If you haven’t had your fantasy football draft yet, then you are probably neck-deep in your fantasy football player rankings, reading everything you can possibly read in our free fantasy football draft guide and formulating draft strategies for the big day. Safe to assume you’ve already printed out and studied the Ultimate Fantasy Football Cheat Sheet? Good. What about doing some fantasy football mock drafts? Excellent. But even with all of that research, you are probably still staring at certain players, wondering if drafting them at their current fantasy football ADP is, not just giving you the proper value, but if they are even right for you or your team. Is the juice worth the squeeze? This is where we come in with our all-new Fantasy Football Player Debate series where two analysts go head-to-head and give you the pros and cons to help with your decisions.

Today, Dan Malin and Britt Flinn go head-to-head to help you decide whether you want to or even should draft New York Jets running back Breece Hall. 

 

 

 

Pros To Drafting Breece Hall

by Dan Malin

Rookie running backs always make for a polarizing debate during fantasy football draft season. A year ago we were discussing what to make of Najee Harris’ situation in Pittsburgh. The same could be said for Javonte Williams who we knew had to share touches with Melvin Gordon. Breece Hall of the New York Jets is this year’s rookie running back that is up for debate as to whether or not you should draft him for your fantasy football team. FantasyAlarm’s 2022 Fantasy Football Player Rankings have Hall just outside the top 15 at the running back position, while most mock drafts have him going just inside the top 40 picks overall. Let’s dive into what makes the New York Jets prized rookie running back such an appealing option ahead of the 2022 fantasy football season.

The Jets used an early second-round pick on Hall out of Iowa State. As a prospect, Hall was one of the best running backs to come out of the draft in recent memory. Since 2019, while at Iowa State, Hall led all players among the power five conferences in rushing yards, while leading all collegiate players in yards after contact, touchdowns, and missed tackles per Pro Football Focus.

But what do we make of Michael Carter? The Jets know more about Carter than we do, but all signs point to the organization knowing Carter is not a three-down back as he’s more of a complimentary piece than a featured weapon. When Tevin Coleman missed three games a year ago, Carter saw his touches and snap share increase to 19 per game and 66% respectively. Once Coleman returned, the workload for Carter regressed to about 12-14 touches and a 50% snap share. Now Carter has to compete for work against a far more talented running back and a heavy draft investment in Hall, who profiles more as a three-down back.

Now there are concerns about what the New York Jets offense could look like in 2022. Truthfully, it’s more of a stigma that many football fans can’t quite shake. For starters, Zach Wilson is expected to make strides in his second year in the league. Fortunately, he dodged a very serious knee injury in New York’s first preseason game and surgery earlier in the week was deemed a success. It’s possible he still misses time, but overall this was fortunate news for the Jets who can turn to Joe Flacco if they need to. As noted in this year’s NFL Offensive Line Breakdown, I’m a fan of the moves the Jets made in the offseason. Yes, the loss of Mekhi Becton certainly hurts. But they recently went and signed veteran Duane Brown to replace Becton for 2022 and they brought in Laken Tomlinson in the offseason to lock up the interior. 

Hall is the kind of impact player than can immediately step in and receive 15-20 touches per game and be used in the passing game and in goal line situations. If he stays healthy behind an improved offensive line, there’s no reason he can’t hit his ceiling, finish as a top 12 running back, and help you win your league.

Cons to Drafting Breece Hall

by Britt Flinn

I’m going against consensus here, but I’m not drafting Breece Hall at his ADP this year. When a running back coach says he’s going to manage the running back rotation like it’s Pokemon, I don’t get a good feeling that it’s going to be anything more than a committee, at least for a good part of the season. Will he be the Breece-achu or more of a Squirtle?

While Breece Hall has the draft capital and profile of a three-down back with a second-round draft selection and 6-foot 220-pound frame, Michael Carter offers too much talent to be relegated to a complementary piece in this backfield. In 2021, Carter led the league in missed tackles per touch and was 13th in yards per touch, leaving many to wonder why the Jets selected Hall where they did in the first place. There is too much talent in this backfield for it to go to just one back.

There is also concern over how much total volume these backs will be splitting. In 2021, the Jets gave their running back room a combined 455 touches, with a league-low 22.4 rushing attempts per game. The Jets were fairly productive on the run plays they did call, but if Carter and Hall split the work on first and second downs, some of those more productive runs could go Carter’s way. Sure, Hall will also get some targets to go along with those attempts, but last season, Jets running backs only averaged 4.35 targets per game. If the workload is split and Carter becomes the primary pass-catching back, Hall will not see the kind of target share you want to see where you’re drafting him. 

Next up is the comparison with Jonathan Taylor. Everyone loves to use player comps when evaluating a player, and it’s hard to not get fired up when Hall’s comp is THE number one running back in 2022. However, if you look at Taylor’s rookie season, aside from an outlier in Week 2 where he cracked the 100-yard mark, it really took him until Week 12 for him to finally establish himself as the workhorse back in Indianapolis. Of course, you can’t compare player to player or situation to situation, but it is something to think about, especially if you’re counting on Hall to be an immediate impact player. I still remember the lamentations of why JT wasn’t producing during his rookie season, and the similarities are eerie. Hall is currently being drafted at RB19 where Taylor was going as RB23. This isn’t to say that Hall can’t or won’t be a valuable asset down the stretch, but you better have some kind of early season contingency plan for your RB2 slot if you expect to win matchups early on.

As a side note, the Jets also lost their best run blocker Mekhi Beckton for the season, and it may be more of an uphill climb for Hall to break out than people are expecting. You can’t argue against his talent, but there are too many flies in the ointment for me to count on Breece Hall this season.

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