Christian McCaffrey vs. Saquon Barkley at #1
Yahoo Sports' Andy Behrens and The Action Network's Chris Raybon debate who between Christian McCaffrey and Saquon Barkley should go #1 overall in fantasy drafts. Subscribe to the Yahoo Fantasy Football Forecast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Video Transcript
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ANDY BEHRENS: You're for sure, 100% it has to be McCaffrey at number one? Can't-- can I talk you into Saquon?
CHRIS RAYBON: No, absolutely not. Saquon had a game where he ran 13 times for a 1 yard.
ANDY BEHRENS: But I mean, OK. OK. I'll try to talk you into Saquon to start that since you are a Giants fan.
CHRIS RAYBON: So do it, let's do it.
ANDY BEHRENS: So much of his season, like the terrible middle weeks of this season we're obviously related to the ankle injury, right? He gets back to basically full capacity in December. And he is quite suddenly the best running back on Earth again.
That was 400 yards, 400 plus yards over two weeks, four or five touchdowns. Absolute monster. He has a 2,000 scrimmage yard season to his credit. He's already been a 90-catch guy. You look at the Panthers, you got the new head coach who is quite reasonably, I think, talking about maybe not playing Christian McCaffrey every damn snap.
Right? McCaffrey is a wonderful player, and I wouldn't take him past two. But I'm really close with Barkley.
CHRIS RAYBON: I just think Barkley's running style is so-- is too boom or bust. And you get ugly games. And McCaffrey just hasn't had that same issue. If you look at McCaffrey last year, in PPR, he outscored every other running back.
These are running backs that played 16 games. He outscored their number two running back, Aaron Jones, by over 150 points. That's like 10 per week, essentially.
ANDY BEHRENS: It's a fair margin.
CHRIS RAYBON: That's too much of a guess for me to say nah, Christian McCaffrey. You know, he can play less snaps. He's a guy who had over 1,000 hours on the ground, over 1,000 yards receiving. But I think if you're fading McCaffrey, you got to go Michael Thomas.
Because fading McCaffrey is such a contrarian move, that you're essentially fading the running back position, and saying all of these guys are too injury prone. I'm going to take the guy that can catch 150 balls this year. And I think it's most viable in PPR.
But that's kind of how I'm looking at it. If I'm fading McCaffrey, it's not going to be for another running back. It's going to be for a completely different position, because right next are the most injury-prone position.
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