RJ Harvey fantasy football insight from Hayden Winks - PPR Rankings

Harvey was a boom-bust prospect. He had athleticism to work with, yet was a 24-year-old rookie with vision issues. Both sides of the profile showed themselves as a rookie, just with more bad than good. Harvey was 42nd in EPA per carry (-0.16) and 32nd in rushing yards over expected (-8%) out of 46 RB qualifiers, despite running behind an OL universally considered to be top-3, if not the best in the NFL. He was pretty bouncy and indecisive on tape, and his 5'8"/205 size made it more difficult to break tackles than it was as a redshirt senior at UCF. NextGenStats had him with the 2nd-highest time spent behind the line of scrimmage, only trailing Kenneth Walker. Since Harvey's rookie season ended, the Broncos were heavily linked to Travis Etienne, Kenneth Walker, and other bigger-named free agent RBs. They whiffed on them but did shell out $10M guaranteed to re-sign JK Dobbins, who easily out-paced Harvey in advanced rushing metrics. Denver was also linked to Jadarian Price in the draft, ultimately settling on reliable Jonah Coleman in the 4th round. It's reasonable to look at all of this as a partial indictment on Harvey. Let's say this is too pessimistic, and Harvey is the Broncos starter. Then what? Without Dobbins available, Harvey was the RB17 on RB10 usage, while (once again) playing behind a healthy, top-flight OL and far worse RB depth than currently projected. It's possible for Harvey to reach fantasy RB2 levels in 2026. It's just not likeliest based on the context of his boom-bust prospect profile, his advanced stats as a rookie, the offseason flirtation of other...