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Ezekiel Elliott leads the way among NFL players who represent major gambles for owners

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The NFL has suspended Dallas Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott six games for violating the league’s personal conduct policy, a suspension that significantly limits Elliott’s fantasy value. Elliott is appealing the ban, but for now we must assume the leading rusher of 2016 won’t be eligible to play for the first seven weeks of the year — the Cowboys’ bye is in Week 6 — ultimately costing him half the upcoming fantasy football season.

Elliott was considered a top-three fantasy running back in both standard and pointper-reception, or PPR, formats before the ruling, and has since fallen to the second or third round in 1,559 fantasy football mock drafts audited by Fantasy Football Calculator in the wake of the suspension.

The math behind the limited fall checks out. Elliott scored 327 PPR points last season, secondmost at the position, and if you subtract six games worth of scoring he would have fallen to the 19th-best back in that format, which equates to a mid-round pick in the fourth round in 2017 mock drafts. If he missed just five games he would have been on par with a running back being drafted late in the second round.

But there is no guarantee he plays in all of those games at the end of the season. Elliott did not miss a game in 2016 due to injury, but running backs are one of the most injury-prone positions in the NFL. Last season, Elliott was one of 11 running backs to start 14 or more games and Jake Davidow, the founder of the Sports Injury Predictor, estimates Elliott will miss two games in 2017. Two games isn’t much to fret over, but even one game missed in addition to the six games served for suspension and one more for the bye week gives Elliott a projection of 152 and 174 points in 2017. That would be fringestarter territory in a per game average basis in 12-team leagues. And there’s also the cost of carrying him on your roster for half the season while providing zero impact.