Buy or Sell: Montee Ball

Montee Ball came to Denver last season highly touted. But inexperience shone through and he spent his rookie season out of the limelight as Knowshon Moreno came out of nowhere to post a great season.

With Moreno in Miami, Ball has the opportunity this season to put a stranglehold on the starting RB job in one of the league’s most potent offenses. But now he’s missed a portion of camp while recovering from an appendix surgery. Can he recover and fulfill his potential in 2014? Or will this turn into another lost season for the Broncos’ preferred top RB?

Montee Ball
ADP: 26.6
RB: 13

Buy: Maggio

Montee Ball’s ADP continues to fall since his appendectomy left him sidelined for the next couple of weeks. Do people think that everyone else in the NFL still has their appendix? Ball’s going 13th among running backs right now, which is an absolute steal.

Certainly Ball doesn’t play the running back position the way Knowshon Moreno does, so penciling Ball in for Knowshon’s numbers is silly. But Ball is a better overall back than Moreno, and if Denver didn’t trust Ball to keep Peyton Manning upright in passing situations Moreno would still be a Bronco. Ronnie Hillman and CJ Anderson will fight for table scraps, and Hillman is a worthwhile handcuff based on Denver’s offense, but Ball is going to be the bell-cow in a league that’s trending running back by the committee—for the highest scoring offense in the NFL last year, no less.

So if you’re thinking of picking guys like Arian Foster and Doug Martin ahead of Ball in your upcoming draft, stop thinking right now and do what I tell you. He’ll be involved in both facets of the game (Ball was targeted 27 times in limited duty last season) and averaged an extremely useful 4.7 yards per carry on his 120 attempts. Of the guys outside my top five preseason ranks at running back, Ball might be the most likely to finish there by season’s end.

Sell: Tony

Montee Ball was the rookie that seemingly everybody thought was going to snipe big time points last season, given the Broncos lack of faith in Knowshon Moreno.

With Moreno in Miami, this year again he seems to be getting a lot of preseason hype as the most likely featured back. But Ball has more than a few things working against him. First, he plays in Denver, where the focus is on passing, thanks to a certain future HOF quarterback. This focus on passing also means having the ability to block is key for a RB—which is one area Ball needed to improve on last year.

Add in a coach that has a reputation for cycling through backs (remember the super fun days of Stephen Davis to DeShaun Foster to DeAngelo Williams to Jonathan Stewart?), and you’ve got a back that could be a frustrating borderline start every week. Might get you 120-2, but might just as easily get you 38-0. Worth a sniff, but I’d be hesitant to make him one of my top two RB, unless I was drafting a WR/TE heavy team.

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