The Curious Case of Frank Gore

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was an excellent movie by Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. If you haven’t seen it, go and watch it so you can at least understand this analogy. Frank Gore is the Benjamin Button of the NFL. I’m not saying he’s aging in reverse but during his time in San Fran, he had to stumble across the fountain of youth. Every time we consider Frank to be too old and attempt to send him to the running back cemetery, he comes back alive like the Undertaker from WWE. Frank Gore will be 32 years old this season but is coming into the best possible situation imaginable. He will be a valuable addition to this already high-powered offense. The Indianapolis Colts are super bowl contenders and Andrew Luck has gone deeper in the playoffs every year he’s been in the league.

Personally, I think Frank has the best vision in the NFL. He doesn’t have blazing speed or trucks defenders over like Christian Okoye on Tecmo Bowl (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_ddO5ENtus) but he always finds the seams to slide through and keep the chains moving. Obviously, I’m not the only person that thinks this because bleacher report wrote an article last year titled, “building the perfect running back”. Gore was the eyes/head of this running back that consisted of Adrian Peterson (upper body), Marshawn Lynch (legs) and LeSean McCoy (feet).

Frank Gore has been on some awful teams during his tenure in San Francisco but the only thing he has done is averaged over 4 yards a carry along with an annual 1,000 yards no matter what. These numbers don’t sound like much until you factor in the offenses that he has been apart of with Alex Smith and Colin Kaepernick. These quarterbacks don’t scare any defenses! It’s equivalent to Freddy Krueger trying to walk slowly to scare Helen Keller.

Frank Gore has been running against 8 and 9 man boxes for years. He ran against eight or more defenders in the box for a league high 76 times last season. Many experts assumed Carlos Hyde would become the lead back and dethrone Gore last season and he simply couldn’t outplay the wildly veteran. Gore had 255 carries for 1,106 yards last season. I know Gore’s age is an issue for most but he hasn’t missed a game in four years. Now he’s not expected to be the bell cow and will be a three down back facing six and seven man boxes every Sunday.

You simply can’t view Andrew Luck as the number 1 fantasy QB and not like Frank Gore. If you think Luck will have one of the best offenses in the league, how are you not infatuated with the thought of Gore getting all the goal line work for this team? Gore will deliver this season and you shouldn’t be afraid of his 3^rd round ADP, it’ll pay dividends in the fantasy playoffs.