Jamaal Charles vs CJ Spiller 2012 Fantasy Scoring Distribution
Byron Lambert, Rosterwatch.com

Photo by Alex Dunlap, Rosterwatch.com

One of the toughest rankings decisions we face in 2013. Jamaal Charles or CJ Spiller?

Since the preseason of 2010, Spiller has conjured images of Barry Sanders in our minds. He’s an incredible and completely electric playmaker. Yet, lost in the “Year of Adrian Peterson”– was a Jamaal Charles fantasy monster that would have gained my PFWA vote for NFL Comeback Player of the Year in most any other season.

Both Spiller and Charles appear to be on the uptick this season. Both are receiving threats out of the backfield. Both are explosive. Both have been sub-20 touch/game guys. By all measures of central tendency, both have been 13-point-weekly fantasy producers.

Now Jamaal Charles has a “minor” foot sprain. Like this wasn’t hard enough to begin with. Let’s break down the numbers and the respective situations. How do we sort this out?

According to their 2012 scoring distributions, CJ Spiller was significantly more reliable on a week-to-week basis, scoring 10+ fantasy points over 75% of the time, while Charles did it a little more often than every other game. Charles did demonstrate bigger upside in any given game, though.

The question is, can Spiller maintain that level of reliability as his workload increases as expected this year?

Reliability is a fragile discussion with a completely new offense, a rookie head coach, a rookie quarterback, a rookie play-caller, and three rookie wide receivers in the picture. That said, we are big believers in the Bills young offensive talent and we fully expect Doug Marrone and OC Nathaniel Hackett to go run-heavy just as they did in the college ranks.

The flip-side is—Andy Reid and Jamaal Charles are known, successful commodities. We’ve seen Charles average 15+ PPG in 2010. When choosing Charles here, we acquire a level of certainty which should be a critical characteristic of your first round pick. While neither faces a murderer’s row, we also believe Charles has the softer schedule- facing the likes of the: AFC West, AFC South, and NFC East.

Charles also has absolutely zero competition for touches. Rookie Knile Davis might steal a few touchdowns, but owners don’t depend on touchdowns for their points out of Charles anyway.

Something else we know: While Bills RB Fred Jackson looks a step slower this year- he’s already slated to at least share 3rd down duties and will have a defined workload behind Spiller. In the end, we expect Charles and Spiller to finish within 5-10% of each other for total touches, if not much closer.

While Charles averages a very respectable .76 fantasy points/touch (and closer to .80 when he was fully healthy in 2010), Spiller is off the charts. Spiller averages a scintillating .87 fantasy points/touch. A number we can conservatively expect to decrease moderately over the course of more touches – still, this leaves the edge in projected fantasy scoring to Spiller in 2013 over Jamaal Charles.

In prior rankings, we’ve agreed the certainty factor is Charles’ trump card over CJ Spiller in the first round of fantasy football drafts. With the news of Charles’ foot sprain Monday, and the team’s initial “no worries” statement following MRIs, we’ve had to flip the rankings. We are very wary of foot sprains that teams tell everyone are minor – see: Oakland/McFadden 2011, Jacksonville/MJD 2012. See Kevin Smith and the Lions. The list goes on and on.

This is a situation we will monitor closely as the preseason progresses. If we are convinced Charles has a clean bill of health- he will get the nod. If you’re love for CJ Spiller is your tie-breaker in this debate- hey, we have no qualms with that either.