LET'S FACE IT, 2013 was a gruesome year for first-round running backs. Arian Foster, Ray Rice, Doug Martin, C.J. Spiller and Trent Richardson were consensus top-10 picks, and by any measure, each was a disaster. Yes, if you were fortunate enough to draft Jamaal Charles or our cover boy, LeSean McCoy, your season worked out fine. But odds are that if you used your first-rounder on a back last season, you were unimpressed. That opens a whole bag of questions: Why would a right-thinking fantasy football owner do it again in 2014? Isn't the strategy of selecting RBs very early in your draft a product of the "old" NFL? Haven't we recently seen players at other positions -- like Peyton Manning, Calvin Johnson and Jimmy Graham -- shatter records? Don't we need a new fantasy paradigm to match the new NFL? No, no, no and no.

I don't deal in absolutes. I will never argue that you must take a back with your first pick, no matter who he is. There is a point where I think drafting a seemingly reliable wideout or quarterback is probably smarter than grabbing, say, the No. 11 running back. But with my first pick, I'm leaning toward the ball carrier. To explain why, I'll address the three most typical objections to the RB-first strategy.

Objection No. 1: You dope, it's a passing league!

You're right. It is. Over the past two seasons, 12 QBs have attempted 600-plus passes in a single campaign. In the entire previous decade, that happened only 13 times. Last year 16 signal-callers -- half the league -- exceeded 500 attempts. In 2010, that number was nine. And in 1992, Dan Marino was the only QB over 500. The 18,136 leaguewide passing attempts in 2013 were the most ever.

This explains why, in terms of raw fantasy point totals, QBs have so thoroughly dominated the past two seasons. In that span, 31 QBs have posted top-20 fantasy seasons, compared with nine running backs. Only one RB -- Jamaal Charles -- has finished higher than seventh. So if raw point totals were all we cared about, you'd be dumb to draft anything other than a QB in your draft's first round.