All offseason we kind of put our heads in the sand when it came to Alvin Kamara. 

Travis Etienne had joined the Saints and none of us wanted to deal with the specter of a 30-year-old veteran RB crashing the party on Bourbon Street.

But Kamara is officially staying in New Orleans after agreeing to a pay cut—a $6M base with an additional $2.5M in possible incentives—and now we are forced to reckon with the fly in the ointment.

No one is worried about Kamara stealing early-down base work from Etienne, but it would be naïve not to assume Kamara will eat into his high-value touches (receiving work and goal-line opportunities).

As Matt LaMarca notes here, Kamara still managed an 11% target share last year and was targeted on 16% of his routes.

Pair that inconvenient truth with the fact that most of Etienne's receiving work last year (94%) came on early downs (something Adam Pfeifer attributes to Liam Cohen's scheme) and you get the recipe for a dicey third-round pick (or the worst pick in Round 3, per Pfeifer).

Of course, in the best ball landscape, things change quickly. Etienne is now routinely sliding into early Round 4—a much more palatable price tag.

Meanwhile, Kamara is up almost a full round after restructuring his contract.

So how to play it? 

I like both of these guys way more in best ball than in redraft. Kamara is RB54 on Underdog right now, but RB46 in our ranks. He's the perfect guy to add to Zero RB builds to lock in some early-season production. 

Etienne I think is perfectly fine in the fourth round, but I do think guys like Cam Skattebo, Josh Jacobs and David Montgomery will be more straightforward starts in managed leagues.