Fantasy Fallout: Bucs Add Another Weapon in Rachaad White

With Ronald Jones in Kansas City, the Buccaneers had only Ke’Shawn Vaughn and Giovani Bernard backing up Leonard Fournette at running back entering the NFL Draft. They rectified that lack of depth in Round 3, drafting Arizona State’s Rachaad White with the 91st overall pick.

White played his first two seasons of college ball at Mount San Antonio College before transferring to the FBS level. He played just four games in 2020 due to injury but exploded onto the scene last fall with 1,000 rushing yards and 15 scores on 182 carries (5.5 yards per attempt) to go along with a whopping 43 catches for 456 yards and an additional touchdown through the air. With 10.6 yards per reception and 1.8 yards per team pass attempt as a senior at Arizona State, White flashed pass-catching talent that should get him onto the field immediately at the NFL level. He may have the best receiving profile of any running back in this rookie class:

In Tampa Bay, he’ll team up with Fournette, who is fresh off a breakout season in which he caught 69 passes, third in the league among running backs. White figures to eat into that total, but the question is how much work can he carve out behind Fournette? Let’s take a look at how ETR’s projections changed as a result of the White pick.

RACHAAD WHITE

Projection: 97.2 carries for 404.4 yards and 3.1 touchdowns, 33.9 catches on 45.3 targets for 271.3 yards and 1.5 touchdowns.

• White should spell Fournette in all facets, but he needs to siphon a chunk of the receiving work to be a fantasy-relevant asset on a weekly basis. That’s no easy task considering Fournette was as involved a pass catcher as any running back in the league down the stretch in 2021. We saw last year how Bernard was signed to fill the third-down role and barely made an impact early on before getting hurt midseason.
• Over the second half of the season, Fournette never had an individual week with lower than a 12.5% target share. That’s truly ridiculous receiving volume. With that in mind, we’re hesitant to immediately crown White as Tampa Bay’s pass-catching back.
• Still, we’re leaning on White’s top-class receiving profile to give him some work as a receiver. We also gave White a strong ceiling outcome in case he gets more pass-catching work than we expect, as that is within his range of outcomes and would be a highly lucrative role. White also has elite contingent upside as the RB2 in arguably the best offense in football, and a Fournette injury would immediately vault him into the fantasy RB2 conversation. For that reason, White is a fringe top-36 back for us right now as a change-of-pace back with some standalone value who has incredible upside if Fournette gets injured.

LEONARD FOURNETTE

Old projection: 196.3 carries for 836.2 yards and 7.3 touchdowns, 60.4 catches on 77.7 targets for 428.5 yards and 2.2 touchdowns. RB11 on Underdog (22nd overall).

New projection: 213.9 carries for 911.1 yards and 8.0 touchdowns, 55.3 catches on 71.2 targets for 392.8 yards and 2.0 touchdowns. RB12 on Underdog (23rd overall).

• The increase in Fournette’s rushing volume expectation is mostly just us realizing we were too low before the draft. It’s not a result of the Buccaneers picking White.
• When healthy last season, Fournette had a 59.0% carry share and a 14.0% target share. And those are his full-season numbers, which don’t account for how his role increased as the year progressed. In five healthy games after the Buccaneers’ Week 10 bye, he handled 62% of carries and 18% of targets. We currently have him projected well below his full-season numbers from last year — both because he’s an older back with a late-career breakout and due to the addition of White — and he still comes out as a low-end RB1 in our rankings.
• There’s no denying White is a talented pass catcher, but the Buccaneers relied so heavily on Fournette in that facet over the second half of the season that we are tentative to aggressively knock Fournette’s target share. In other words, there are two extremes: There is one side in which we give Fournette a similar target share to last year, and there’s another in which we split work evenly between Fournette and White. Our current target share projection lies in the middle of those two outcomes.
• While Tampa Bay should be in positive game script most of the time, they are among the pass-heaviest teams in the league regardless of the score. For that reason, even a robust rushing attempts market share lands Fournette shy of 1,000 yards, although he clearly has the upside to crest the millennial mark on the ground.
• White will steal some work, but Fournette was such a workhorse last year that we still have him as a late Round 2 pick right now, even with the rookie slotting in as a fringe top-36 back.

OTHER BUCS RUNNING BACKS

• Either Vaughn or Bernard will end up being the odd man out in the Tampa Bay backfield — most teams don’t have four active running backs on gameday — so we severely knocked both players down our rankings. This looks like it could be a two-man backfield with Fournette and White, and that doesn’t leave much work for whoever ends up as the RB3. With Fournette established as the short-yardage option and both players capable of playing on passing downs, the high-value touches are all accounted for too. Both Vaughn and Bernard are off the fantasy radar for now.