I think ZERO RB even was always a game of BPA. Calling it "zero RB" made people feel cool and like they were being slick/outsmarting the competition.
But naming it zero RB to me implies you're actively avoiding RB's, which is a terrible draft strategy. If you're picking #1--do you go "Zero RB" because that's the strategy? That just seems really bad.
Maybe you don't love Montgomery or Sanders. But if they slide by a couple of rounds--you're not taking them? And someone will say THAT'S WHY YOU GO ZERO RB AND TAKE THE VALUE. But taking the value--that's BPA. It's always been BPA. You don't pass on a better RB because #ZeroRB.
I think Zero RB was an appropriate zig at the end of a 1st round where the RB's fall off a cliff and you could get Michael Thomas and Davante Adams. That's still BPA. If good RB's are there in the 3rd--you should probably take them. Not cling to your ZERO RB strategy like your life depends on it because I'm going to get Kareem Hunt in the 5th and Zack Moss in the 8th.
I agree with others--people are starting to look more and more at that round 6/7/8 RB's that are in time shares or high volume back up roles.
WR is just so absurdly deep. Like holy crap deep.
To the best of my knowledge, the term "Zero RB" was coined in 2013. I don't know how the mods here feel about linking to a competitor's site, but you can google the article "Zero RB, Antifragility, and the Myth of Value-Based Drafting." The basis is that, obviously, there's no way to know which players will get hurt. But if you subscribe to the notion that "the players who handle the ball the most are therefore most likely to suffer an injury," then that would point to RBs. They are the most fragile.
In formats such as FFPC, you're required to start two RBs, two WRs and a TE, with two flex spots. When the FFPC first started, the second flex spot was a new wrinkle. Another key part of the Zero RB strategy is to "win the flex." It's proven in PPR formats that WRs score more than comparable RBs. (Pick a threshold -- say, 200 PPR points. It's likely that roughly twice as many WRs will have scored that amount than RBs.) It's easier to find good WRs than RBs, and in FFPC, you can start four WRs. If your goal is to build an "anti-fragile" lineup, and you believe RBs are the most fragile, then your focus should be on WRs (or TEs, in the case of the FFPC and its TE-premium format).
However, Zero RB does not eschew the drafting of an early-round RB just to be contrarian. The fantasy landscape changes every year. The 2019 season was a horrible one for Zero RB because, simply put, RBs didn't really get hurt. They stayed healthy at an unheard-of rate. Consequently, RBs were drafted much more heavily in early rounds in 2020, because most people have recency bias and use the previous season as their baseline. Yes, Zero RB has tended to evolve into strategies that promote taking a stud RB in the first two rounds before pivoting to other positions, but that's also a reaction to the evolution of the position, as workhorse RBs became rarer and pass-catching RBs took on higher value than grinders. Nothing's ever set in stone.
In recent seasons, you can examine best-ball win rates and see that the middle single-digit rounds are a RB dead-zone. Drafting any RBs in that range correlate to lower win rates. You can certainly win by picking the *right* RB in that range. But I look at it like blackjack: You can hit when you have 16 and not bust, but it's a safer strategy to stay.
I have done both Zero RB and the "modified" version and have had a lot of success doing so. The author of the article mentioned above drafted an FFPC Main Event team with a partner from the 12 spot in which they waited until the round 11/12 turn to take their first RBs (Bryce Love and Ke'Shawn Vaughn). They made their league playoffs, competed in the championship round and pocketed several thousand dollars in prize money. Granted, I know that's anecdotal. But I'm a big believer in the notion that, in a format such as the FFPC's, your RB2 really doesn't matter that much, and if you treat that position as your least valuable starter, you can still be successful.
