Meanwhile, this transaction is pretty great news for Daniel Thomas. Yes, he's still a rookie who missed an entire summer of working out for his new team. Yes, Bush will eat into his touches. But the Dolphins were never going to entirely hand over their RB touches to an untested dude (no matter how talented), so they were always going to acquire a veteran. Over the past few days, there were rumors that Miami was serious about signing Ahmad Bradshaw, which would've been far more calamitous for Thomas' value. Bush is injury-prone and nobody's idea of a feature back.
As such, Thomas is a top-30 fantasy option, with the upside to be more than that.In New Orleans, the main unknown is the status of Ivory's injured foot. He required Lisfranc surgery this winter, and for the moment I'm assuming he's a distant third on the depth chart. If that's so, the main RB gig comes down to Ingram and Pierre Thomas. We all know Sean Payton likes to split his rushing workload: Over the past four years, no Saints rusher has been given more then 230 total touches in a season, and only one -- Bush, in '07 -- has gotten more than 186.
Although the fantasy value of Ingram and Thomas probably gets a little clearer with Bush gone, my rankings of those guys always pretty much assumed Bush would leave. The fact is, Ingram and Thomas are going to battle each other for looks. At the moment, I think they're pretty close; Ingram looks like the favorite for plow-horse work (including short TDs), while Thomas will catch some passes and carry it in more spread formations. I like Frenchy in this type of role -- in a similar position in '08 and '09, he averaged more than 1,000 total yards and 10 TDs -- and I actually think I might draft him first. But Ingram is going to go higher in most drafts, and probably has significantly more upside.
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