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USATSI

The biggest winner of Ezekiel Elliott's decision to sign with the Patriots, as reported by numerous outlets Monday? Probably Tony Pollard. 

Elliott is coming off a 12-touchdown final season with the Cowboys in 2022, and as long as he lingered on the free agent market, there was a chance the Cowboys would bring him back as a short-yardage/between-the-tackles complement to Pollard. Now? Well, I don't think every single one of those nine touchdowns Elliott scored from 4 yards and in will go to Pollard, but his chances of getting vultured consistently just went down, at the very least. 

As for what kind of impact Elliott is going to have in New England? Well, that's less clear, in part because we're not entirely sure how the Patriots were intending to use their running backs to begin with.

But, my initial reaction is this isn't great news for Rhamondre Stevenson. In theory, signing Elliott to handle some of the low-value, between-the-tackles work wouldn't be a bad thing for Stevenson, who could still be the goal-line and passing downs back while potentially taking on less injury risk. The problem is, while Elliott is far removed from the days when he was legitimately one of the best running backs in the league, he was still a very good short-yardage back last season: 

Stevenson converted the first down with 1-3 yards to go at a slightly lower rate than Elliott, but not so much that you could say it was a weakness in his game. However, if nothing else, Elliott represents real competition for at least those high-value touches, which is a real concern in an offense that may not throw to the running backs as much as we've gotten used to.

Last season, the Patriots threw to their running backs 123 times, the sixth-highest total in the league and good for 22.7% of their total passes. Stevenson was the primary beneficiary of that, catching 69 passes, the fourth-most at the RB position, and a big part of why he was able to be such a good Fantasy option. 

However, the last time Bill O'Brien was the Patriots offensive coordinator was in 2011, when just 9.5% of their passes went to their running backs. And, in his time as Houston's head coach, they ranked second-to-last in combined target share for their running backs from 2014 through 2020. There are confounding variables across both sample sizes, but I don't think we should just ignore those tendencies either. 

So, while I don't think Elliott will play enough of a role to matter much for Fantasy, I also don't think we should just write off the impact it may have on Stevenson. If Elliott takes even 40% of the goal-line touches in what will probably be a mediocre offense and the Patriots don't throw to their running backs as often as we've gotten used to, the path to a top-12 RB finish becomes a lot narrower. He could still get there, but he probably needs Elliott to be a non-factor or for the offense to be significantly better than expected or for the Patriots to throw to their running backs as often as they have in the past.

None of that is impossible, but there's enough working against Stevenson now that I'm willing to downgrade him. He was a fringe RB1 in my rankings before this, but I'm dropping him down to RB17 after this news. You'll find plenty of Fantasy analysts who will tell you Stevenson shouldn't be downgraded at all because of this, and they might be right. But I've had my concerns about Stevenson and this offense for longer than Elliott has been on the roster, so this just makes them more concrete. 

Stevenson is still a viable third-round option for me, especially toward the latter half of the round if I want an RB, but I prefer him in the fourth round if I can get him there. That probably represents a drop of about a round from where he's been going in ADP lately, which seems reasonable enough to me.