The 6 Riskiest Players in Fantasy Football This Season

Arian Foster

You've been living under a rock if you're not aware of the risk involved in drafting Arian Foster for your fantasy football team. The oft-injured Texans tailback is still one of the most talented in the league, but there's a lot counting against him as he approaches the 2014 season.

Gary Kubiak is gone, Foster is getting older, and he'll be playing in a new scheme with a new quarterback for the first time in his NFL career (apart from Matt Schaub's injury and horrible play-related spells on the sideline, of course). So it's no surprise that Foster is one of the riskiest players in the league when it comes to fantasy.

Just how risky, though? According to our CI numbers, Foster's range of outcomes is the widest in the entire NFL, with a 112.74 fantasy point swing between the least and most-reasonably likely outcomes. That CI range represents around 46% of his point total, meaning that a rise or fall of just under 25% of his projection is not only possible, but reasonable based on the uncertainty of his situation.

To put it another way, the top-end of Foster's CI numbers would see him finishing as the second-best running back in the fantasy football, just behind Jamaal Charles. But the low end of his CI would rank him 14th, behind Gio Bernard and Doug Martin. A swing from second-best running back to an RB2 is certainly a big risk, but one worth taking if you can land Foster in a draft position reflective of the low end of his CI range.

Sure, he's a risk, but spending a third-round pick on Foster (as I have already a few times this offseason) could pay huge dividends should he get back to the performances that earned him the high draft position he enjoyed over the past few seasons. Otherwise, he might be a bit too big of a question mark for that late-first rounder that could be spent on a safer Eddie Lacy or Marshawn Lynch.