4 rookie RBs who can start for your fantasy football team

Which rookie running backs could be the key to a successful fantasy football season in 2019? Here are four to keep an eye on.

Draft season never truly ends. And I’m not just talking about the NFL Draft, because once the guys who pick players for real are done with their jobs, fantasy football general managers take over and start building their draft boards in virtual war rooms.

Veteran fantasy football players know one simple rule: franchise running backs can be the building block of a championship season. And, in many instances, some of those running backs come from the rookie class.

This year has a chance to be no different. There are several first-year backs who will challenge for starting jobs in your fantasy backfield. Don’t be misled by the fact that only one running back was picked in the first round; It’s more important where a running back goes than when he’s selected.

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There are three obvious candidates (and one sleeper) at the position this year who have starter’s traits in reality, which means they’ll be big-time contributors in fantasy.

Josh Jacobs, Raiders

Volume is king in fantasy football, and Jacobs literally has no competition for touches in Oakland. He’s going to push for 20 carries per game and could easily tally another five receptions every week. Yes, that’s 25 touches a game for a player who has enough wiggle and juice to turn several of them into chunk plays. He should finish the 2019 season as a top-12 scorer at running back.

David Montgomery, Bears

Montgomery will begin the year in what’s likely to be a running-back-by-committee situation, but he’s clearly the most talented natural runner of the current group in Chicago (Mike Davis and Tarik Cohen). Montgomery is expected to be used much like Kareem Hunt was by Kansas City when Matt Nagy was on the Chiefs coaching staff, and we all know how that season turned out for him. Hunt led the NFL in rushing that year. While it would be rich to predict the same level of success for Montgomery in 2019, the dude’s gonna get his chances to make plays.

Miles Sanders, Eagles

Sanders was Saquon Barkley-lite at Penn State last season and he feels like the missing piece to an Eagles offense that just needs a player like him to give Carson Wentz a bailout option in the flat. And don’t sleep on his ability to flat out tote the rock. Sanders could be for Philadelphia what Matt Forte once was for the Bears, and that means big-time points in fantasy.

Darrell Henderson, Rams

If Todd Gurley stays healthy in 2019, Henderson will be nothing more than bench fodder in fantasy football. But the odds Gurley will play a full 16 games are low, and if Los Angeles has a playoff spot locked up late in the season — aka, the fantasy playoffs — Henderson could go off. He has field-flipping ability, and with the kind of weapons that already exist on the Rams’ offense, a player with Henderson’s traits could conjure memories of Chris Johnson from his dazzling years with the Titans.