5 Players Whose Fantasy Football Stock Took a Hit Since Free Agency Started

Latavius Murray, RB, Minnesota Vikings

Is it a hot take if you think Latavius Murray is just a guy? Because Latavius Murray might be just a guy.

In 2016, the Raiders had the 15th-ranked schedule-adjusted rushing offense in football, according to our Net Expected Points (or NEP, which you can read more about in our glossary). This decent ranking wasn't all because of Murray, though. Take a look at how he stacked up according to NEP versus teammates Jalen Richard and DeAndre Washington this past year:

What these numbers tell us is that the Raiders running backs were really efficient in 2016 (far better than the league-average rate in Rushing NEP per rush), but Murray was the least consistent of the three players, given he was creating a positive expected points play on just 40.51% of his rushes.

If NEP doesn't really do it for you, then maybe this will put things into context a bit: among the 42 running backs with 100 or more carries last year, only Matt Forte saw a larger discrepancy between his yards per carry average compared to his running back teammates' rate than Murray did to his. The Raiders averaged 5.31 yards per attempt on the ground, while Murray's yards per rush was just 4.04.

This is just a continuation from 2015, too. I actually wrote an article entering this past season titled Latavius Murray Might Not Be Very Good, But It Also Might Not Matter, which showed that his numbers were really underwhelming, but his potential volume could negate those inefficiencies.

That sort of happened in 2016, but his effectiveness rose a tad thanks to strong offensive line play, which is why we see his teammates performing at a high level, as well.

So good luck in Minnesota behind a line that produced the worst rushing offense our database has seen since 2012, Latavius.