The Running Game Is Alive - NextGen Stats Analysis

Most fantasy GMs are already celebrating or lamenting their success or failure at fantasy football for the 2021 season. With the average, now-usual 17-week leagues already over, there are folks out there (most probably you're one if you're reading this) still fighting for the chip in the mighty, unpredictable, crazy Week 18 slate of games that will wrap up the season next weekend. That's why we're here today looking at the RB position for the last time in-season before we move one to review what the 2021 year left in the stat sheets starting next week.

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 17 - 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 overperforming or underperforming 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 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 85 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.
• There has not been a below-3.0 EFF rusher since all the way back from Week 2 (!), but Rashaad Penny finally made the minimum attempt cut and is now leading all rushers with a 3.03 EFF on 96 carries.
• Jonathan Taylor led the pack in the prior two columns (with that 3.03 mark back on W11) but is now second with a 3.14 EFF. Jordan Howard closes the top-three as the only other ballcarrier with a mark below 3.30.

• 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 at any point throughout the season. That's why we can rest easy comparing the likes of Taylor (317 carries) and Penny (96).
• The range of outcomes among top-EFF rushers when it comes to fantasy points is quite wide. Just at the very top, we have everything from Taylor's 17.6 FPPG to Penny's 9.5 mark, almost half of the former's... BUT. On a per-carry basis (per 15 attempts), both are posting eerily similar outcomes with Penny edging Taylor 13.4 to 13.3 FP/15Att!

• It surely felt like an impossible thing to happen, but Mike Davis escaped the bottom of the leaderboard being surpassed by Alvin Kamara. Kamara's 4.68 is the lowest EFF mark of the year through W17 compared to Davis' 4.58 one.
• The styles of play employed by both Atlanta and New Orleans surely feel similar and predicated on patience/finding the better path forward instead of bulldozing one. That's why four of the bottom six players have EFF marks of 4.35 or higher while belonging to the Falcons/Saints rosters.
• Don't get EFF wrong, though. There are very legit studs at the bottom of that leaderboard, including Joe Mixon, James Conner, and Dalvin Cook. All of them have posted 11+ ruFP/G, and that's no joke at all.

• Slight league-wide bump down in the efficiency this week, as it's gone from 3.88 to 3.84.

• Players with the top-15 EFF marks have averaged six TDs over the 17 weeks played (removing Taylor's outlier 18 TDs the average would sit at five), while those with the bottom-15 marks have scored an average of six TDs.
• Only one qualifier (Miles Sanders) has yet to score a touchdown and he's currently boasting a 3.35 EFF mark, one sitting in the top-five. The eight players with two or fewer TDs on the year have marks ranging from 4.41 to 3.31, though... In other words, they are spread up and down the leaderboard without much significance to it.

• The group of 11 RBs averaging 10+ ruFP per game is posting an average EFF of 3.78.
• The group of 16 RBs averaging <6 FPPG is at a 3.93 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 nonexistent 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 10+ stacked boxes on them throughout the season. Clyde Edwards-Helaire sits at the bottom with just 10 such defenses faced. He's closely followed by Alex Collins' 11 while Miles Sanders (14) and Chase Edmonds (15) are the only other players below 18.
• As it was the case with Atlanta/New Orleans and low-efficiency rushers, it is the same with Kansas City/Seattle and low-stacked-boxes rushers: both teams have two players (CEH and Darrell Williams; Alex Collins and Rashaad Penny) inside the bottom-six players with the fewest amount of such defenses faced.

• Najee Harris is the only rusher putting up 10+ ruFP/G while facing a stacked box on fewer than 15% of his rushing attempts.
• At the other end, Cordarrelle Patterson is the lone RB putting up fewer than seven ruFP/G while facing stacked boxes at a 30%+ clip.

• Although D'Onta Foreman only has 112 carries over the year, he boasts the higher (by a mile) percentage of stacked boxes faced with a rate of 49.1%. That has translated on 55 plays in which he's carried the ball against such defenses.
• Rhamondre Stevenson and Elijah Mitchell are the only other two players above 39%, with 41.9 and 41.4 percent marks on 129 and 186 attempts, respectively.

• Of the 22 rushers who have faced stacked boxes in 25% of their carries or more, the Y/A sits at 4.2. That compares to an average of 4.4 Y/A for those (21 of them) that have faced them <20% of the time.

• 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 26.7% of their attempts.
• On the other hand, the bottom-12 FPPG rushers (min. 70 carries) are facing stacked boxes 20.7% of the time on average.

 

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.

• AJ Dillon can't seemingly tame his ways and that's why he's still leading the league (tied with Ronald Jones II) with a TLOS of just 2.53 seconds. That is lower than his prior lowest of 2.56 the last time we checked it out on W14.
• In this case, it's Tampa Bay and Philly putting two of their players each in the top-six quickest rushers to cross the LOS, all of them with marks of 2.65 seconds or quicker.

• Kenyan Drake broke the 2.5-second barrier back in Week 11, but since then, no rusher has been able to go below that figure. In fact, only four players are keeping up marks in the 2.50s with just one game to go.
• That said, it's also true that Dillos is somehow staying on a super-quick 2.53 TLOS while having 173 carries to date. Of the other three below-2.6 players, none is past 101 rushing attempts this season.

• The 12 "quickest" rushers to cross the TLOS are averaging 7.9 FPPG through Week 17 with two players below 5.0 FPPG.
• The 12 "slowest" are averaging 7.3 FPPG through Week 17 with three players below 5.0 FPPG, though.

• The top-12 running backs in FPPG are averaging a 2.80 TLOS.
• The bottom-12 players are averaging 2.75 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:

• Chase Edmonds barely qualified in W14, meeting the 70-carry threshold by just six rushing attempts, thus staying on top of the Y/A leaderboard. He's still in the table, but way down with only the sixth-best mark as he's been surpassed by a four-man group at 5.5 Y/A and a clear leader in Rashaad Penny (5.8 Y/A).
• While Penny is not that close to the threshold (16 carries above the minimum), it is also true that he's the only player above 5.0 Y/A with fewer than 116 carries on the season. In the four-man group of 5.5-yard averages, we have to hand the title to Jonathan Taylor because somehow, someway, he's been able to stay on top of everyone even though he's rushed the ball a ridiculous 317 (!) times so far.

• Only three players boasting a 3.5-or-worse Y/A mark through W17, including veterans Latavius Murray and Mark Ingram II, and backup Chuba Hubbard.
• Mike Davis escaped the bottom a while ago but his 3.6 Y/A are still tied for the fourth-worst mark among qualified rushers, just in case.

• Only James Conner and David Montgomery are part of the group of players averaging fewer than 4.0 Y/A while posting ruFP/G of 10+ fantasy points on the year.
• On the other hand, Chase Edmonds and Tony Pollard are the only players with fewer than 6.0 ruFP/G while racking up more than 4.3 Y/A on their 2021 campaigns.

• Jonathan Taylor has a huge chance of getting to 20 rushing TDs on the regular season (yes, through 17 games played, but still...) as the Colts are still fighting for a postseason berth and face the lowly Jags this weekend. In other words: bring the rushing game to run out the clock, which probably means plenty of Taylor's touches. Taylor would become just the sixth player since 2000 with 20+ rushing TDs, and the first putting up that many since 2006.

 

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 five of 10 (50.0%) of his carries.

• Taylor's numbers don't make much sense, and that is if they make any sense at all. Taylor has rushed the rock for 455 yards above expectation, which is 91% more than Chubb's mark. No need to mention that the distance between those two (217 RYOE edge for Taylor) is almost the same as the distance between Chubb's and 21st-best James Robinson (22 RYOE).
• The massive lead in total carries is surely helping Taylor, of course, but even accounting for that on a per-carry basis Taylor would still rank second league-wide as his stupid 1.5 RYOE/A shows. Only Rashaad Penny is above him while qualifying (1.8 RYOE/A) though Penny has rushed the rock almost four fewer times than Taylor overall.

• The Pats have been able to feed Damien Harris and Rhamondre Stevenson 129+ carries each, and they are both top-10 in the RYOE/A with marks of 0.8 and 0.4, respectively.
• AJ Dillon and Aaron Jones are the only other pair of rushers to make the top-15 while being part of the same squad. Even then, though, their RYOE/A marks are a low 0.3 extra yards for each, so it's not that they have done anything super remarkable.

• Only three players have qualified while putting up 1.0+ RYOE/Att so far this season. Each of them has featured in a widely different amount of carries (from 96 to 219 to 317).
• Not a single qualifier is at minus-1.0 ROYE/A through Week 17, which was already the case the last time we checked (W14). That said, as many as three are at-or-below a minus-0.8. Shout out Chuba Hubbard for the league-trailing minus-0.9 figure. Yikes.
• All qualifiers considered, 26 are underperforming the expectations (<0 RYOE/Att), 23 are overperforming them (>0), and four are doing exactly what the model expected (=0).

• Although the last time we checked a few rushers were above 50% in terms of ROE, no qualified rusher is doing so through Week 17. One more rush attempt/overperforming-carry by Jordan Howard would have put him in that realm, as he closed last weekend sitting at an exact 50-ROE% (on a very low 86 rushing attempts, though).
• Three players (including Jordan Howard) above a 45 ROE% so far, with Damien Harris (45.7%) and AJ Dillon (48.3%) joining Howard on rather bulkier amounts of rushing attempts (min. 173).
• Mike Davis trails the league in ROE% and is the lone player with a mark below 29% for the second column in a row after doing so back on W14. His 26% is putrid even compared to the second-lowest figure belonging to Alex Mattison (29.7%).

• There are 11 qualifiers averaging double-digit FPPG to date, and three of them (James Conner, David Montgomery, and Najee Harris) are underperforming the expectations. On average, that group of 11 players is rushing for 0.4 RYOE/Att on the season.
• There are 10 qualifiers averaging five-or-fewer FPPG, and none of them have positive RYOE/A numbers (three of them are at a neutral 0.0). On average, that group of 10 players is rushing for -0.4 RYOE/A.

That's it for today... and the year! Starting next week, we'll break down the final leaderboards for all three passing/rushing/receiving categories highlighting the best and worst producers of the 2021 NFL season from the NGS point of view. Until then, good luck if you're still doing it out there in a full-schedule fantasy league or trying to break the DFS slate!

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