Welcome back Bruno Boys Nation! Here we are, at the start of the 2023 fantasy football, and we’re all getting ready for the upcoming Week 1. There’s less than a week left in draft season, so we all have business to take care of. We’re talking about dominating your fantasy football draft and then maintaining a balanced and deep roster. Whatever the format or scoring system, you won’t win your league unless you fill your bench with players who can score and produce.
That’s become more challenging because with passing becoming more prevalent and running back duties becoming more split, Â sleepers may not emerge until later and later into the season. Here are a handful of running backs we believe can break out and have big seasons if everything goes right.
Out of the Doghouse Sleeper: Cam Akers, Los Angeles Rams
Previous owners of Akers in dynasty leagues will tell you what an frustrating roller coaster ride it was trying to decide whether or not to cut him these last two seasons. One week he’s in the doghouse, another he’s getting feature carries, one week he’s on the trading block, this year he’s not.
Akers enters the 2023 season with optimism after he closed last season with three straight 100-yard games. In those three games, he averaged over 20+ touches per game. Compare that to his other 12 games where he averaged just 11.0 touches; the production was capped. If Sean McVay just uses these three weeks as an example of how to use Akers going forward, he wouldn’t be a sleeper, he’d be a top draft pick in redraft leagues.
Two of the more impressive stats on Akers is his 48.1 percent snaps with a touch (rushing attempts + receptions) and his 81.4 percent positive run. He’s not someone who goes backward very often. Akers needs to reach the end zone more though. Truthfully, he just needs more touches period and consistently. The Rams can’t win by being one-dimensional. Outside of Matthew Stafford and Cooper Kupp , Akers needs to be the other key part to this offense.
