We’ve taken on Cam Akers and Jalen Reagor thus far in this Dynasty Profiles series and now will discuss a running-back who’s landing position had a major impact on the icumbendent’s value.
Zack Moss was taken with the 86th overall pick of the 2020 NFL draft by the Buffalo Bills, where he’ll form one of the best young backfield duos in the league with Devin Singeltary.
As we venture through both the face-value breakdown and the statistical breakdown, we’ll explain why we believe Singletary is a must sell candidate at this point as his value will never be as high.
Moss is currently being taken in the back-end of the first round and early parts of the second-round of most rookie dynasty drafts, and rightfully so.
At face-value, why would we like Moss’ landing spot as the Bills already have break-out rookie Singletary in the backfield who too was a third round pick a year ago?
It’s simple, Singletary is not a three-down back in the NFL.
When Singletary was used as the change-of-pace back to the never-aging Frank Gore, he averaged 7.6 yards-per-carry. Although, the sample size was small as he had just 28 carries across five games that Gore started and Singletary served as the back-up, it proves that he’s best suited for such a role.
When Singeltary took over as the starter, he averaged 4.8 yards-per-carry on 108 carries. Now, this is an impressive number, don’t get me wrong, but that’s 2.8-yards shy when mixing him with a Gore-type.
An even bigger difference is his involvement in the passing game decreases when he’s the starting back. In the five games he was the back-up, he was targeted 18-times. In the games where he was on the field the majority of the time as the starter, he was targeted 22-times in those six games.
Singeltary’s biggest hole in his game is his inability to find the endzone and be productive in the red-zone. He ran for just two touchdowns a team ago, despite receiving 151 carries and rushing for 775 yards. He even saw 23 red-zone attempts. He also received two touchdowns, both outside of the redzone.
Gore saw 26 red zone opportunities on ten total less opportunities than Singletary.
Now we can see why the Bills went out and got Moss, they needed that piece to counteract Singeltary, and Moss is as close to Gore as you can get, at least physically.
Both Gore and Moss are 5-foot-9. Gore has ten pounds on moss but both have similar 40 yard dash speeds (Gore, 4.58 and Moss, 4.65) and even similar verticals (Gore, 34 and Moss, 33.)
Last season when Gore was the starting running back, he averaged 3.4 yards-per-carry. I know, not impressive but let’s not forget that the man is 36 years old.
He averaged just 2.3 yards-per-carry when he served as the backup.
If we were to combine both Gore and Singletary’s yards-per-carry when Gore was the starter and when Singletary was the starter we would get 11 to 7.1.
It’s pretty obvious where I’m going with this.
This is going to be a split back-field for years to come. Moss is going to get more carries than Singeltary but Singletary will work more out of the back as Moss is not much of a pass catching back.
What also stands out is that Moss is arguably the best pass-blocking back in this entire draft, which will allow him to see the field more than the very poor blocking Singletary.
It is also pretty obvious that Moss will be the red-zone option for the Bills, limiting the already limited touchdown value that Singletary has.
If you’re a Singletary owner, I suggest selling him now. Moss is coming in to take much of his value. You’ll be disappointed if you hold onto him and expect end-of-the-season production out of him.
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