. What has fallen are Conner's outcomes this season, and with Big Ben out for the year and Mason Rudolph not looking good so far, things could turn even uglier.

Through three games, Conner is averaging almost half the PPR per game he did in 2018, and all of this rushing and receiving numbers are on the low end, including the fantasy Expected Points for both sides of his game.

Solving The Conner Owner's Conundrum

As we reach this point, I'm going to start closing Conner's case. Something is clear: Pittsburgh had a beast in Bell. They lost him in 2018 and put Conner in his place. Conner went to have a career-year, ranking among the best players in the league, let alone running backs. Now the Steelers have lost also Antonio Brown and Ben Roethlisberger, teams are not scared of the passing game Mason Rudolph brings, and Conner is more than probably going to suffer.

If you're a proud Conner owner, it is still early to just go and drop him. It wouldn't make much sense, let's be honest. While it is true Conner is no longer an RB1, his total 33.7 PPR this season through three weeks rank him RB25, which is to say borderline low-end RB2 and a sure-thing Flex option at the very least. More than that, Conner's EP (Expected Points) are actually 39.5, which are minus-5.8 compared to his real PPR mark, and which would rank him 17th-best in RB ranks instead of 25th. Expect a rebound from him.

Even with that potential rebound coming, Conner still doesn't merit a lock in your lineup's RB1 position. If we judge for EP instead of actual PPR, we can find interesting players to move into RB1, try to acquire through waivers to compensate for potential Conner flops, or to even try and trade Conner for in case he puts on another dud come Week 4.

Of players "underperforming" (lower PPR than EP), Conner has been the 14th-most unlucky player with a 5.8-point difference. Here are some potential players worth your attention in Week 4 in case they become available through any of the paths I mentioned:

• Leonard Fournette (JAX): I don't think there is a player underperforming more than Fournette. You don't even need numbers to tell. He has 41.3 PPR to 51.5 EP, so he's definitely on a system where, given the chances he's been given, he should perform more. Try to sell the trade as some sort of "waste removal" from both sites and expect better production going forward.
• Chris Thompson (WAS): With Derrius Guice out injured, I expected Adrian Peterson to carry a heavy load every game. It doesn't seem like that is going to be the case, and although Thompson doesn't offer such a solid floor on the ground as others, his usage on the passing game is outstanding. You might be able to swap RBs and gain another player in addition to Thompson based on draft stock.
• Joe Mixon (CIN): Perhaps one of the more upsetting players of the season so far, Mixon has only racked up 26.9 PPR in three games and he's been banged up for some time. That could be reason to expect a better set of outings going forward, so you could easily buy on the low (lower than Conner) and expect him to do better in an offense led by a quite volatile quarterback in Andy Dalton and that is lacking target-magnets such as A.J. Green.

My advice, after all of this wording, is to hold onto James Conner until we see at least one or two more outings from these Mason Rudolph-led Steelers. There is no better team for Conner to prove he's still a go-to option at RB2 than this weekend's matchup against Cincinnati, which ranks dead last against the position. If Conner lays an egg against them, seriously consider moving him (and using him as no more than a Flex). If he does what he's supposed to do, then hold until he faces a much tougher defense against Baltimore in Week 5, and consider that game a do-or-die for his future in your team.

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