In the fourth of a six-part fantasy draft preview series leading up to the NFL season, Fantasy Insanity discusses which running backs to draft when. Next week: wide receivers.

Life lessons can come from the strangest of places. For instance, you “run” a marathon, but you also “run” for office. If you are avoiding the law, you’re on the “run.” If your appliances are in working order, they are “running.” You might have far-reaching plans that cover what will happen in the long “run.”

Everywhere you look, it is as if the universe is telling you “run” is good. So just apply those lessons to your fantasy football drafts, and run to running backs early and often.

The RB position is the shallowest, but also the most volatile. That means the dependable ones will run out fast in the draft. It also means you stand a much high risk of a bust, through either injury or poor performance.

Some think of that uncertainty as a deterrent to using huge draft capital on the position, but the Madman instead invests in the insurance of knowing if we grab enough good ones, we stand a good chance of having two who are playable most weeks.

Since other positions have decently reliable options later, we will sacrifice better bench options elsewhere stock up on RBs.

In the first couple of rounds, we don’t focus solely on RBs, but rather a best-available approach — and almost always, the best available is either a RB or wide receiver. And if struggling to make a decision, the tiebreaker goes to the RB.

This means we would take Derrick Henry, though he is coming off an injury, ahead of Justin Jefferson. But it doesn’t mean we would take Henry ahead of Cooper Kupp.

We put added emphasis on volume, which also lifts Henry higher in our ranks than most — ahead of Austin Ekeler. We also use anticipated games played as a part of our player projections. Henry is coming off a broken bone in his foot, but otherwise he doesn’t have an injury history of any concern — unlike, say, Christian McCaffrey, who ranks lower in our ratings than the industry standard.

That is how we hedge our bets toward the most probable outcomes. Because probabilities beat guesswork the vast majority of the time.

Where we really start to like our value, where we don’t think we’re paying a premium for the upside, is with Saquon Barkley in the second round. He has RB1 potential at RB12 pricing.

But our bullishness doesn’t end with Barkley. We like what we saw of how the Rams used Cam Akers late last season, so he is higher than you’ll find in many other rankings. We’re confident in Alvin Kamara and Leonard Fournette. We like the upside of D’Andre Swift, despite the negative biased baked in to Lions RBs.

We’re grown softer on Javonte Williams, worried about the lingering theft Melvin Gordon might have on his workload. We’re not big on Ezekiel Elliott, but it seems a lot of fantasy managers aren’t, so we’re not as averse to his draft value as we expected.

But leagues aren’t won in the early rounds. They often come from sharp late draft picks. One we really like is AJ Dillon. We’re expecting him to be the Kareem Hunt to Aaron Jones’ Nick Chubb. Similarly, we like Tony Pollard.

And don’t overlook Rashaad Penny. He might be in a bad Seahawks offense, but with rookie Ken Walker out with a hernia, any roadblock to workload has been removed for Penny.

So once your fantasy draft starts, make sure to make a run on running backs.