Over the past decade, one of the most striking trends in the National Football League has been the devaluing of the running-back position.

While the top rushers in the league have had trouble getting paid as much as their receiving and quarterbacking cohorts, they’ve still proven to be invaluable to fantasy football success.

Four of the past five years, we’ve made a ball-carrier the No. 1 rookie pick in our fantasy previews (Josh Jacobs, Clyde Edwards-Helaire, Breece Hall, Bijan Robinson).

But no such luck this year. Pass catchers reign in our 2024 list, led by a talented trio that begin their NFL fantasy careers as must-starts.

1. Marvin Harrison Jr. (Cardinals WR)

The son of a hall of famer and a future hall of famer himself? Yes, the hype around Harrison has been feverish. That’s due to his last two seasons at Ohio State (144 catches, 2,474 yards, 28 touchdowns). He’ll be the obvious No. 1 target of Arizona QB Kyler Murray, and he’s the only player on this list who could conceivably finish in the fantasy top 10 this season.

Marvin Harrison Jr. #18 of the Ohio State Buckeyes is tackled by Benjamin Morrison #20 of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish after a reception during the first half at Notre Dame Stadium on Sept. 23, 2023 in South Bend, Indiana. (Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

2. Malik Nabers (Giants WR)

The latest model of LSU superstar receivers, Nabers made like Justin Jefferson and Ja’Marr Chase with a three-year tally of 189 catches, 3,003 yards and 21 TDs. He begins his career as the Giants’ No. 1 offensive threat. The only thing that could hold him back, and likely will hold him back, is the mediocrity of New York incumbent quarterback Daniel Jones.

Malik Nabers #8 of the LSU Tigers runs with the ball as Jacoby Mathews #2 of the Texas A&M Aggies defends during the first half at Tiger Stadium on Nov. 25, 2023 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. (Photo by Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images)

3. Rome Odunze (Bears WR)

He helped lead Washington to the national championship game last season with 92 catches for 1,640 yards and 13 touchdowns. And now he’s in the Windy City to pair up with Caleb Williams in what could be an explosive Bears attack. The only issue for Odunze’s fantasy value is that, playing beside veterans D.J. Moore and Keenan Allen, there are many mouths to feed.

Cam Lampkin #3 of the Washington State Cougars tackles Rome Odunze #1 of the Washington Huskies during the first quarter at Husky Stadium on Nov. 25, 2023 in Seattle, Washington. (Photo by Steph Chambers/Getty Images)

4. Jonathon Brooks (Panthers RB)

Brooks blossomed as a senior at Texas with 212 touches for 1,425 yards and 11 touchdowns. Despite a knee injury he suffered at the end of last season, he’s still the top rookie running back of this class. He won’t be ready for the first few weeks, but he should eventually push his way past Chuba Hubbard and Miles Sanders into a starting role in Carolina.

Jonathon Brooks #24 of the Texas Longhorns breaks a tackle attempt by Siale Esera #54 of the Brigham Young Cougars in the second half at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium on Oct. 28, 2023 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Tim Warner/Getty Images)

5. Brock Bowers (Raiders TE)

Georgia’s three-time All-American was one of the greatest tight ends in college football history, scoring 31 touchdowns as a Bulldog. And he will quickly rise near the top of the fairly thin crop of fantasy tight ends. Could he challenge Davante Adams for the Raiders’ receiving lead? The biggest liability for both is Vegas’ meager QB ranks (Aidan O’Connell and Gardner Minshew).

Brock Bowers #19 of the Georgia Bulldogs reacts after scoring the go-ahead touchdown against the Auburn Tigers during the fourth quarter at Jordan-Hare Stadium on Sept. 30, 2023 in Auburn, Alabama. (Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)

6. Brian Thomas Jr. (Jaguars WR)

The other standout LSU receiver, Thomas last year had 68 catches for 1,177 yards and 17 TDs. He posted a sizzling 4.33 time in the 40-yard dash at the NFL combine. If QB Trevor Lawrence doesn’t have a rebound season, he won’t be able to blame it on a pass-catching corps that also includes Christian Kirk, Gabe Davis and tight end Evan Engram.

Brian Thomas Jr. #11 of the LSU Tigers catches a pass over Daedae Hill #6 of the Central Michigan Chippewas during the second quarter at Tiger Stadium on Sept. 18, 2021 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. (Photo by Sean Gardner/Getty Images)

7. Caleb Williams (Bears QB)

The 2022 Heisman Trophy winner and No. 1 draft pick threw for 10,082 yards in his last three seasons at Oklahoma and Southern California. His 93-14 touchdown-to-interception ratio glitters, but he often did not in big games. But he’ll be heading an overhauled Chicago offense that, in addition to Odunze, added veterans Allen and D’Andre Swift.

Caleb Williams #13 of the USC Trojans reacts against the Notre Dame Fighting Irish during the first half at Notre Dame Stadium on Oct. 14, 2023 in South Bend, Indiana. (Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

8. Trey Benson (Cardinals RB)

The clear No. 2 rookie running back had almost identical seasons the past two years at Oregon and Florida State. He totalled 343 touches for 2,267 yards and 24 touchdowns. He’ll be taking some of the workload from starter James Conner and will be a significant player in the ascending Arizona offense.

Running back Trey Benson #3 of the Florida State Seminoles runs the ball by safety Jalen Stroman #26 of the Virginia Tech Hokies during the second half of play at Doak Campbell Stadium on Oct. 07, 2023 in Tallahassee, Florida. (Photo by Michael Chang/Getty Images)

9. Xavier Worthy (Chiefs WR)

Patrick Mahomes’ newest ally starred for three years at Texas, with 197 receptions for 2,755 yards and 26 TDs. But his most impressive number is the record 4.21-second time he posted in the 40 at the NFL combine. With Rashee Rice facing a possible suspension, Worthy will be high on Mahomes’ target list along with another newcomer, Marquise Brown.

Xavier Worthy #1 of the Texas Longhorns reacts after a touchdown in the third quarter against the Texas Tech Red Raiders at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium on Nov. 24, 2023 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Tim Warner/Getty Images)

10. Jayden Daniels (Commanders QB)

The 2023 Heisman Trophy winner had an off-the-charts season at LSU, completing more than 72 percent of his passes for 3,812 yards and 40 TDs. Even more impressive: only four interceptions. But he’s pretty skinny by NFL QB standards, so we’re guessing he won’t be duplicating the 10 rushing touchdowns he had last season in Baton Rouge.

Jayden Daniels #5 of the LSU Tigers runs with the ball during the first half against the Texas A&M Aggies at Tiger Stadium on Nov. 25, 2023 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. (Photo by Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images)

11. Ladd McConkey (Chargers WR)

McConkey was one of the many standouts at Georgia, where in three seasons he tallied 132 touches for 1,903 yards and 18 TDs. He lands with a rebuilding Chargers team led by new coach Jim Harbaugh. With the exits of Keenan Allen, MIke Williams, Austin Ekeler and Gerald Everett, QB Justin Herbert will need McConkey to quickly emerge as a weapon.

Ladd McConkey #84 of the Georgia Bulldogs catches a 14 yard touchdown in the third quarter against the TCU Horned Frogs in the College Football Playoff National Championship game at SoFi Stadium on Jan. 09, 2023 in Inglewood, California. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

12. Keon Coleman (Bills WR)

The Bills said goodbye to Stefon Diggs and Gabe Davis, who combined for 152 catches last season. In comes this Florida State standout, who caught 51 passes for 660 yards and 11 touchdowns for the Seminoles. He’s the seventh rookie on this list who has at least a chance to lead his new team in receptions.

Keon Coleman #4 of the Florida State Seminoles makes the game-winning catch against Jeadyn Lukus #10 of the Clemson Tigers in overtime at Memorial Stadium on Sept. 23, 2023 in Clemson, South Carolina. (Photo by Isaiah Vazquez/Getty Images)

13. Blake Corum (Rams RB)

The hero of Michigan’s 2023 national championship team had two sterling seasons with the Wolverines, rushing for 2,708 yards and 45 touchdowns in 2022-23. He scored in 26 of his last 27 games. Corum could see regular work in L.A. as he’s behind only Kyren Williams on the depth chart. Coach Sean McVay will not let this talent go to waste.

Blake Corum #2 of the Michigan Wolverines celebrates with teammates after scoring a touchdown in overtime against the Alabama Crimson Tide during the CFP Semifinal Rose Bowl Game at Rose Bowl Stadium on Jan. 01, 2024 in Pasadena, California. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

14. Ricky Pearsall (49ers WR)

Pearsall started at Arizona State and finished at Florida, where he scored six TDs and caught 65 passes for 965 last season. A very athletic addition to a 49ers receiver corps that is a bit up in the air because of the uncertain status of disgruntled Brandon Aiyuk.

Ricky Pearsall #1 of the Florida Gators catches the ball on a kickoff by the Oregon State Beavers during the first half of the SRS Distribution Las Vegas Bowl at Allegiant Stadium on Dec. 17, 2022 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by David Becker/Getty Images)

15. Adonai MItchell (Colts WR)

Mitchell transferred from Georgia to Texas and posted strong numbers last season (55 catches, 845 yards, 11 TDs). He could find his way into the starting lineup with the Colts, who have only one top-flight receiver in Michael Pittman Jr.

Adonai Mitchell #5 of the Texas Longhorns catches a touchdown pass as Josh Newton #2 of the TCU Horned Frogs defends during the first half at Amon G. Carter Stadium on Nov. 11, 2023 in Fort Worth, Texas. (Photo by Ron Jenkins/Getty Images)

Other notable rookies

Jaylen Wright (Dolphins RB), MarShawn Lloyd (Packers RB), Xavier Legette (Panthers WR), Drake Maye (Patriots QB), J.J. McCarthy (Vikings QB), Bo Nix (Broncos QB), MIchael Penix Jr. (Falcons QB), Ben Sinott (Commanders TE).

Jaylen Wright #0 of the Tennessee Volunteers runs the ball against the Texas A&M Aggies in the fourth quarter at Neyland Stadium on Oct. 14, 2023 in Knoxville, Tennessee. (Photo by Eakin Howard/Getty Images)

Coming up

August 18: Veterans that we’re not especially high on for this fantasy season.

August 25: Veterans that we’re rating higher than the experts’ consensus.

September 1: Our annual Nipsey Russell-inspired NFL Preview.

You can hear <a href=”http://www.twincities.com/author/kevin-cusick/” target=”_blank”>Kevin Cusick</a> on Wednesdays on <a href=”http://bsblog.com/podcasts” target=”_blank”>Bob Sansevere’s “BS Show” podcast</a> on iTunes. You can follow Kevin on <a href=”http://twitter.com/theloopnow’” target=”_blank”>Twitter — @theloopnow</a>. He can be reached at kcusick@pioneerpress.com.

Barbara Bradley Hagerty is an eclectic journalist: In her working life at NPR and later at The Atlantic, she has relentlessly pursued stories that somehow connect the divergent tent poles of religion and criminal justice. Forced to leave her 19-year-long radio career by a paralyzed vocal cord in 2014, Hagerty began to rethink her life. In 2016, her search for deeper stories—and for answers about life’s meaning—brought her to Jim McCloskey, who years before had abandoned his studies at Princeton Theological Seminary to “reinvestigate the case of a prisoner he believed was wrongly convicted and persuaded a judge that the man was innocent.”

It was McCloskey, the founder of Centurion Ministries, a man who at that point had already helped exonerate 54 people, who told her about an imprisoned Texan whose story haunted him: Ben Spencer, a “Black man convicted of robbing and killing a white man in Dallas in 1987.” 

Locked up on a life sentence for decades, Spencer was McCloskey’s “unfinished business, his heartbreak,” Hagerty writes. Despite Herculean efforts, Centurion Ministries had been unable to win Spencer’s release.

Then, as her new book, Bringing Ben Home, describes, Spencer’s story also became her business. Hagerty plunged into a seven-year-long search for new evidence that could help free Spencer and for the deeper reasons behind his wrongful conviction. She began with an investigative piece for The Atlantic in 2018 that recounted how he’d helped a private detective interview previously unheard witnesses.

At one point, she stood on the doorstep of a modest Dallas home alongside that detective hoping to find a witness when he abruptly “placed his hands on my shoulders and silently moved me to the side,” she wrote. His experience, he told her, was that sometimes hostile witnesses shot through a door before answering. It was a precaution that as a door-knocking journalist she’d never previously considered. The evidence they uncovered, along with a review by a different Dallas DA, John Creuzot, ultimately led to Spencer’s release in March 2021.

Barbara Bradley Hagerty (Michelle Pitcher)

But she kept thinking about Spencer long after that. For Hagerty, covering this case has been a transformative journey. As she shares in a related essay, “My reporting forced me to confront some bigger lessons about life, truth, and faith.”

The resulting book is a compelling page-turner both about Spencer, a hard-working married Texan who was unjustly convicted of murder, and about the causes of his wrongful conviction that include mishandled and lost crime scene evidence, flawed eyewitness testimony, discounted alibi witnesses, a lying jailhouse snitch, and the failure to investigate an alternative suspect—a violent serial robber from the same neighborhood.

Somehow, Hagerty managed to deftly dissect nearly all of America’s principal sources of unjust and flawed convictions as revealed in the National Registry of Exonerations, a growing list of more than 3,500 people that spans 35 years. Indeed, she briefly describes myriad other cases, even as she deeply reveals the life and motivations of Spencer himself. Her book includes an encyclopedic review of nationwide exonerations of the innocent that led to new revelations and research about flaws in America’s criminal justice system.

Hagerty’s book deploys a mantra, repeatedly describing Spencer as one of the “luckiest of unlucky men,” deftly repurposing a battle survivors’ trope to describe an innocent man unjustly sentenced to prison for life who is ultimately, and against all odds, finally freed.

A lyrical writer and a gifted radio storyteller, Hagerty is a skilled collector of compelling anecdotes and quotes that contribute to making this book of more than 400 pages both informative and a pleasure to read. Early on, she shares a family story about Spencer, a boy so idealistic that after watching Mary Poppins he jumped off the roof with an umbrella, expecting to fly. “And the umbrella flipped up, and he came crashing down!” his younger sister Juanita recalled, chuckling. But as Hagerty recounts, “Nothing was hurt except his ego. … Ben Spencer thought he could defy gravity.” 

Much of her material comes from Spencer himself, including lines from 2,500 pages of letters he wrote from prison. She opens the book with his words from a September 2016 missive: “My fervent prayer is that I will not fail in my objective by pointing out the serious wrong that has been imposed upon me, my family and the family of the victim, Jeffrey Young. My prayer is that after reading about the details in this particular case, that you can find it in your heart to come up with a solution to this problem of injustice.”

The trouble is that Spencer is an innocent man unable to be exonerated through incontrovertible DNA or fingerprint evidence. The man he was convicted of killing, Young, a father of three and a successful businessman, was robbed and locked into the trunk of his BMW by his assailant in March 1987. Young then apparently fought his way out of the trunk, ending up on the street, initially still alive. Therefore, no homicide detectives arrived to collect evidence at the scene. Prints later lifted from the BMW were lost. 

Spencer was one of only several suspects named by witnesses—and perhaps the least likely of the bunch. He had a good job, wife and a baby on the way, and only one prior: He’d pled guilty to joy riding after being stopped inside a car stolen by a friend. 

Ben Spencer and his wife Debra Spencer (Michelle Pitcher)

You know from the beginning of this story that ultimately Spencer will be released. And yet this is a suspenseful tale with myriad twists and turns. There are so many moments when, as a reader, you think surely now he’ll be freed as more witnesses come forward, as more lawyers and a private detective and a reporter turn up to help, and as a series of progressive Dallas DAs and an open-minded judge review his innocence claims.

But what makes the story most compelling is Spencer himself—a man who took solace in prison in his own spirituality as a leader of religion and education programs. At first, Ben takes such pride in his appearance and has such hopes for release that he crisply presses his uniform by putting it under his mattress. Over time, Ben pushes away his wife, encouraging her to divorce him and remarry after he loses appeals and almost loses hope. 

Yet year after year, he never stops declaring his innocence or his love for her. Time after time, he turns down probation deals that require him to admit his guilt, and at one point he helps exonerate another innocent man by connecting him with McCloskey, of Centurion Ministries.

In the end, this book delivers a truly happy ending—34 years in the making. And yet, this true crime tale haunts the reader, just as McCloskey was once haunted by Spencer’s story. Even now, the criminal justice system’s many flaws remain unaddressed and other unlucky innocent men remain behind bars. As Hagerty writes: “Yes for now, Ben Spencer is lucky. But in America, should one’s freedom depend on luck?” 

Editor’s Note: Observer Staff Writer Michelle Pitcher assisted Barbara Bradley Hagerty with fact checking for the book reviewed here.