a lot of those guys were not even worth mentioning. Gio Spiller, Bell and Stacy are all less talented than Martin. Vereen is a part timer. Morris and Foster are legit and should be considered in the top portion.
Chris Johnson? Rice? Wilson??
come on.
Really? You must not have watched Martin play last year or watched most of his NFL career. Gio and Spiller are much more talented than Martin. Spiller because he is better all around and Gio because of his pass catching abilities. Bell and Stacy are both in the same ballpark as Martin. 2 years ago Martin had 1454 rushing yards, but 794 of those yards came in 5 games against less than stellar defenses. in the other 10 games he averaged 66 yards per game. Last year before he was injured he was terrible and two back ups came in and outperformed him easily. Martin is pretty much a big bag of below average IMO and I will be passing on at his current ADP.
Martin had the most total yards of any rookie RB since Edgerrin James. I think it would be hard to do that on a mediocre team if he had below average talent. I don't know if he's better than Gio or Spiller. They're flashier players, but he's a lot bigger and stronger than either of them. He's probably a more complete overall back. Everyone loves speed and explosiveness, but there's something to be said for strength and power as well.
Martin played in six games last season. Here are his stats:
vs. NYJ - 24 carries, 65 yards (2.7 YPC)
vs. NO - 29 carries, 144 yards (5.0 YPC)
vs. NE - 20 carries, 88 yards (4.4 YPC)
vs. ARI - 27 carries, 45 yards (1.7 YPC)
vs. PHI - 16 carries, 67 yards (4.2 YPC)
vs. ATL - 11 carries, 47 yards (4.3 YPC)
He had one nightmare game, one bad one, and
four pretty good ones. To say he was "terrible" seems like a stretch. He only scored one TD and that hurt his FF numbers. The one horrendous game against AZ killed his YPC average. However, he was pretty effective more often than not. IMO the backlash is excessive. People who got burned by him in FF are exaggerating the extent to which he struggled in real life. He had a forgettable year, but it wasn't the disaster people make it out to be. With a full 16 games to minimize variance, I'm guessing his YPC and his FF ppg would've crept back up closer to his 2012 numbers.
Watching the game that I linked above,
I was struck (again) by what a talent he is. I think he's on the level of guys like Lynch and
Forte, and would draft him with confidence at his ADP in dynasty or redraft. I actually got him in both drafts I've done this year (one dynasty startup and one redraft), so I guess he's a guy who jumps out at me right now as a very good value.