After covering the NFL Golden Boys here, it’s time to move to the crux of your fantasy squad: Running Backs and Wide Receivers.

We’ll start with running backs because they need any kind of moral victory they can get.  As the NFL has morphed into a passing league, running backs have lost their luster.  As evidence, look no further than the last two drafts, where Runnings Backs are an Afterthought.  Exactly zero running backs were selected in the last two first rounds; that hadn’t happened since, like, forever.  By the time the Titans selected Bishop Sankey at pick #54, there had already been 9 WRs and 4 TEs taken.

Your name is Bishop AND you like girls? Tony Dungy All-Star!

The devaluation of running backs has made a seamless transition from reality to our fake football squads.  Sure, they still dominate the first 3 or 4 picks of most fantasy drafts, however, recently there have been manifests written to the First Round QB and ZeroRB strategy.  As there names suggest, these strategy’s buck the historic trend and advocate taking QBs, WRs (and even TE’s…hullo Jimmy Graham) in the first round in lieu of RBs.  For more ZeroRB (and even ZeroWR) strategy head over to Rotoviz, they’ve got it covered from just about every angle.

No matter how you build your fake football team, one thing hasn’t changed: properly evaluating, identifying and drafting the right running backs will lead to prolonged success.  So let’s get on with the rankings already: