Most people are drafting the wrong running backs in fantasy football right now.

I know this because I've been tracking where players are being drafted in over 100 drafts this summer. And in this video, I'll be telling you the five running backs you need to be drafting instead. And if you're not familiar, I'm Salvetri. I've helped people win their fantasy leagues for nearly eight years now. And in this video, I plan to do the same for you. And let's talk about Bucky Irving to start here. First off, Bucky Irving, if you're not familiar right now, he's going as a top 20 overall player at the back of the second round on average. He's going after guys like Josh Jacobs, Jonathan Taylor, Devon, A. Chan, at the running back position, as you can see on the screen right now. And if you're not already familiar, Bucky Irving last year, he broke out in a major way for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, especially around the second half of the season.

Because as you can see right here on RotoViz's game splits tool, over his final seven games after the Bucks by week, Buckie Irving was averaging 8.18.3 fantasy points per game. In between his receiving yards right here of 29 and his rushing yards of 90 yards per game, this dude is averaging nearly 120 total yards per game, almost double the fantasy points in those final seven games compared to his first 10. He was fantastic. And as you can see from my friend Austin over on Twitter, he says in Bucky Irving's five games where he saw at least 10 rush attempts, and I would assume he's going to see more than five games this year with at least double-digit rush attempts. He averaged over 20 fantasy points, 128 yards per game, and almost a touchdown per game. Nearly 21 fantasy points was like top three fantasy production when the dude just saw 10 rush attempts per game. I mean, give this guy more carries. Now that alone, that type of production alone when he got the volume and in the second half of last year where he left off as a late round rookie mind you, that alone is worth like a second round draft pick. But then you factor in that this dude put up over 1,500 total yards last year while not even playing 50% of the team snaps. Heck, he didn't even play 46% of his team snaps. And despite this, he still went out there and he was productive.

Overall, last year, Buck Eirving, only played 45% of the snaps. He was just 37th in

Snapshire. 34th in Opportunity Share, meaning the percentage of his team's backfield

targets and carries that he saw. If you scroll over to his actual carries on the season,

barely got into the top 20, but just 12.2 carries per game, I would assume as most running backs who break out as rookies and show potential down the stretch that he's only going to see more volume heading into year two or at least a decent amount more. Now that doesn't mean that it's 12.2 carries per game is now going to become 20, but maybe it becomes 14 or 15 carries per game. And it's 3.1 targets because becomes 3.7 or 3.8. That doesn't sound like a lot. But if you take that over a 17 game sample, now he's starting to see an extra 50 to 60 plus opportunities on the year, and that's massive. Now, the reason why he was able to put up over 1,500 total yards on limited snaps, less than 50% is because he was extremely efficient. Check this out. Bucky finished top 10 in yards per touch, broken tackle rate, and yards created last year. And just a reminder, he was doing this as a rookie. Now, just in general, when we look at where he's currently going is the 20th overall pick. Now, guys who go around him, yeah, I'd probably rather take Chase Brown later over him, but I want Bucky Irving over guys like Kyram Williams over Brees Hall, and I even want him

over Josh Jacobs and Jonathan Taylor, who currently go ahead of him in fantasy drafts, and I think that's a mistake. Because coming off of that awesome rookie year, the competition doesn't change for Buck Irving. It's still going to be the primary competition, Rashad White, who don't just think like Rashad White's not going to be involved. Sure, he hasn't been the most efficient runner, but he's still a very solid pass catching running back.

One of the best that we've seen the last like five to 10 years come out of college in terms of what he was able to do as a pass catcher at Arizona State in college. There's still Sean Tucker there who in his limited samples and we got opportunities last year, including extended run. He had some massive performances on a per such basis, but this looks like the Bucky Irving show. He's the most explosive.

He's the most versatile.

If you're talking about creating those explosive plays of 20 plus yards, Bucky's probably your guy in this backfield who will do it most. And the Bucke's own head coach Todd Bowles, as you can see on the Coach Speak Index right here on Twitter, a great account. Make sure you're following them, especially right now during training camp and preseason, all that stuff really matters and they're tracking it closely. He basically

goes out and he says, Bucky will be the guy coming in, as you can see right here, which is good to know. And he says Rashab White will play a ton, as we were saying, he's a talented player still, but Bucky will be the guy coming in. That's a stamp of approval. And it makes sense. If you look at the second half of last year, he was the guy.

They gave him key snaps in important games, like a week 17 or week 18 playing game in their postseason game as well. He was seeing a good amount of snaps and touches. It also helps that this should be. They were one of the best offensive lines last year. As you can see right here on Football Insights on the top three right here in the NFL, the Eagles, the Broncos, and the Bucks in terms of

projected offensive lines this year.

I will say that this does not most likely take into account Tristan Werf's injury. He's currently on the Pupplest. There's a good chance that he doesn't start the season 100% healthy or maybe even miss his time. Tristan Whirps, the best offensive lineman on this team, one of the best offensive linemen in the NFL. So that's something to track closely.

And when I was comparing him to, let's say, a guy like Josh Jacobs who goes ahead of

Bucky in more than 50% of fantasy drafts right now, well, Josh Jacobs, I'm taking Bucky

Bucky, probably like 9 out of 10 or 10 out of 10 times in drafts for a couple of reasons.

First off, Bucky Irving is four years younger.

He's heading into his second year in the league when Josh Jacobs has had some massive seasons, including last year where he had over 330 touches. And if you do recall, the last time that Josh Jacobs had a massive workload back in 2022 when he was a fantasy darling when he had 340 carries and over 1,600 rushing yards alone. Well, the following season, he ended up dealing with injuries to close the year, and he wasn't as efficient, a career low 3.5 yards per carry, barely 800 barely 800 rushing yards of course that was on a bad raiders offense where he dealt with injury later in the year in a bad offensive line this is a totally different environment now on a new team with mat lafleur creative offense better offensive line right so we can't just say that that's automatically going to happen again but we can say that josh jacobs is now another year older with a massive and we hope no injury does happen here, but there's a chance that that happens. When you're getting the younger, I would say more dynamic and explosive, expectually in the short areas of the field, Bucking Irving, on what looks like just as good of an offense in terms of total points and offensive line play, I'll go ahead and I'll take Bucking Irving here, a guy who I think has a lot better chance if we're talking about a guy who maybe there's some games that only sees 12 touches, but even

in those, he has a chance to go for like 100 plus yards. So at the end of the day, the first running back right here, who is currently Josh Jacobs being drafted wrongfully ahead of Bucky Irving in my opinion, I'd be taking Bucky Irving instead. and I'd also be taking this next rookie running back ahead of a veteran and a lot of people aren't.

And that rookie I would be taking is Amari running back ahead of a veteran and a lot of people

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