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Should You Draft Baltimore Ravens Running Back in This Year's Fantasy Draft?
It's never too early to start your fantasy football research, and we here at SI Fantasy want to provide you with the best information possible heading into your drafts. Our "Draft or Pass" video series takes a closer look at a fantasy player that will be debated, often leading up to fantasy drafts. Are our hosts targeting this player specifically? Are they avoiding him entirely?
Today's video focuses on Baltimore Ravens running back Mark Ingram.
Draft at current ADP: 63.0 (RB24)
Ingram: It appears that everyone is poised to run away from Ingram this season after the Ravens spent a second-round pick on running back J.K. Dobbins. However, I’m not one of them.
Ingram finished as the RB9 in total points and RB11 in average fantasy points per game in PPR formats last season despite catching only 26 passes. His 15 total touchdowns are sure to regress, but he's priced quite appropriately right now as a sixth-rounder and borderline RB2/Flex.
No team in the NFL ran a higher percentage of running plays than Baltimore last season, rushing a little more than 54% of the time they had the ball. The Ravens were ranked third in that category the season prior without Ingram and Lamar Jackson only starting part of the season. Running the football is Baltimore's identity, and that’s not changing anytime soon according to Todd Karpovich of RavenCountry
“The Ravens love to run the football and broke the NFL’s all-time single-season rushing mark with 3,296 yards last season. Baltimore also became the first team in NFL history to average 206.0 rushing yards and 201.6 net passing yards per game behind quarterback Lamar Jackson, who was named the league's Most Valuable Player.”
A crowded backfield can be scary, especially since Ingram isn’t a 20-touch-per-game guy, but there isn’t a real threat for Ingram to lose his job. You may see a little more of Justice Hill on third downs in Year 2, but he and Gus Edwards were both there last season when Ingram was a fantasy RB1. Dobbins will be worked into the offense slowly, a la Hill in 2019, and isn’t a threat to steal touches from Ingram in 2020.
Expect Ingram to get around the 15 touches per game he averaged in 2018 with fewer touchdowns—if you took away five touchdowns from last season, he would've finished as the RB22. He won't be near RB1 territory, but as a low-end RB2 or flex, you'll be quite satisfied.
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Video Transcript
Bill Enright: Baltimore Ravens running back Mark Ingram finished as the eighth running back in fantasy football standard formats. 1200 combined yards, 15 touchdowns. The guy does it all, but when it comes to 2020. Are you drafting or are you passing when it comes to Mark Ingram? Let's go to Karpovich from Raven Country and Jaime Eisner, fantasy gaming analyst here for Sports Illustrated. Todd, I'll start with you. Even though the Ravens drafted J.K. Dobbins this year. Mark Ingram still gonna be the guy in the backfield, right?
Todd Karpovich: He'll be the starter. What they expect J.K. Dobbins can move that depth chart. And they also got Gus Edwards and Justice Hill. So you got four guys who can run the ball and how many carries is this guy going to get? And of course, Lamar Jackson, he'll get his yards. He led the team last year with 1,206 yards rushing. He's also going to carry the rock a lot. So will Ingram be a goo fantasy pic?. I don't know. I think the Ravens have a lot of versatility back there and they're going to use all four of those guys. In addition, Ingram suffered a calf injury late in the season. So the Ravens might limit how much he gets the ball early in the year to preserve him for a postseason run.
Bill Enright: Jaime, based on Mark Ingram's ADP, are you drafting or are you passing?
Jaime Eisner: I'm drafting in his current ADP for a lot of reasons that Todd brought up. He's kind of looks like he's going to slip down fantasy drafts. Right now he's ranked as the consensus RB 24 going in the sixth round. And at that point I'm more than happy to take him. He was the RB 11 last year on a per game basis in PPR formats despite catching fewer than 30 passes. Even if you took his touchdown total from 15 down to 10, he still would've been an RB two last year. So long as he gets his 15 touches per game and you could stick him in as maybe your flex or a low end RB two, I think you'll be happy with the return.
