With the Chris Thompson addition to the Jacksonville Jaguars’ backfield, how does this impact Leonard Fournette’s fantasy value entering a contract year?
The Jacksonville Jaguars have had an interesting offseason to say the very least. They used 12 picks in the 2020 NFL Draft and not a single one of them was on a running back. Jacksonville declined former first-round pick Leonard Fournette‘s fifth-year option, but do plan to keep him around for this fall. They also signed former Washington Redskins running back Chris Thompson.
The Fantasy Footballers look at what the Jaguars plan to do in the backfield this fall. There are a ton of moving pieces here, but this one isn’t all that hard to follow. The idea of declining Fournette’s fifth-year option leaves open the option to move off him should he have a poor year in his fourth season in the league. They could still re-sign him or franchise tag him next season.
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As for adding Thompson to the mix, this is really simple. Thompson was Jay Gruden’s guy when he was the head coach of the Redskins. Now that Gruden is entering his first season as the Jaguars offensive coordinator under Doug Marrone, he’d like to have a familiar face in the backfield and one he can lean on should Fournette not be an ideal fit for his offensive philosophy.
Though one would think Fournette would be perfect in Gruden’s offense, given his NFL prototype coming out of LSU was current Redskins running back Adrian Peterson, the Jaguars do seem to have a bit of buyer’s remorse from using the No. 4 overall pick on Fournette back in 2017. They could have had Christian McCaffrey, Patrick Mahomes or Deshaun Watson instead.
Regardless, here is how the Thompson signing impacts Fournette’s 2020 fantasy season. Look for Jacksonville to run Fournette into the ground in his final year with the team. Adding Thompson gives the Jaguars a great change-of-pace back, albeit an often injured one. This has been Thompson’s biggest issue in the league, but he does receive the ball well out of the backfield.
In short, Fournette should still have a big workload as a ball carrier but may not get the number of touches as a receiver now that Thompson is in the building. There will be games where Thompson is the better back over him. However, Thompson will almost certainly miss some time. Fournette will be there to pick up the slack in all facets of the game should Thompson succumb to injury.