Last year, Zac Stacy was a lovable waiver-wire legend. The Vanderbilt product saw just one carry and nine total snaps through Week 4 of his rookie season. From inactive to feature duties, Stacy took on meaningful snaps and touches in Week 5 and never looked back.

From Week 5 through the end of the season, Stacy posted the eighth-most standard fantasy points among all backs, as well as the seventh-most rushing yards and fifth-most rushing touchdowns over that span. The Rams' eight-year streak of 1,000-yard rushers was snapped last season, but Stacy (973) gave it an impressive go when you consider the late start.

Zac Stacy may not be the most electrifying runner, but he has enough talent to be the Rams' primary back this year. Scott Rovak/USA TODAY Sports

Stacy is being taken as the 10th running back off the board in ESPN live drafts. He is going 17.8 overall on average, with a healthy average auction stock of $36.3. Yet as the offseason develops and the Twitter banter and buzz build, it seems the marketplace isn't nearly as confident in Stacy as this ADP information suggests. I've seen Stacy slip well into the third round and even beyond in mock and expert drafts this offseason. In saying that, I suppose I've also been cold to Stacy's stock in those drafts.

The loudest doubts focus on Stacy's talent level -- calling into question if he's anything more than a downhill plodder in the Cedric Benson mold, solely dependent on volume to be a valuable fantasy asset (is that even a bad thing?).

Is Stacy a player prone to getting passed on the depth chart, especially given that the team invested in Heisman finalist Tre Mason in the draft, 85 picks ahead of where the Rams took Stacy in 2013? Or was last year's impressive sample (1,114 total yards with eight scores) enough to cement Stacy as the team's featured workhorse for 2014?

We'll do our best to try to answer these questions to gain an understanding of how we might want to price Stacy come draft day. For some insight into what kind of players Stacy and Mason are, I turned to Matt Williamson, NFL scout for ESPN and co-host of the Football Today Podcast: "I think Mason is clearly more laterally explosive and has a better burst and long speed, but Stacy is a no-nonsense downhill runner who stays low and doesn't give defenders a lot to hit. But in the end, I see Stacy more as a volume guy that needs a lot of touches to really put up numbers."

Short and stout at just 5-foot-8, Stacy has combine measurables that compare favorably to those of Doug Martin (closest match), DeAngelo Williams, Shane Vereen and Travis Henry (a former Jeff Fisher feature back). There's not a ton of "wiggle" to Stacy's game, as talent evaluators tend to say, as he ranked just 24th among qualifying backs (at least 50 percent of team's carries) in Pro Football Focus' elusive rating metric. Stacy forced a missed tackle on 11.6 percent of his carries, a respectable but middle-of-the-pack rate (top backs approach the 20 percent threshold).