Assessing the Washington backfield

Yahoo’s Scott Pianowski and SportsGrid's Davis Mattek evaluate how to make the most out of the Washington backfield Subscribe to the Yahoo Fantasy Football Forecast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Video Transcript

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SCOTT PIANOWSKI: We just saw Washington-- there's been some shakeup in their backfield. Derrius Guice is off the team for obvious reasons. Adrian Peterson looks like their first 2-down grinder. But he's a million years old. Gibson's ADP is jumping up. What's your take on him? Are you gonna be invested this year? What do you think about this backfield?

DAVIS MATTEK: Well, another reason to get those drafts in early. Gibson's one of my most drafted players of the off-season because you could just-- for a while, you could get him free. He was going in, like, the 17th round.

Then he started to creep up. Scott Turner called him Christian McCaffrey-light or something like that. The team started to talk about him. And now he goes really early. You are lucky to get him in the eighth round now.

And I mean, for the most part, I do think that it's appropriate. Because after the top 60 or so players, we're just talking about really wide ranges of outcomes. These are guys who can get benched. These are guys who can just not be very good anymore. So I'm very fine taking shots there.

And I think that actually the way that Gibson gets there-- I think it's unrealistic in year one for him to go from being an offensive weapon-style player at Memphis to being a 300-carry running back. But Washington has this really terrible wide receiver depth chart. So they have McLaurin, and they have Sims. And then they just have a bunch of guys who are very average to below average.

And it's actually underrated. They don't really have a tight end either. They have Logan Thomas, who is fine. Hale Hentges, Jeremy Sprinkle-- but these are not guys who demand playing time or targets. So I actually think the way that you end up with a winning running back selection out of Gibson is they give him-- do you remember when Shonn Greene and LaDainian Tomlinson played together in New York?

SCOTT PIANOWSKI: Sure.

DAVIS MATTEK: And Shonn Greene was getting 18 carries a game. But they were all the terrible carries. They were all second and 8, up the gut. And then LaDainian Tomlinson is getting 6 carries a game. But it was all the good carries. It was the goal line carries. It was third and 3, the pitch to the outside, the speed option. He was getting all the good carries.

And so I think Gibson can do that better than Peterson can, obviously. But then also there's no reason why he can't do what he did in college, which was just be a slot wide receiver and do both of those things. And I think that's actually the Gibson upside case is that they give him some carries, but he's getting loads of work as a pass-catcher.

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