Fantasy Football: 5 Running Backs Who Easily Outperformed Their 2016 Preseason Rankings

LeGarrette Blount, New England Patriots

Coming into 2016, LeGarrette Blount's best statistical season was his rookie year, when he ran for 1,007 yards and 6 touchdowns for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Not too many NFL players have that type of rookie season and then fail coming close to it again. That was the case with Blount, who didn't surpass 800 rushing yards in his next five seasons.

His inability to live up to those rookie numbers was a big reason behind an average draft position (ADP) of 111 heading into 2016 when comparing five popular fantasy draft sites: ESPN, Yahoo, NFL.com, Fox Sports and CBS Sports. Fantasy players who had early drafts also thought Dion Lewis would be in the backfield mix for the New England Patriots, but he had a setback while recovering from a torn ACL that landed him on the PUP list.

With no big threat to take carries away from him and quarterback Tom Brady sitting out the first four games, the Patriots handed the ball off to Blount early and often. He averaged 25 carries in his first three games, totaling 298 rushing yards and 4 touchdowns.

While they did cut back on his carries a bit -- he averaged 17.2 the rest of the season -- Blount was their primary goal-line option. He finished with a franchise-record 18 rushing touchdowns, the most in the league since Adrian Peterson had that many in 2009. He scored all but one of the team's rushing touchdowns, and 11 of them were 1-yard scores. He also had career-highs in rushing yards (1,161, 8th in NFL) and carries (299, 2nd in league).

Lewis didn't return until Week 11 and didn't score a touchdown during the regular season.

Blount, who had an average preseason ranking of 99 using the five previously-mentioned websites, finished 27th overall in standard-league scoring and was a top-10 fantasy back in both standard (6th) and point-per-reception (9th) leagues.