Thursday Fantasy Fliers: Once more into the Baltimore backfield
We're going to dispense with the usual Thursday Fliers gimmick this week, for the following reasons:
1) It's only the second week of the season and the byes haven't yet begun, so very few fantasy owners are actually in need of a one-week flier.
2) The ground rules we've established for this feature require me to discuss players owned in less than one-third of Yahoo leagues, and this week's combatants (Pittsburgh and Baltimore) don't necessarily offer the most appealing options. You don't want to read a blog post on Shaun Suisham, right? Didn't think so.
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3) At least half of the sit/start questions I've fielded this week involve Baltimore running backs — usually Forsett or Pierce, but occasionally some misspelled variant of "Taliaferro."
Therefore, I think the best use of this Thursday's post is to review the options in the Ravens backfield, beginning with the one player I'm actually using in a pair of leagues...
Justin Forsett (59 percent owned, 20 percent started) – Forsett dominated the backfield snaps in Baltimore's opener, playing 57 to Pierce's eight, per Pro Football Focus. The Ravens took an odd approach against Cincinnati, allowing Joe Flacco to throw the ball 62 times, but Forsett still finished with 84 scrimmage yards on 16 touches, with a 13-yard rushing score included. He averaged 2.8 yards-after-contact on his 11 rush attempts against the Bengals; Pierce averaged 2.8 per carry.
Head coach John Harbaugh has declined to name anyone as his featured runner for Week 2, instead suggesting that both Forsett and Pierce would "play a lot." Forsett doesn't profile as the sort of back who would typically have a workhorse role — he's 5-foot-8, listed just under 200 pounds. He'll turn 29 next month, and he's never taken more than 118 total carries in any NFL season.
Bottom line: Based on Forsett's effectiveness in the opener, I'm expecting him to lead Baltimore's backfield in total touches against Pittsburgh. If anyone gets to 75 total yards, it's him. Forsett gets a PPR bump, too. He's a more than capable receiver who caught five balls on six targets against Cincy. Looking down the road, however, I do not expect Forsett to remain this team's featured early-down runner. Which brings us to...
Bernard Pierce (56 percent owned, 12 percent started) – At this stage, it's fair to suggest that perhaps Pierce is simply not a great back by NFL standards. He averaged an abysmal 2.9 yards per carry last season, then gained just 17 yards on six totes in Week 1. And of course he lost a fumble against the Bengals, when Vontaze Burfict ripped the ball out of his arms. (A grown-man play by Burfict, for sure.) Pierce will surely get a few looks against the Steelers, and it's not as if the matchup is terrifying; Pittsburgh allowed 183 rushing yards to Cleveland last week.
Coach Harbaugh had a few not-terrible things to say about Pierce following the loss to Cincinnati:
"Bernard has been very good. He has a great attitude, good demeanor," Harbaugh said. "You don't lose faith in a player because of a bad play. Bernard is still on his way to becoming, I would say, a very good player, and I've been saying that all along."
[...]
The coach clarified Tuesday that "there was no talk about sitting Bernard down during the game."
"It's just [that] Justin was rolling," Harbaugh said. "He was making good decisions, he was picking up pass protection. We had confidence in him at that time more so than the other running backs."
So there you go. The team still likes Pierce. His attitude? It's great. But his head coach recently developed a higher level of confidence in Forsett, who was clearly the better player last week.
Thus, I can't recommend Pierce on Thursday. He was buried in my Week 2 ranks. I'd be loath to drop him just yet, but there's no way I'd flex him until he reclaims a decent share of the rushing workload.
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Lorenzo Taliaferro (3 percent owned, 0 percent started) – The fourth-round rookie has excellent size (6-foot-0, 230), and he was a tremendously productive back at Coastal Carolina. He had an active-if-not-spectacular preseason, carrying 65 times for 243 yards (3.7 YPC) and one score. Taliaferro isn't a flashy back -- or at least I didn't see it in the preseason -- but he seems built to handle a substantial workload (which is more than we can say for Forsett). He's at least worth a speculative pickup in deeper leagues, while we wait for this backfield to sort itself out. You shouldn't entertain the notion of starting him this week, of course, unless you're involved in a 10-team AFC North-only league.
