Dameon Pierce has a Limited Path to Break Out in Fantasy Football in 2023

After a promising start to his rookie season, Dameon Pierce's effort to reach 1,000 yards was derailed by an ankle injury. He fell 61 yards short of that threshold but still had a successful first year in the NFL. In addition to his impressive rushing stats, the young player also made sporadic contributions to the passing game. Pierce's story bears a striking resemblance to that of Ken Walker, who I wrote about recently. He didn’t garner the attention that Walker did, but Pierce had a similar production profile, faces new competition on his own team, and is being drafted in a similar part of fantasy drafts.

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Pierce’s Rookie Profile

Since 2012, there have been 16 rookie running backs to hit the following thresholds:

• 200 Rush Attempts
• 900 Rushing Yards
• 30 Targets

Of that group, Dameon Pierce was dead last in half-PPR points. He was one of just four backs to fail to cross that 1,000-yard mark but is still regarded highly as a runner. Pierce was trusted in the red zone when Houston made it that far. He was sandwiched between Josh Jacobs and Austin Ekeler with his market share of team red zone carries. Pierce was also second in the NFL breaking tackles at an 11.9% clip.

The aforementioned sporadic contributions to the passing game are what kept his fantasy point total lower than his peers in this group. Pierce did have a couple of games last season with a half-dozen targets but he also had five games with two or fewer targets. Hurdle number one, even without factoring in anything else, is a lack of consistent passing work.

Analyzing Pierce’s ADP

When you look at where Pierce is being taken, it’s hard to feel too excited about him relative to drafting other positions.

Whether we're talking about redraft or best ball formats, the strategy of picking running backs in this draft range is a touchy subject. Over the past two seasons, securing your second running back before the 7th round has led to subpar win rates.

While these win rates aren't the definitive metric for decision-making, they certainly contribute to the overall picture when approaching drafts. The quality of wide receivers available tends to decline significantly after Round 8, so my usual approach is to accumulate pass catchers during this part of the draft. This strategy is particularly relevant on platforms like Underdog, where the ADPs of these players continue to rise.

Texans 2023 Offseason Moves

Devin Singletary joined Houston during the offseason. Justin Edwards wrote a great piece about that back in March. Even the most bullish case for Singletary doesn't foresee him coming in and just running away with the RB1 job. But, you can be sure that he’s going to take away a chunk of the passing down work and some early down rushes from Pierce. Singletary has seen five or more targets in 27% of his career games.

His contributions were already unsteady in the passing game. With a healthy Singletary in the mix, Pierce is unlikely to have those five or six target games that he managed a couple of times in his rookie year. When those disappear, you're going to be heavily reliant on him finding the end zone. It doesn't mean he's not going to be productive, but he doesn't have the profile of a true top-end RB1-type breakout.

Bottom Line

• Pierce seemingly doesn’t have a path to expanding his role this year. If you extrapolate his first 13 games to a 17-game season, you wind up with over 1,400 all-purpose yards, 39 receptions, and seven touchdowns. That gets you to just over 200 half-PPR points which would’ve finished as RB15 in 2022.
• With his current ADP slotting him in as RB21, there’s some room for overperformance. But, we’d be relying on an injury to Singletary and a pretty strong shift in philosophy to get Pierce the type of receiving load that would vault him into high-end RB1 territory.
• In redraft formats, he’s a fine RB2 at the right price. If you’re in the 7th round and have a stud running back with a strong receiver group, you can lock him in and go with a hyper-fragile build the rest of the way through your draft.