The Running Game Is Alive! NextGen Stats Analysis

Folks, it's time to put on your battle armor and get ready for war. We've completed 11 weeks and I can see the playoffs on the horizon already. And let me tell you something: nobody is pushing me out of them. If you too have a chance at making the playoffs at this point in the season, that means you have been able to dominate for more than two-thirds of it. No team has been as good as yours. No fantasy GM has come close to you and your decision-making. Only one thing can beat you to the finish line: yourself. But hey, don't lose any bit of hope. I'm here for another week to show you how the league is looking entering the home stretch of the season, so you can make the final pinpoint decisions of the year and bring that championship home.

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 11 - Running Back Takeaways from NextGenStats

I have mentioned one of the most important concepts to consider when analyzing players through this series of articles: 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.

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 concepts 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?)
• Rushing Yards Over Expectation (RYOE; The difference between actual rushing yards and expected rushing yards on an individual play or series of plays)
• Rush Pct Over Expected (ROE%; The percentage of runs where a ball-carrier gained more yards than expected)

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/15Att", which is 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 55 rushing attempts.

 

Running Backs 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.
• The last time we checked the leaderboards, right after Week 8, no player had an EFF mark below 3.0. That hasn't changed, but Jonathan Taylor is this close to the feat with a 3.03 EFF through 11 games this year. It's going to take a great effort to stay there, but there is a chance JT does it when all is said and done.
• Tony Pollard, who ranked along with Chase Edmons as a top-EFF player below a 3.25 mark, is now fourth after Nick Chubb jumped him on the leaderboard by a nail. The Efficiency of a rusher has pretty much nothing to do with the carries he's gotten (no correlation nor stabilization happening over time), so you can take the EFF values for what they are no matter the number of rushing attempts an RB has to his name to date.
• No player in the top-5 EFF rushers (all of them below 3.40) is posting up fewer than 9.3 FP/15Att, but the difference in actual FPPG is wild with Taylor at 17.3 compared to Edmonds 5.4 fantasy points.

• Mike Davis' nightmarish season keeps on giving headaches to his fantasy GMs. After a monster year backing up CMC, Davis has been atrocious since moving to Atlanta this past offseason. Davis is by far the least efficient rusher with his 5.00 mark and the only RB with a 4.7+ EFF through 11 games. No wonder he's wasting yardage as his 3.5 FPPG show...
• Don't get EFF wrong, though. Peep a little bit more down the list of "trailers" and you'll see names such as those of Alvin Kamara, Joe Mixon, and Mark Ingram II pop up. Those are far from bad fantasy players, so it's not that sky-high EFF marks are linked to underperforming players.
• Overall, and with 52 qualifiers, the league EFF keeps going down for the third time in a row as it has gone from 4.00 yards to 3.93 in W8 and is now at a lower 3.78 mark. Not that big of a difference, but somewhat notable and still going down and down.

• Players with the 20-highest EFF marks have averaged three TDs over the 11 games played, while those with the 20-lowest marks have scored an average of four TDs.
• Only three qualifiers have yet to score a touchdown and their EFF marks range from 4.65 (Alexander Mattison) to 3.61 (Miles Sanders). In other words, they are spread up and down the leaderboard without much significance to it.

• The group of 12 RBs averaging 10+ ruFP per game is posting an average EFF of 3.43.
• The group of 11 RBs averaging <5 FPPG is at a 4.03 EFF.

 

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.

• Every qualifier has forced opposing defenses to drop a stacked box on them at least once, with Carlos Hyde having the fewer such plays with just 4 faced boxes on his 56 carries. Clyde Edwards-Helaire and Kenyan Drake rank joint-second with 6 loaded boxes faced each.
• Kansas City has kept "up" with their low stacked boxes faced, as both CEH and Darrel Williams have been able to stay on the bottom-3 of the leaderboard through W11. None of them has faced that type of alignment more than 9% of the times they've carried the ball. Only Las Vegas rushers are close, but both Drake and Josh Jacobs are at 10.9%+ each.
• Only two players putting up more than 6 FPPG through this week while facing stacked boxes in fewer than 12% of their carries (CEH and Jacobs). Only two at 9.9+ FPPG with fewer than a 15% mark.

• Christian McCaffrey came back a few weeks ago and he's been able to stay on top with a 37.1% stacked boxes faced. Derrick Henry is out for the year (or the playoffs, at least) and his 36.5% is now second followed by active-rusher Rhamondre Stevenson at 34.3%.
• Among players with 100+ rushing attempts (excluding Henry), though, the leaders on the stacked-box front would be Mark Ingram, Elijah Mitchell, and Chuba Hubbard, all of them at 31.7%+

• Of the 20 rushers who have faced stacked boxes in 25% of their carries or more, the Y/A sits at 4.4. That compares to an average of 4.2 Y/A for those (15 of them) that have faced them <15% of the time.

• Stacked boxes are often employed in the red zone. That probably explains why 10 of the 14 rushers with the highest rate in 8+D% (all above 28%) have already scored three or more touchdowns. McCaffrey, Cordarrelle Patterson, and Alex Mattison are all in the group of four without 3+ TDs, but they also have fewer than 90 carries each.
• Rushers with 100+ carries through W11 see stacked boxes 22.5% of the time while those with <70 carries so far see them 20.1% on average.

• Looking at the metric from a pure FPPG perspective, the top-12 per-game scorers at the position have faced 8+D an average of 23.9% of their attempts. This group includes Elijah Mitchell (31.9%) and David Montgomery (13.5%).
• On the other hand, the bottom-12 FPPG rushers (min. 70 carries) are facing stacked boxes 17.6% of the time on average. This group includes Darrel Williams (9.0%) and Cordarrelle Patterson (31.2%).

 

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 five weeks on the books already, the relation sits at a ridiculous 0.5%. I mean... 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.

• Ronald Jones II is not in the list of qualifed players anymore, and that has put Kenyan Drake atop the TLOS leaderboard as the lone rusher spending less than 2.5 seconds to cross the line of scrimmage. Only four other players are below 2.6, including RJ2's teammate Leonard Fournette.
• The truth is that while Drake leads the pack, he's doing so after only 55 carries (which is this week's minimum to qualify). Among bulky rushers, it'd be AJ Dillon leading the way with a 2.55 TLOS in 108 rushing attempts.

• Hyper-quick rushers tend to get lower Y/A than those that take it a little more patiently. Those putting up the 12th-lowest TLOS marks are averaging 4.1 Y/A. Those putting up the 12th-highest TLOS are averaging 4.7 Y/A.
• The 12 "fastest" rushers to cross the TLOS (all below 2.68 seconds) are averaging 6.3 FPPG with none of them into double-digit fantasy production on the ground.
• The 12 "slowest" (all above 2.87 seconds) are averaging 8.0 FPPG through W11 with three players below 5.0 FPPG (Alexander Matison, Khalil Herbert, and Mike Davis).

• The top-12 running backs in FPPG (10.0+) are averaging a 2.85 TLOS
• The bottom-12 (<5.0 FPPG) players are averaging 2.76 seconds behind the LOS.
• There is something to this, but it's ridiculously insignificant to give it any importance at all for fantasy purposes.

 

ATT & YDS & Y/A & TD

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

Leaders and Trailers:

Leaderboard Notes:

• Absolutely fantastic to find the top-2 rushers in terms of Y/A having at least 142 carries each. This is a metric that always favor low-volume outliers, but not through the 11th week of the year by the look of things. Chase Edmons' third-highest YPC has come on just 76 carries, but it's amazing to find Chubb and Taylor above that mark with such bulky loads of rushing attempts.
• Edmonds, though, is way below the production levels of the other two players as he's at a paltry 5.4 FPPG compared to Chubb's 15.1 and Tyalor's 17.3. Not even on a per-15Att basis would he catch up, with a 9.7 mark to Chubb's 12.8 and Taylor's 14.8.

• With Phillip Lindsay off the leaderboard as he has not reached 55 carries yet, it's now Mike Davis (91 rushing attempts) who trails everybody in YPC at a putrid 3.2 mark. No other player is below 3.5 yards per carry through 11 games of play. Ugh.
• Even while ranking last, Davis can still be proud of putting up 0.6 more yards per carry than Lindsay was doing three weeks ago, I guess...
• James Conner (3.8) has the lowest YPC among players with at least 6 rushing TDs through W11. In fact, only Jonathan Taylor (13 TD) has more touchdowns than Conner's 12 to date.

• On a 15-carry basis only Taylor, Hunt, James Robinson, and Conner are averaging more than 13 rushing FP/15Att on the season. The problem, of course, is that all of them have scored 5+ TDs on the season and that's truly helping those averages. Only Hunt has fewer than 7 TDs and 112 carries among those four.
• Removing touchdowns from the rushing FP calculations, Edmonds and Pollard would jump up the leaderboard and trail only Chubb and Taylor. Myles Gaskin would be the player losing the fewer production taking his TDs away, going from an overall 8.4 FP/15Att to a kinda similar 7.5 wihtout touchdowns baked into the equation.

 

RYOE & RYOE/A & ROE%

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

• Lord have mercy for those facing the Browns rushing game as Cleveland seems to have found the cheat code to make their RBs incredibly overproducting. All three of Johnson, Chub, and Hunt have rushed the ball 61+ times in order to qualify for this week's leaderboards and are racking up at least 1.1 yards above expectation on their carries. Jesus.
• Denver and New England are the only two other franchises with two players getting 0.4+ RYOE/A each.
• While D'Ernest Johnson's 1.9 RYOE per carry leads the pack, the truth is that he will probably regress a bit on that department if only because of his still-low volume of 61 rushing attempts through W11. Much more impressive is Jonathan Taylor's 1.7 mark in a freakish 193 carries.
• No wonder who leads the league in total RYOE: Taylor's 322 are doing so, with Chubb's 204 clocking in second. That's a 118-yard difference, which is the same as the distance between Chubb and no. 5 Chase Edmonds (84). Also, only Taylor and Chubb have topped 118 RYOE through Week 11.

• Only six players have qualified while putting up 1.0+ RYOE/Att so far this season. Only three of those have rushed the rock 100+ times.
• On the other hand, Mike Davis is the only qualifier at -1.0 RYOE/Att while only two other men (Darrel Williams and Chuba Hubbard) are at a negative-0.9 RYOE/Att.
• All qualifiers considered, 23 are underperforming the expections (<0 RYOE/Att), 23 are overperforming them (>0), and five are doing exactly what the model expected (=0).

• Getting back to D'Ernest Johnson and his upcoming regression: Johnson is the only player other than AJ Dillon (50.5%) getting more yards than expected in more than half of his rushing attempts. He's overachieved in 62.7% (!!!) of his carries; in other words, he's rushed above expectations in 38 of his total 61 rushing attempts.
• Something similar is going on with teammate Kareem Hunt, whose 45.5 ROE% is the fifth highest league-wide.
• Of course, Mike Davis trails the whole bunch of qualifiers with a silly 22.2 ROE% that is almost three percentage points below second-worst ranked Mattison's 25%. Myles Gaskin and D'Andre Swift are the only other players with a ROE% below 30% through W11.

• There are 18 qualifiers averaging double-digit FPPG to date, and only four (Conner, Jacobs, Latavius Murray, and Melvin Gordon) of them are underperforming the expectations, from Conner's -0.2 to Gordon's -0.8. On average, that group of 18 players is rushing for 0.4 RYOE on the season.
• There are 22 qualifers averaging fewer than 6 FPPG, and only eight of them have positive RYOE/A numbers led by D'Ernest Johnson, Chase Edmonds, and Javonte Williams as the only three players with 1.0+ marks. On average, that group of 22 players is rushing for exactly 0.0 RYOE/A, thus doing it to the model expectations. Removing outlier D'Ernest Johnson, though, the average falls below zero and goes down to -0.1.

• The correlation between ROE% and FPPG has gone down a bit from the last time we checked, but it's still a high one (positive-43% r-squared value) and the most consistent overperformers are those averaging the most fantasy points per game so far, which makes all of the sense in the world.

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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