Clinton Portis = Mr. Overated

[Timbathia]

Does no one factor in consistency, reliability and durability in their fantasy rankings? Everyone overlooks them in favor of "potential." Every RB in the league has potential. Kevin Jones ranked 9th in fantasy points per game, so if he stays healthy, is he also worth a early second round pick? No one wants to take him there because he is in fact an injury risk. Kevin Jones led the league in rushing over the second half of the '04 season, and then he sucked in '05.

It gets factored in completely and seems to have been addressed about the 16 games in 5 years comment when half of those were last year alone. People seem to be scared off of Portis due to the injuries last year and Betts. That's fine by me. I'll be there to scoop him up greedily.

KJ is not being an early second round pick due to the fact he's still hurt and a likely candidate for PUP. So no reason to even consider taking him that high. I don't see the connection to a back coming back healthy to one that may not even play in '07. I also thought he had a degenerative condition in one or both of his knees, so that would hurt his value I would think ultimately as well.

He may have only missed 16 games in 5 years, but he has left games early and played hurt in a lot of games. Portis is less durable than almost every starting running back in the NFL. Check out the injury reports for the past 5 years, including pre-season. Those shoulder injuries are starting to build up as well, not ideal for a RB.

Great talent, but IMO the least likely starting RB to play in all 16 games this year.

[Humpback]

You guys should know better than to try and argue with Matt and FB . I think you know I'm a big fan of Portis, I think he's a great talent, but I think even you'd agree that there are question marks in terms of his FF value. You guys bring up many valid points, but do you really think all of them are going to pan out? Campbell is "only going to improve", their defense "only got better", another year under Saunders is going to "make a huge difference", "he uses his shoulder a lot, his injury was serious so it affected him last year, but not long-term so it won't affect him this year", etc., etc., etc. Honestly, you don't think there's any chance that Campbell stinks next year, or he gets banged up again, or they give Betts a much larger role, or the offense or defense as a whole doesn't live up to expectations? Shoulder injuries do tend to linger, especially if you use them to smash into moster defensive players 50+ times per game (counting blocking). I'm not saying I expect his shoulder to be an issue, but it's certainly a concern.

Also Matt, I don't think anybody's saying the number's you guys are talking about are unreasonable, but would you really project him to get them? If so, then you'd take him in the first round. I think those numbers are certainly possible, but I would lower the projections personally because a lot would have to go right for them to come to fruition, and it's been quite a while since a lot has gone right for Portis. I mean, you're projecting a much higher ypc than he's had in the 3 seasons there, more TDs than any season he's had there, and similar receiving numbers, even though they've already basically said they like Betts in that role. Again, it certainly could happen, but to project it is a completely different story.

The talent in undeniable, but so are the risks. If it wasn't for these risks, he'd be a lock 1st rounder, like he was a few seasons ago. If he comes out and puts up the numbers you project this year, then he will be a 1st rounder next year, but I would not want him as my 1st round pick this season. Just too many risks. 2nd round, gladly.

[cowboyragan]

Portis is almost equivalent to Donvan McNabb. You can count on him producing stellar per game numbers whenever he plays, but he's a lock to miss 2-4 games and spend another 8 weeks listed as questionable...I'd pass, even though I think he holds Betts off as long as he's playing

[eaglesrule]

although, it seems to me that donovan and portis are weird in that the injuries aren't consistent, in that they vary. so I don't know if they are a lock to miss any time necessarily, its just you can't discount their past either.

[Kensat30]

Fine, let's just include the 6 games where we know he played all 4 quarters. He had 15.16 fantasy PPG. That's good enough for 8th place.

But still, everyone's overlooking the fact that he DID INDEED MISS TIME.

#1 - Portis played injured and by your count was #8 in PPG while playing injured
#2 - Averaged 315 carries per year over a 4 year period before being injured last year
#3 - everyone has a chance to get injured at some point in time, look at Shaun Alexander

[bagobonez]

Fine, let's just include the 6 games where we know he played all 4 quarters. He had 15.16 fantasy PPG. That's good enough for 8th place.

But still, everyone's overlooking the fact that he DID INDEED MISS TIME.

#1 - Portis played injured and by your count was #8 in PPG while playing injured
#2 - Averaged 315 carries per year over a 4 year period before being injured last year
#3 - everyone has a chance to get injured at some point in time, look at Shaun Alexander

Yes, everyone has a chance to get injured at some point in time, it's football after all, but some players show more likelihood to get hurt than others, Portis is one of those guys, you can't deny that.

[Free Bagel]

You guys should know better than to try and argue with Matt and FB . I think you know I'm a big fan of Portis, I think he's a great talent, but I think even you'd agree that there are question marks in terms of his FF value. You guys bring up many valid points, but do you really think all of them are going to pan out? Campbell is "only going to improve", their defense "only got better", another year under Saunders is going to "make a huge difference", "he uses his shoulder a lot, his injury was serious so it affected him last year, but not long-term so it won't affect him this year", etc., etc., etc. Honestly, you don't think there's any chance that Campbell stinks next year, or he gets banged up again, or they give Betts a much larger role, or the offense or defense as a whole doesn't live up to expectations? Shoulder injuries do tend to linger, especially if you use them to smash into moster defensive players 50+ times per game (counting blocking). I'm not saying I expect his shoulder to be an issue, but it's certainly a concern.

That's just it though, you don't have to "count on" any of those things because even when they were all at their worst the guy was still putting up top 10 numbers with only 60% of the touches. Campbell will probably get better, most QBs are better after their first half season as an NFL QB. But even if he's not, he won't be worse than Brunell with whom Portis put up top 10 PPG numbers, so who cares? QB play has nowhere to go but up. If Campbell played with two broken arms and in a wheelchair he'd be better than Brunell was last year just because he's not scared to stand within 10 yards of the line of scrimmage, so even if everything breaks down and Campbell ends up being awful Portis is still no worse off than he was with Brunell.

If the defense doesn't improve, so what? He did fine with the defense just the way it is.

Maybe Saunders second year will be no better than his first, and he's just an overrated guy that benefited from being an assistant of Vermeil. Even if that's the case though and they don't improve any from last year, that system was still good enough to put up 1st round RB numbers.

Maybe Portis' shoulder will never be the same as it once was. But it certainly won't be any worse than it was when he was playing last year and he did just fine even playing with it.

Now, many of those things are likely to improve. But even if they don't he was still doing just fine with all of them in the forefront.

That's the thing with Portis. Every argument that people make about the guy is something he's already dealt with. Splitting time? He was a top 10 PPG RB doing the same thing last year. Poor QB play? Last year was as bad as it gets.

The injuries scare many people off, and I get this. But the guy has one major injury in his NFL career, and managed to play through the rest and put up 1st round VBD numbers basically every year of his career except 2004, where he was still pretty close to it.

Further, to those worried about "counting" on Portis, those little nagging injuries generally have not come at bad times. Last year his major injury knocked him out of the 2nd half but the rest of his career he's been very strong towards the end of the season. He missed week 16 in 2003 and other than that he averaged 24 (!!!) PPG in the fantasy playoffs (weeks 14-16). For those interested, that comes from 140yds and 1.7 TDs per game in that span.

In those TEN games he failed to go for 100 yards only ONCE. He scored a TD in 7 of those 10 games and scored multiple TDs in 5 of those 10.

So it's not like he's a guy like Mcnabb (we'll leave out the part where that's not really even a fair comparison for Portis) where you can say that he's not there when you need him. So he misses a game in week 4 and you have to start someone else (that should be even less of an issue this year given that his backup is very startable when he's out this year). He's a RB, that happens and that's part of the reason guys like Rudi are valuable. Half the 1st rounders aren't reliable to stay healthy every game every year (Brian Westbrook anyone?). Again though, it's not like he misses all the big games, in fact he may be one of the best out there during the FF playoffs.

[bagobonez]

You guys should know better than to try and argue with Matt and FB . I think you know I'm a big fan of Portis, I think he's a great talent, but I think even you'd agree that there are question marks in terms of his FF value. You guys bring up many valid points, but do you really think all of them are going to pan out? Campbell is "only going to improve", their defense "only got better", another year under Saunders is going to "make a huge difference", "he uses his shoulder a lot, his injury was serious so it affected him last year, but not long-term so it won't affect him this year", etc., etc., etc. Honestly, you don't think there's any chance that Campbell stinks next year, or he gets banged up again, or they give Betts a much larger role, or the offense or defense as a whole doesn't live up to expectations? Shoulder injuries do tend to linger, especially if you use them to smash into moster defensive players 50+ times per game (counting blocking). I'm not saying I expect his shoulder to be an issue, but it's certainly a concern.

That's just it though, you don't have to "count on" any of those things because even when they were all at their worst the guy was still putting up top 10 numbers with only 60% of the touches. Campbell will probably get better, most QBs are better after their first half season as an NFL QB. But even if he's not, he won't be worse than Brunell with whom Portis put up top 10 PPG numbers, so who cares? QB play has nowhere to go but up. If Campbell played with two broken arms and in a wheelchair he'd be better than Brunell was last year just because he's not scared to stand within 10 yards of the line of scrimmage, so even if everything breaks down and Campbell ends up being awful Portis is still no worse off than he was with Brunell.

If the defense doesn't improve, so what? He did fine with the defense just the way it is.

Maybe Saunders second year will be no better than his first, and he's just an overrated guy that benefited from being an assistant of Vermeil. Even if that's the case though and they don't improve any from last year, that system was still good enough to put up 1st round RB numbers.

Maybe Portis' shoulder will never be the same as it once was. But it certainly won't be any worse than it was when he was playing last year and he did just fine even playing with it.

Now, many of those things are likely to improve. But even if they don't he was still doing just fine with all of them in the forefront.

That's the thing with Portis. Every argument that people make about the guy is something he's already dealt with. Splitting time? He was a top 10 PPG RB doing the same thing last year. Poor QB play? Last year was as bad as it gets.

The injuries scare many people off, and I get this. But the guy has one major injury in his NFL career, and managed to play through the rest and put up 1st round VBD numbers basically every year of his career except 2004, where he was still pretty close to it.

Further, to those worried about "counting" on Portis, those little nagging injuries generally have not come at bad times. Last year his major injury knocked him out of the 2nd half but the rest of his career he's been very strong towards the end of the season. He missed week 16 in 2003 and other than that he averaged 24 (!!!) PPG in the fantasy playoffs (weeks 14-16). For those interested, that comes from 140yds and 1.7 TDs per game in that span.

In those TEN games he failed to go for 100 yards only ONCE. He scored a TD in 7 of those 10 games and scored multiple TDs in 5 of those 10.

So it's not like he's a guy like Mcnabb (we'll leave out the part where that's not really even a fair comparison for Portis) where you can say that he's not there when you need him. So he misses a game in week 4 and you have to start someone else (that should be even less of an issue this year given that his backup is very startable when he's out this year). He's a RB, that happens and that's part of the reason guys like Rudi are valuable. Half the 1st rounders aren't reliable to stay healthy every game every year (Brian Westbrook anyone?). Again though, it's not like he misses all the big games, in fact he may be one of the best out there during the FF playoffs.

Well said. 1 point for the bagel!

[Timbathia]

Hang on a second, but...........

I am not going to accept an argument that Portis is reliable because although he gets constant nagging injuries, they only come at times that doesnt impact fantasy playoffs. You are suggesting that somehow Portis has an influence over when he gets injured, and it hasnt just been luck that he has been healthy for 4 of 5 fantasy post-seasons.

The only possible way this makes sense is if, a) Portis exaggerates injuries he gets early in the season to get sympathy or kudos for playing through the pain, or, b) he avoids contact later in the season to ensure he doesnt get knocked around as much.

He is a giant tool (i.e. dog-fighting comments, heavy-weight championship belt, etc.) and I wouldnt put either a) or b) past him, but I tend to think that he has been more lucky with injury timing than good management.

I agree Portis has performed well in the past despite these constant injuries, I am just saying that he gets nicked up a lot and a history of injuries tend to catch up with you (most things dont heal up perfectly). I would sure be taking Betts a round earlier than his ADP if I invest a high draft pick in Portis.

[Kensat30]

Fine, let's just include the 6 games where we know he played all 4 quarters. He had 15.16 fantasy PPG. That's good enough for 8th place.

But still, everyone's overlooking the fact that he DID INDEED MISS TIME.

#1 - Portis played injured and by your count was #8 in PPG while playing injured
#2 - Averaged 315 carries per year over a 4 year period before being injured last year
#3 - everyone has a chance to get injured at some point in time, look at Shaun Alexander

Yes, everyone has a chance to get injured at some point in time, it's football after all, but some players show more likelihood to get hurt than others, Portis is one of those guys, you can't deny that.

Not everyone is LT.

Why is Portis "one of those guys"? Before last year he was averaging well over 300 carries per season for his entire career. That's 4 years either very close to 300 carries, or very close to 350 carries. If Portis is just "one of those guys", I challenge you to find 10 other RBs who have a track record of 300+ carries per year over a 4 year span.