Fred Jackson’s 2010 Fantasy Potential

When making an analysis into the 2010 fantasy potential of Buffalo Bills running back Fred Jackson, a closer look must be taken at how Marshawn Lynch factors into the offense.

Both players are in their third season with the team, although Lynch is the player who was expected to be the featured back.  Lynch was drafted 12th overall in the 07 NFL draft, whereas Jackson was an undrafted free agent.  Lynch had a somewhat productive first two seasons with the Bills, but was largely ineffective last season.  The emergence of Jackson as an option for the number one running back slot is surely going to affect Lynch’s carries and fantasy value.  Taking a look at each of the players stats over the past three season one can see a how the bulk of the workload has been distributed and how Jackson has taken on more of that workload.

Looking over these numbers there are two areas that stick out.  The first is the yards per carry for each player in 2009.  Jackson had an impressive 4.5 YPC, while Lynch dropped to below 4.0 YPC for the first time in his career.  The second area that sticks out for both players is the lack of touchdowns.  For either player to make a significant fantasy impact in 2010 the individual rushing touchdown total would have to go up.  An improvement in the offensive line play and the play at the quarterback position would greatly improve both players’ numbers.   However, this is an analysis into the fantasy potential of Fred Jackson.  So, let’s take a more in depth look at the 2009 statistics by breaking out the total rushing stats for each player based on games where they carried the ball more than 15 times.

Clearly, you can see that Jackson was the more effective back in 2009 based off of his 8 games with 15 plus carries and a whopping 5.1 yards per carry. These 8 games make up the majority of the total yardage of 1062 that Jackson amassed in 2009. Unlike Jackson, Lynch was only able to get 3.2 yards per carry and the total yardage in games where he had 15 plus carries was not as impressive compared to his 2009 total rushing yardage.

Therefore, it is easy to see that if the Bills were to commit themselves more to the run with Fred Jackson a fantasy force in 2010 could surely happen. Imagine if Jackson were to get 15 plus carries in all 16 regular season games.

An easy way to try and get a 2010 outlook would be to double his totals from his eight 15 plus carries games. That would give Jackson a total of 318 carries for 1614 yards. Unfortunately, for Jackson I don’t think the Bills are entirely willing to give up on Lynch. However, Jackson will see the majority of the carries next season and will be a good option as a late third to a fourth round selection in most fantasy drafts.