For fantasy football managers, every season particular players stand out as ADP values while others seem like glaring traps waiting to leave a gaping black hole in your starting lineup. It’s going to be my mission in this series to highlight both of those types of players.

Additionally, that includes players of value and players to avoid. I’m going to attempt to steer clear of personal biases and stick to the numbers. Here, I’ll break down how Arizona Cardinals’ James Conner is someone you should be targeting based on our Consistency Score.

Volume is King

Like many things in the Fantasy Football Twitter-sphere (“X-Sphere” just doesn’t have the same ring to it) the term “workhorse” is thrown around a lot. Probably too much.  As of late though, it is usually to say something akin to “there are few true workhorse running backs left”.  And while that statement may be true, James Conner has been nothing but a workhorse since joining the Arizona Cardinals. Well, when healthy that is.

Last season, despite playing in only 13 games, Conner amassed more than double the snaps of any other running back on the team, 663 compared to Eno Benjamin’s 314. Conner was on the field for 58.26% of the total teams’ snaps. Conner also dominated the opportunity share with a whopping 78.76%.

After returning for Week 9 until the end of the fantasy season, that was even more evident, where Conner then dominated snap count among the teams running backs, logging 88% compared to 12% combined between Eno Benjamin, Keaontay Ingram, and Corey Clement over that time.

The Kyler Murray Conundrum

One might think that a team’s star quarterback not being ready to start the season in Week 1 would be foreboding for a fantasy football running back. Welp, not if your name happens to be “James Conner”.  That same time frame mentioned above, Weeks 9 through 17. Kyler Murray only played in three of those games. And in Week 13, one of the three, he threw only 1 pass and exited again.

What is that you say? Surely Conner’s fantasy production suffered without Murray under center? Nope!

From Week 9 until the end of the fantasy season, Conner rushed for 582 yards and six touchdowns. He racked up an impressive 146.4 fantasy points which ranked seventh most among runningbacks during that time frame. And his 18.3 fantasy points per game was the eighth most among the position.

If we carve out Conner’s Consistency Score (CS) over those same weeks, it’s an impressive 7.49 and is the fourth-highest running back CS over those weeks.

He was a dominant fantasy force while Kyler was out each and every week.

The Price is Right

Like other players I’ve highlighted in this mini-series, the biggest factor going for Conner this draft season is the discrepancy between his current ADP and how the metrics predict he is going to produce.

For the entirety of the season, Conner was the running back 15 in Consistency Score with a 5.14 CS and finished 53% of games played as a Top-24 running back. He never dipped below the RB3 range on any given week. His 11.9 fantasy points per game for the season ranked 11th best at his position. And despite the Cardinals not investing anything in runningbacks to make us worry about Conner’s potential volume, his ADP is still in the back half of the sixth round, at 6.08. He is, on average, the 26th runningback drafted.

That late in the draft Conner is a prime candidate to absolutely crush his ADP in terms of value. This is the typical range for a “zero-RB” candidate and Conner would be a steal for anyone drafting that way in 2023. He’s proven he can produce for fantasy, even if Murray isn’t ready in Week 1. He’s proven he can produce at a high level, consistently. And you can get him after the fifth round in drafts regularly.

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