NextGen Stats - Running Back Breakdowns and Takeaways

The season is officially in full swing. Two weeks are gone, and 32 games are already in the books, providing some tasty information and data to crunch.

To gain the biggest edge in your fantasy football league, it's necessary to understand how to apply the advanced statistics being used in sports nowadays. Back in the day, it was all about wins and losses, passing yards, and touchdowns scored. It's not that those stats are now worthless, they just don't offer enough information to savvy analysts. While football is still in its infancy compared to baseball in terms of analytics, the evolution the sport has seen lately in those terms is notable.

Each week, I'll be tackling NFL's Next Gen Stats, bringing you data from the previous week's games with notable takeaways you should consider when assessing fantasy players for the upcoming week. In case you're new to the series, or Next Gen Stats altogether, I recommend you read our NGS-primer. Now, let's get to the data!

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Week 2 - The Running Game Is Alive!

A few days back, I mentioned one of the most important concepts to consider when analyzing players: Air Yards. The metrics around it are key to know who is really over-performing or under-performing among receivers and passers, but it doesn't have much to do with rushers. For this last group, which mostly features on the ground, we can look at time, speed, and efficiency metrics.

With only one week of data, I deemed it optimal to first look at wideouts and tight ends, as their receiving profiles were probably true from the get-go. The best players were going to get targeted no matter what, and deep threats would remain to be speedsters, just as short-router-runners would also keep their profile the same. I'll focus on running backs for this week's entry.

Today, I'll present each of the stats from the NFL's advanced metrics site, its correlation with rushers-fantasy points, and a list of leaders and trailers in each category along with some notes and takeaways on both the players' and the metrics' impact on fantasy football as a whole. Last season, the NFL introduced the concept of Expected Rushing Yards (xRY; How many rushing yards is a ball-carrier expected to gain on a given carry based on the relative location, speed and direction of blockers and defenders?), and Rushing Yards Over Expectation (RYOE; The difference between actual rushing yards and expected rushing yards on an individual play or series of plays). I will also tackle Rush Pct Over Expected (ROE%; The percentage of runs where a ball-carrier gained more yards than expected) in this column.

I will only focus on fantasy production as pure rushers, eliminating the pass-catching element from their game. This will concentrate entirely on their total rushing yardage and rushing touchdowns in terms of the fantasy points per game numbers shown (labeled ruFP/G). I will also include an extra column, "ruFP/15At", which accounts for the fantasy points a rusher is getting per 15 rushing attempts, which would be considered an RB1 workload on average and allows us to know how different players in different roles would be doing if given the same opportunities.

So let's dive in. Note: The cutoff is set at 10 rushing attempts.

 

Efficiency

Correlation with Rushing Fantasy Points (based on the 2020 season): negative-32%

Leaders and Trailers:

Leaderboard Notes:

• Remember, the more "efficient" a rusher is, the lower amount of yards he "wastes" going headfirst toward the opposite goal line in a straight route. With that in mind, and through two weeks of play, only three rushers out of 51 qualified can be considered true "north/south rushers" with marks below 3.00 EFF. That's four fewer than last season at this point.
• While the efficiency is there for those three running backs, only one of them is putting up more than 10.7 FPPG (remember, I'm only using rushing FP) with the two others falling below that mark. And all of them have scored a single touchdown, mind you, so it's not that the data is skewed.
• Of the top-13 rushers in FPPG (10+ through W2), only four of them are posting EFF marks at or below 3.15. The average is currently sitting at 3.82, way above what we'd consider a truly efficient rusher per NGS definition.
• The overall EFF average of the 51 qualifiers through a couple of games is 4.18.
• Kenyan Drake and Phillip Lindsay play in a league of their own with both posting ridiculously high marks. As expected given the -32% correlation with FPPG, neither of them is averaging more than 4.4 ruFP per game.
• In fact, of the less efficient rushers posting marks above 5-EFF, only one of the six in that group (Aaron Jones) is currently averaging more than 4.4 FPPG sitting at 6.8 after MNF's game against the Lions.
• Josh Jacobs is the only "yard-waster" putting up numbers. He's averaging 15.4 FPPG while having a rather high EFF mark of 4.85, the 9th-highest among qualifiers. Chris Carson comes next with 12+ FPPG, but his EFF is already down to 4.46 compared to Jacobs' 4.85.
• Rushers averaging <5 FPPG average a 4.60 EFF; rushers averaging 9+ FPPG average a 3.80 EFF.

• Jacobs, Nick Chubb, and Tony Pollard are the only players averaging 15+ ruFP/15att and they are all around the place in terms of EFF with marks of 4.85, 3.03, and 2.74 respectively.
• On the other hand, of the six players averaging fewer than 5 ruFP/15att (Kenyan Drake, Peyton Barber, Alvin Kamara, Najee Harris, James Conner, Clyde Edwards-Helaire) nobody is posting an EFF mark below 4.75, with Drake at a ridiculously high 8.89 himself.

 

Percentage of Stacked Boxes Faced

Correlation with Rushing Fantasy Points (based on the 2020 season): 8%

Leaders and Trailers:

Leaderboard Notes:

• The correlation between stacked boxes and fantasy points is so minimal that it doesn't make much sense to be overly worried about it if anything at all.
• Don't throw away stacked boxes completely given that almost non-existent relation, but keep in mind that it is heavily related to the role a player has on his offense and to what teams expect from him.

• Only 11 of 51 qualifiers have faced stacked boxes in more than 35% of their rushing attempts. Three of them have rushed the rock at least 40 times (they are probably facing the 8+D because of fear of their actual talents) while the other eight are either less talented RB1s on their teams or just subpar/secondary-role players.
• Special mention to Malcolm Brown and Peyton Barber (both RB2/RB3 in their rotations), who although on super-low samples are battling stacked boxes almost on a play-by-play basis. And they're sweating it, because neither is above 3.2 FPPG so far.
• Stacked boxes are often employed in the red zone. That probably explains why 9 of the 13 rushers with the highest rate in 8+D% have already scored a touchdown. They are the ones tasked with carrying the ball through the goal line, so defenses lock heavily into them when they reach that zone.
• Only Aaron Jones (22 carries) and Kenneth Gainwell (15) have yet to face a stacked box this season. They are putting up 6.8 and 5.6 FPPG respectively while both have a touchdown to their name already.
• Rushers with 25+ carries through W2 see stacked boxes 22.8% of the time while those with <20 carries so far see them 25.5% on average.

• Looking at the metric from a pure FPPG perspective, the top-10 per-game scorers at the position have faced 8+D an average of 22.7% of their attempts. Only Christian McCaffrey and Derrick Henry are posting marks above 23.1% at 37.8% and 48.1% respectively. David Montgomery is clearly the outlier with his measly 2.8% among those in that 10-player group.
• On the other hand, the bottom-10 FPPG rushers are facing stacked boxes 30% of the time on average. Don't get this wrong and flipped, though. It's not that those facing packed defenses more often find it hard to score fantasy points, but rather that they're often limited rushers already that just can't do anything of relevance no matter what they face, so defenses just go all-in to murder any possible chance they have of racking up yards and FP.

 

Average Time Behind The Line Of Scrimmage

Correlation with Rushing Fantasy Points (based on the 2020 season): 21%

Leaders and Trailers:

Leaderboard Notes:

• You might think that TLOS and EFF are related, as a north-south rusher should spend less time behind the line of scrimmage. With two weeks on the books already, the relation sits at an irrelevant 7%. Nothing linked between these two things, I'm afraid.
• The relation between TLOS and actual fantasy points is also pretty much nonexistent, so this metric can be discarded when analyzing players in fantasy leagues and trying to predict their outcomes.

• Kareem Hunt's mark of 3.43 seconds of TLOS is an absolute outlier among qualifiers while he's averaging 7.2 FPPG. Jamaal Williams, who has spent the second-shortest time behind the LOS (2.36 TLOS) is averaging 7.0 FPPG. Nothing to like about this metric, as I said above.
• Looking at the larger picture, though, the top-16 running backs in FPPG are averaging a 2.99 TLOS while the bottom-16 are averaging 2.52 seconds behind it. There is something to this, but it's not that incredible when considering all players (league average at 2.77).
• Running backs in the top half of the TLOS leaderboard (highest marks, more time behind the LOS) are posting up 0.4 more Y/A than those in the bottom half on average (4.4 to 4.0).
• The problem (we'll go through this metric later) is that those in the first group are overperforming as data tells us that they should be averaging 4.1 yards while the second group is underperforming as they should be averaging 4.4 yards. Once those things regress to their means we'll find ourselves looking at a bunch of noise coming from a mostly irrelevant metric for fantasy GMs.

 

ATT & YDS & Y/A & TD

Correlation with Rushing Fantasy Points (based on the 2020 season): 83% / 90% / 53% / 86%

Leaders and Trailers:

Leaderboard Notes:

• Shout-out to the Cowboys Real MVP Running Back Tony Pollard for posting a ridiculous 7.7 YPC mark two games into the season. The sample is midget-sized at just 16 carries, but there's that. Prorated to a per-15-attempt basis, Pollard would be putting up the third-highest FPPG only below Nick Chubb and Josh Jacobs.
• Rest easy, as Pollard will get back to earth eventually whether he likes it or not. No rusher has posted even 7.0 YPC through a full season in the past 20 years (min. 50 carries) with Darren Sproles topping the leaderboard at 6.9 YPC all the way back in 2011.
• Something similar will happen at the bottom of the leaderboard. Kenyan Drake's putrid 1.5 YPC are just not going to stay there all year long. Only one RB in the past 20 seasons rushed the rock 50+ times and finished below 2 YPC: Kalen Ballage (1.8) in 2019. Quite the relief for Drake, knowing things can (will) only get better.

• As ridiculous as it sounds, Josh Jacobs has rushed the ball just 10 times for 2 touchdowns already while averaging a measly 3.4 YPC. The scores are boosting his FPPG to a third-highest 15.4 so far, making him the most TD-dependent player through two weeks of games.
• On the other hand, Chase Edmonds has yet to score a touchdown while having 20 carries to his name already and the fourth-highest YPC mark at 5.5 yards. Cold world.

• Removing touchdowns from FPPG averages, and prorating the averages to a per-15-attempt basis, rookie sensation Ty'Son Williams would be the third-highest scorer among qualifiers through W2. The 2020 UDFA signee and college senior finally got to debut in a barren Ravens' backfield and he's not thrown his chance away. So far he's racked up 142 yards on 22 carries (6.4 YPC) and he's only behind 12 other rushers in the "actual" rushing FPPG leaderboard.
• Coincidentally, Williams' teammate Latavius Murray is averaging one of the lowest such marks (on a non-TD-factored, per-15-att basis) as he's 2 TDs on the year already (Vulture Latavius won't ever get old) but only 19 rushing attempts for 64 yards and a meager 3.4 YPC average.

 

YDS & RYOE & Y/A & RYOE/A & ROE%

Correlation with Rushing Fantasy Points (based on the 2020 season): 90% / 67% / 53% / 53% / 33%

Leaders and Trailers:

Leaderboard Notes:

• Starting last year, the NFL introduced the concept of Rushing Yards Over Expectation. Basically, it comes down to the extra yards a rusher gained (or lost) in a given play given the context of that play (down, distance, defender positional data, etc...).
• The RYOE metric indicates how many extra yards the rusher gained/lost on his carries over/under those he actually rushed for. Ex: YDS = 100, RYOE = 10, then the rusher was expected to rush for 90 yards, but overperformed that mark by 10 (RYOE) thus getting to 100.
• The RYOE/A metric indicates the average extra yards gained/lost per rushing attempt. Ex: Y/A = 0.5, RYOE/A = -1.5, then the rusher was expected to rush for 2.0 Y/A but underperformed that mark by -1.5 (RYOE) thus getting 0.5 Y/A.
• The ROE% metric indicates the percentage of rushing attempts the rusher exceeded the expected yards (gained more yards than expected). Ex: ATT = 10, ROE% = 50.0, then the rusher gained more yards than expected in 5 of 10 (50.0%) of his carries.

• Kudos to rookie Ty'Son as his 2.0 RYOE leads the league along with Tony Pollard. Williams edges Pollard, though, as the former has six more carries and a ROE% mark of 50 percent, which means he's rushed the ball above expectations in 11 of his 22 rushing attempts compared to Pollard's 6 of 16 for a 37.5 percent ROE%.
• For the effort Myles Gaskin is doing (1.0 RYOE) he has yet to score a touchdown on the season. He's the only player with an RYOE above 0.8 yet to get into the end zone carrying the ball, and he's also posting a 50% ROE% on 14 rushing attempts.
• Kenyan Drake might probably want to erase all memories from the past couple of weeks from his memory. He's averaging a putrid 1.5 YPC precisely because he's underperforming the expectations by -2.2 yards per attempt, the worst mark in the league by far. Only two other players (Aaron Jones and Phillip Lindsay) are at -1.5 yards among qualifiers, but at least those two have scored one touchdown each.
• The more carries a player accrues, the higher the chances the average RYOE he posts regresses to the 0.0 mean. In fact, among qualifiers with 25+ rushing attempts through W2 their average RYOE is precisely 0.0 yards.

• The overperforming artist known as Kareem Hunt is doing something of a kind so far with his league-leading 63.2 percent ROE% in 19 attempts. Nobody is even at 55% (Henry's 54.9% is the second-highest mark) although it must be said that King Henry has rushed the ball 52 times compared to Hunt's 19 carries.
• Speaking of Henry, he's the only rusher with 40+ rushing attempts and a ROE% higher than 37% (Joe Mixon trails him at 36.7% on 49 carries so far this year).
• Derrick Henry leads the league in rushing attempts, rushing yards, rushing yards over expectation, ROE% (min. 20 carries), touchdowns, and rushing FPPG. Crazy stats boosted by a massive workload, sure, but impressive nonetheless.

• The correlation is rather low at this point (positive-11.2%) but the most consistent overperformers are those averaging the most fantasy points per game so far. It will be interesting to keep an eye on this to see how it develops as carries keep piling up over the year.

That's it for today. Until we meet again next week, I hope you can crush your waiver wire, set up the best possible lineup, and get ready for another weekend full of fireworks!

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