Saints Historic Fantasy Football Scoring Could Point to Upside for Alvin Kamara and Latavius Murray

It's no secret that Sean Payton, Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints have solidified themselves as one of the great offenses in NFL history. Their success has lasted for years, and they've consistently turned anyone who gets significant playing time into a valuable asset in fantasy football.

While this has, of course, been rooted in their passing attack, the elite offense has also generated a massive amount of fantasy football success for their running backs.

That's an absurdly long track record of elite production, and it spans a number of different running backs, pointing to the system itself elevating RB value. When you add in a back with talent like Alvin Kamara the upside gets especially high, but this is an offense that has found success with a huge range of backs including Mark Ingram, Darren Sproles, Pierre Thomas, Chris Ivory and Khiry Robinson. Guys like Ivory and Robinson had their value essentially disappear in other offenses.

Alvin Kamara's upside isn't exactly news as this point. He finished fourth among running backs in fantasy points per game in 2018, and he's in consideration as one of the top picks in fantasy football for 2019.

Those numbers are a really encouraging sign for Latavius Murray's fantasy value as well though.

Sharing the backfield with Kamara last year, Mark Ingram finished 28th among RBs in fantasy PPG. Both Kamara and Ingram also finished top-10 in that stat in 2017, and the Saints placed at least two backs in the top-36 in that category in four of the five seasons before that.

Latavius Murray is coming off one of the best seasons of his career, and he's proven himself more than capable of producing when he gets the opportunities. He played second fiddle to Dalvin Cook in a less exciting Minnesota Vikings offense for most of the 2018 season, but when Cook didn't play, Murray put up an average of 16.3 fantasy points per game.

Ingram racked up 138 carries and 27 targets in only 12 games in 2018 (a 16-game pace for 184 carries and 36 targets), and that means there is a ton of opportunity available for Murray to step in and play a significant role. Kamara is unlikely to be used as a true workhorse (though his upside is huge anyway), and that points to Murray being a potential steal at an average draft position (ADP) of only RB36.

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Jason Schandl is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Jason Schandl also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username Jaymun. While the strategies and player selections recommended in his articles are his personal views, he may deploy different strategies and player selections when entering contests with his personal account. The views expressed in their articles are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel.