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Like many, I've been poring over rookie running backs ever since this year's draft and one unavoidable reality keeps coming up. A reality that was brought home once again by Detroit's 2nd rounder Mikel LeShoure. Rookie Running Backs are Dangerous! Buyer Beware.

The young back had a nasty setback to his NFL career after tearing his Achilles. That's bad enough to knock him out for the entire season and it's just another piece of bad injury news for the Lions.

The lesson is to not depend on rookie RB if you can help it. Granted, any player can get injured at any time, but with this group, the trend is hard to ignore.

Flash back to 2010 and the top five rookie RB draft picks were (in order) Ryan Mathews, Jahvid Best, C.J. Spiller, Ben Tate, and Montario Hardesty.

What do they all have in common? None of them gave you a complete and solid fantasy season in 2010.

Both Hardesty and Tate never even made it onto the football field in the regular season. Like LeShoure, the injury bug wiped them out early. Mathews only played 12 games, and he was not 100% for many of the games he did play. Jahvid Best played 15 (started 10), but a nagging turf toe injury plagued him the entire way and he never scored after week 2. C.J. Spiller is the only guy who didn't suffer a significant injury, but for being the 3rd ranked rookie RB last draft season, he sorely disappointed rushing for under 300 yards, scoring only 1 TD (receiving), and starting only 1 game.

2011 gives us a new crop of promising young backs. Here are the top 5 on our draft board. Okay 6, since you can now wipe LeShoure off the list.

1. Daniel Thomas
2. Mark Ingram
3. Ryan Williams
4. Mikel LeShoure
5. Roy Helu
6. DeMarco Murray

Let's hope the rest of these guys make it through preseason!

Fantasy Outlook:
As a final note, every one of these guys has a lot of upside. Depending on their situation and how their role develops on their team a couple of them could be steals. The point is that they come with extra risk, so you don't want to take them too early and you don't want to rely on them as your RB1.