One year ago today, Rhamondre Stevenson was being valued as the RB35 in dynasty (according to KeepTradeCut), a spot that, for reference, is now occupied in the rankings by Brian Robinson. Now, 365 days and one season’s worth of 14.7 PPR points per game later, Stevenson is now valued as the RB10 at KTC, a spot equivalent to his per-game finish from 2022 and that sits just ahead of the best runner in the league and last season’s RB7 in Nick Chubb, last season’s RB1 in Austin Ekeler, and last season’s RB8 in Tony Pollard. It’s been a quick rise up the ranks for the 25-year old former fourth-round pick, but his per-carry performance through two seasons in the league has matched an impressive production resumé and perhaps legitimized his status as an RB1 in dynasty:

After a rookie season spent matching Damien Harris’ per-carry output while far outperforming him and the others Patriots backs on a play-to-play reliability standpoint in a 1B role, Stevenson stole Harris’ job, maintained a positive Relative Success Rate despite a 77-carry increase in workload, and boosted his already-good numbers in each of Box-Adjusted Efficiency Rating, Yards Per Carry+, Rushing Yards Over Expected per Attempt, Juke Rate (according to playerprofiler.com), and yards after contact per attempt (according to Pro Football Focus) as a first-time leader of an NFL backfield. At the end of 2022, Stevenson’s numbers in those first four categories landed in the 58th, 72nd, 78th, and 84th percentiles, respectively, and he ranked fourth and fifth in the league among qualifying runners in the latter two.

All that comes after a collegiate career that saw Stevenson dominate the non-FBS level (the 39.2% Dominator Rating he posted as a sophomore at Cerritos College is higher than the second-year marks posted at non-FBS schools by future NFL runners like Alvin Kamara, David Johnson, James Robinson, and Chris Carson) and post the following efficiency marks during two seasons as an Oklahoma Sooner:

Basically, it should be well-established at this point that Stevenson is a good player: he produces efficiently, he churns out positive outcomes at a quality rate, he makes defenders miss and powers through contact effectively, and, as his 2.5% Chunk Rate+ and 20.7% Breakaway Conversion Rate from last season (the latter is a 54th-percentile mark) combine to indicate, the 230-pound, mid-4.6-running Patriot is also able to create big plays at a respectable rate.

Further evidence of his ability comes via his uniquely balanced skillset. Among just ten lead NFL backs who definitely added value on the ground last season -- defined as posting above-baseline numbers in each of BAE Rating, RSR, and RYOE -- Stevenson and Austin Ekeler are the only ones who also posted marks above the 50th percentile in each of target share, Route Diversity, and Route-Adjusted Target Earnings. He’s one of the biggest runners in the league but manages to be a high-volume receiver with a downfield skillset on top of his aptitude between the tackles, making him one of the closest things to the platonic ideal of a legitimate three-down back that we have in today’s NFL.

Having said all that, Stevenson’s year-two breakout as a legitimate fantasy producer places him in a cohort of historical backs who gained at least 1000 yards from scrimmage and averaged 12+ PPR points per game (the approximate threshold for RB2-level production) for the first time as second-year players after having been selected on day three of the NFL Draft. Since 2000, that group is made up of Jay Ajayi, Chris Carson, Tarik Cohen, Andre Ellington, Devonta Freeman, Tim Hightower, Marlon Mack, and Latavius Murray. Of them, half never scored a dozen fantasy points per game in a single season again, while Mack and Murray each enjoyed one more season of RB2-or-better production and Carson and Freeman each posted multiple usable fantasy seasons in subsequent years. It feels like Stevenson is more like those last two players than he is like Ellington or Hightower, but nothing is guaranteed for low-draft capital runners who are not yet locked into long-term contracts, and Stevenson’s age further complicates matters. Because he entered the league well into his 24th trip around the sun, Stevenson will be 27 years old when he first reaches free agency, an age at which most backs are well into their second contracts and have already been left for dead in dynasty (see: Joe Mixon).

Despite the fact that Stevenson already supplanted and then ran out of town his main competition for touches in Harris and therefore is not likely to go the way of someone like Ellington (who saw his Cardinals draft David Johnson and sign Chris Johnson in the offseason following his own RB2 breakout), the above age- and contract-based realities mean that it’s probably reasonable to treat him like a two-year rental in dynasty leagues. Because of that, the insights we can glean from the situational factors likely to affect his productivity in the immediate future are also relevant to his “long-term” dynasty value.

Unless the Patriots sign Dalvin Cook, Rhamondre Stevenson has already survived the initial post-breakout hurdles faced by many other productive day-three running backs.

In 2023, much of those situational factors will be tied to the shift in offensive philosophy that comes with the transition from Joe Judge to Bill O’Brien, which seems to portend two significant changes coming for the New England offense. First, it seems likely that the Patriots will simply run more plays under O’Brien than they did under Judge; the 2022 team averaged 59.2 plays per game, which ranked 28th in the league, while O’Brien-led offenses in Houston finished an average of 12th in the league in total plays from 2014 to 2019, including four top-ten finishes, two top-five finishes, and a 2015 season in which they ran the most plays of any team in the NFL. In the past two years as the offensive coordinator for the University Alabama, O’Brien’s units finished third and seventh, respectively, in the SEC (out of 14 teams) in total plays. Basically, we have almost a decade’s worth of evidence of O’Brien overseeing offenses that at least played at an average pace and often played at a well-above-average pace, and as more plays would theoretically result in more yards and touchdowns up for grabs for all Patriots skill-position players, such a change would be a good thing for Stevenson.

Second, it seems likely that New England will have a more zone-heavy running game under O’Brien than they did under either Judge in 2022 or Josh McDaniels in 2021. In both of those seasons, the Patriots’ rushing attack skewed gap-heavy, with Judge opting for gap concepts on 52.5% of the team’s run plays (an 80th-percentile portion) and McDaniels doing so on a whopping 71.4% of them (a rate in the 98th percentile). O’Brien, however, has traditionally been a zone guy: his last two full seasons with the Texans (2018 and 2019) saw him call zone runs on 66.4% and 74.1%, respectively, of the team’s total running back attempts (marks in the 78th and 97th percentiles), and the Alabama rushing attack was 77.2% zone under O’Brien. Splitting the difference on all those numbers would portend a 70/30 zone-gap split for Patriots runners going forward, something that might not be ideal for Stevenson specifically.

I say that because while Stevenson has been an effective runner even in the context of the offenses in which he’s operated so far in his NFL career, he’s been much better on gap than zone runs. On 172 gap carries, Stevenson has averaged 5.73 yards per carry and out-produced the other Patriot backs by 0.82 yards per carry. On 169 zone runs, he’s averaged just 3.78 yards per carry and outdone his teammates by just 0.02 yards per attempt. Even back to his time at Oklahoma, Stevenson averaged 7.96 yards and produced a YPC+ mark of 1.77 on gap runs while his numbers in those same categories on zone attempts were 6.49 and 0.86, respectively. The Patriots didn’t do much this offseason to improve an offensive line that ranked 20th in Pro Football Focus’ run-blocking grade and also produced the league’s 20th-ranked per-carry rushing average a year ago, so it’s possible that this projected shift in philosophy will result in a sizable net decrease in Stevenson’s per-carry effectiveness.

Still, it’s clear that O’Brien is a better and more accomplished play-caller and offensive architect that Judge, and that advantage combined with the additions of skill-position talent like JuJu Smith-Schuster and Mike Gesicki to the team should result in the Patriots offense being at least slightly better than the 2022 unit that finished 17th and 26th in the league, respectively, in total yards and total points. Perhaps more importantly, we know that Stevenson will not have to deal with Harris eating into his workload going forward, and the former Sooner was already a top-12 fantasy runner despite a 63.1% opportunity share that ranked right in the middle of the league’s 32 lead backs. More plays, better surrounding talent, and a larger piece of the rushing pie should allow Stevenson to produce a respectable follow-up to his breakout sophomore season despite a new zone-heavy rushing attack that could stifle his per-carry efficiency.

We’ll finish off this piece by examining how things might shake out in this backfield behind the clear RB1. Based on last season’s rushing numbers, Pierre Strong should run away with the breather back touches:

These are all small samples, but it’s probably worth something that Strong excelled on his limited opportunities while JJ Taylor and Kevin Harris both struggled on theirs. Taylor should not be on your dynasty radar at all, but on top of ripping off gains of 44, 19, and 14 yards on three of his ten attempts as a rookie, Strong is a 4.37-runner who profiles as a good fit in a zone-heavy scheme. I wasn’t a huge fan of his as a prospect, but he should have the leg up on the other backs in this running back room.

Harris is reportedly “in terrific shape” and showing “a noticeable extra burst this offseason” after a slow-going rookie season. I’m a believer in his talent and can envision a Damien Harris-type impact from him in the NFL, and at RB79 prices over at KTC, there’s a decent chance you can nab him for free and see where things go with the New England depth chart.