Fantasy Football Insurance – How Necessary Are Handcuffs in the Two RB System Era?

Fantasy Football Insurance – How Necessary Are Handcuffs in the Two RB System Era?
By Bobby Hastings

The Handcuff used to be a common term overheard during fantasy football drafts around the country. Today is a new day. Today is the day of the dreaded running back by committee (RBBC). Today the word handcuff is almost dead. We think it is still an important concept. The handcuff is the idea of drafting a players backup that will gain the majority of carries in the event of an injury to the primary running back. If you owned an injury prone player it was believed to be a good idea to handcuff his backup onto your squad under the assumption that in the event of injury the backup would step right in and your team would not suffer too much.

The RBBC has decreased the value of the handcuff. On some teams the RBBC can be as deep as three players. The handcuff does not work as well in that case when an injury creeps up. However, there are a few legitimate two-back RBBC situations around the league, where if the primary back went down to injury the handcuff would actually dramatically increase in value as a result of becoming the primary ball carrier.
Of course, a handful of situations do still exist where there is one primary ball carrier – in those cases the handcuff is certainly not always a necessity. In fact, in some of those situations, should the primary ball carrier go down to injury the handcuff would NOT become the primary ball carrier – the team would go to a RBBC.

The following is a list of recommended handcuffs. If a player is not on this list, in the event of injury we see a RBBC situation.

2009 BCRT Handcuffs To Target
Chester Taylor
Jerious Norwood
Ladell Betts
Jonathan Stewart
Donald Brown
Ricky Williams
Justin Fargas
LeSean McCoy
Darren Sproles
Edgerrin James
Glen Coffee
LenDale White

There you have it – to handcuff or not to handcuff? We say go for the cuff in certain siutations. Hopefully list provided above will serve you well on draft day.

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