Tim Fuller-USA TODAY Sports
In recent seasons, no fantasy football running back has seen his value diminish more than Chicago Bears RB Matt Forte.
Forte finished with 1,715 total yards (1,238 rushing and 477 receiving) in his rookie year of 2008 and scored 12 total touchdowns. However, Forte hasn’t finished with more than 10 total touchdowns since his first year and has seen his stats drastically go down each season.
Fantasy football is all about touchdowns and Forte simply doesn’t bring that aspect of the game to the table. The team brought in Michael Bush last off-season to be the main goal-line back, which simply showed how little faith the team had in Forte as an inside runner. Bush scavenged touchdowns from Forte the entire season, as all five of his touchdowns came inside of their opponent’s 10-yard line.
Even when Bush was injured, Forte still couldn’t get into the end zone. In one game last year, Forte was actually stuffed on four consecutive 1st and goal carries. Nothing is more devastating to a fantasy week than seeing your star back get stuffed four straight times.
Forte’s value definitely goes up in Point Per Reception leagues, but not too much, because even his receiving totals have gone down in recent years. He hauled in a career-high 63 passes in his rookie year, but his 44 catches for 340 yards last season were both career-lows out of the backfield.
One of the major reasons to steer clear of the scat back, though, is his injury history. Forte has now missed time in two straight seasons with ankle sprains and it seems like only a matter of time until #22 is hobbling around the sideline. It is just too hard to rely on a player that is guaranteed to get hurt at some point in the year.
Forte could be a decent third running back this year, due to all the yardage that he can rack up, but he should not be drafted as a top-tier starter anymore. It would be better to simply avoid Forte altogether in 2013 and let someone else deal with the headache.
Adam McGill is the Senior Fantasy Sports Writer at Rant Sports. Follow him on Twitter @adammcgill83, like him on Facebook, or add him to you networks on Google here or here.
