NextGen Stats - Week 17: RB Breakdowns and Takeaways

January 4, 2023

Antonio Losada provides key fantasy football updates for running backs after Week 17, using Next Gen data to help fantasy owners make the best lineup and waiver wire decisions.

Most fantasy GMs are already celebrating or lamenting their success or failure at fantasy football for the 2022 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 2022 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!

Week 17 - The Running Game Is Alive!

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 knowing 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 (RYO); 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 2021 season): negative-22%

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. Second check in a row in which no rusher is below a 3.00 EFF in the leaderboard. It's now been six weeks with that being the case.

Khalil Herbert lost the lead in the EFF leaderboard to a barely-qualified J.K. Dobbins who made the cut by a tiny two rushing attempts with 92 carries through Week 17. Herbert, though, is still in possession of the lowest EFF figure among players with 100+ carries and would make the final leaderboard no matter what happens in W18 (Dobbins needs at least three more carries).

At the other end of the leaderboard, though, Cam Akers is no longer the least-efficient rusher having moved up a lot. He's gone from last to a respectable tenth-worst while posting a mark 0.58 yards separated from Michael Carter's trailing figure.

While there were three players with figures above 4.00 yards at the bottom of the EFF leaderboard the last time we checked (wasting more than 4.00 yards per carry) there are now 10. Only one (Kenneth Walker III) is averaging more than 10+ FP/15Att, and just three (KW3, Brian Robinson, and Cordarrelle Patterson) have FPPG averages of at least 10+ fantasy points.

The seven most-efficient rushers are all "wasting" fewer than 3.40 yards per carry and all of them aver averaging at least 8.6 FP/15Att. The three most efficient of them are all posting averages of 10.4+ FP/15Att. On a per-game basis, though, only two (Jonathan Taylor and Josh Jacobs) will finish the season above an average of 10+ FPPG.

Among all 46 qualified RBs for Week 17, the average EFF is at 3.77 yards, a neglectable 0.02 yards better than it was three weeks ago when we checked for the last time.

• Rushers with EFF marks below 3.60 are averaging 9.1 ruFPPG and 10.1 ruFP/15Att
• Rushers with EFF marks above 4.00 are averaging 6.8 ruFPPG and 8.1 ruFP/15Att

Percentage of Stacked Boxes Faced

Correlation with Rushing Fantasy Points (based on the 2021 season): 20%

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.

King Derrick Henry might "only" rank second in the stacked-boxes rate leaderboard, but the truth is that absolutely no one is even remotely close to his counting tally of 115 such schemes faced over the season. Nick Chubb (84) and Christian McCaffrey (81) are the only other rushers with more than 74 stacked boxes faced this season.

That said, kudos to Tyler Allgeier for facing the most stacked boxes on a per-carry basis while still being able to average 8.7 FP/15Att. Players with such a fantasy-point average have faced stacked boxes on just 22.4% of their carries.

Among the eight rushers with 8+D% above 30 percent, Allgeier has the third-highest Y/A average at 4.8 yards per carry, only behind Dobbins (5.7) and Falcons teammate Patterson (4.9).

Speaking of the Falcons, they have two of the top-four RBs in terms of stacked boxes faced this season. The next team with two players ranked in the leaderboard is Chicago, having both Khalil Herbert and David Montgomery next to each other with rates of 25.2% and 24.2% respectively in the 13th and 14th positions.

Even though he qualified by only a seven-carry margin, D'Andre Swift's 93 totes this season will be enough for him to make the final leaderboard a week from now. He's the only player in the league with fewer than 10 total stacked boxes faced, and he will also most probably end the season in possession of the only stacked-box rate under 10%.

Two players from the New York Jets (James Robinson and Michael Carter) have rates in the bottom 7 of the leaderboard, while Green Bay is the only other team with two of its players (Aaron Jones and AJ Dillon) inside the bottom 10.

Rushers averaging 10+ ruFP/15Att have a combined average of 25.3% stacked boxes faced. Those averaging fewer than 9.0 ruFP/15Att have faced such defenses 20.8% of the time they've rushed the rock.

Henry (13) is the only player facing stacked boxes more than 30% of the time while having double-digit touchdowns to date. No other player at such a rate has more than 8, and only two (Patterson and CMC) have reached 7+.

Cam Akers (10.2%) is the only rusher with 7+ touchdowns this year and a stacked-box rate below 17.1%.

There are nine players averaging 5+ YPC and they have faced stacked boxes at a 21.5% clip. That compares to a rate of 20.1% for the 10 players averaging fewer than 4 YPC this season, not a quite substantial difference.

Average Time Behind The Line Of Scrimmage

Correlation with Rushing Fantasy Points (based on the 2020 season): negative-1%

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 17 weeks on the books already, the relation sits at a low negative 21%. Not a strong-enough relationship between these two things.

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.

Samaje Perine, although on a smaller sample than those following him, still leads the league as the quickest rusher to cross the LOS at just 2.59 seconds. As things stand (89 carries) he would miss the final cut needing one more rushing attempt to qualify when Week 18 is over.

No other player is below 2.60, though AJ Dillon sits right at that figure while having carried the rock virtually twice the times Perine has done it (177 to 89). D'Onta Foreman and Jamaal Williams also have TLOS averages below 2.65 while having carried the ball 191 and 246 times respectively.

Nick Chubb is just ridiculously slow or patient, whatever you prefer to call it. He's one of only two players with an average TLOS above 3.00 seconds (the other one is Kenneth Walker III) and the difference between his 3.10 seconds and third-slowest 2.99 (Kenyan Drake) is the same between Drake and eighth-slowest Allgeier.

Chubb might be more into the patient than the slow side of things, though. That's because teammate Kareem Hunt also boasts a bottom-4 TLOS while the Ravens' pairing of Drake/Dobbins ranks third and fifth in the leaderboard of the "slowest" rushers.

• Rushers with 10+ FPPG through Week 17 are averaging 2.81 TLOS.
• Rushers with <7 FPPG are averaging 2.79 seconds behind the LOS.

As stated earlier, there might be a little 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 2021 season): 70% / 78% / 33% / 74%

Leaders and Trailers:

Leaderboard Notes:

It's been three steady checks including this one (that is, nine weeks) with falling YPC averages going from 6.2 to 6.0 and now 5.7 at the top of the leaderboard. Dobbins and Herbert lead the way tied at that figure with D'Andre Swift's 5.6 average the only other one above 5.3 yards per carry.

That said, only Herbert has reached 100+ carries through the season, although the final cut will be made at just 90 carries so both Dobbins and Swift will stay above water no matter how many snaps they play and carries they get in Week 18.

Among players with 170+ carries through Week 17 only three are past 5.0 YPC: Tony Pollard, Aaron Jones, and Travis Etienne Jr. That contrasts mostly with Ezekiel Elliott (in that teammate Pollard sits right at the opposite end) and his paltry 3.9 YPC on the season.

The nine players currently averaging 5.0+ YPC have scored a total of 62 touchdowns with an average of 7 TD each. The 10 players averaging <4.0 YPC have 38 total TD between them for an average of less than 4 TD each.

Is safe to assume Josh Jacobs will get the rushing yardage crown after next weekend's games. He leads the NFL by 160 yards over second-place Nick Chubb so it would take a massive game by the Browns' rusher to edge Jacobs, assuming Jacobs does nothing himself.

Both Jacobs and Chubb have the exact same YPC at 5.0 on 323 and 290 carries respectively. They also have the same number of touchdowns scored this season with 12 each. That latter tie is the only one that Chubb can hurt Jacobs with, eliminating the chance of Jacobs winning the Rushing Triple Crown...

...unless Derrick Henry plays and tops Jacobs' total number of rushing attempts. Henry has 319 on the year to Jacobs' 323 while they have averaged 21 and 20 carries per game respectively...

...and again, assuming Jacobs can lock into Uber-Rushing mode and score three more touchdowns. Yeah, looks like Jacobs will miss this Triple Crown. Jamaal Williams has 15 touchdowns and even Derrick Henry and Austin Ekeler (both at 13) will have a hard time matching--let alone topping--Williams' tally this season.

Rachaad White is the only NFL rusher with 85+ rushing attempts and only one single touchdown through the season. He's appeared in 15 games and rushed the rock for 466 total yards to no more than one-TD avail.

Austin Ekeler, on the other hand, has been the most efficient touchdown scorer in 2022 hitting paydirt every 15 rushing attempts. His 13 TD have come in fewer than 200 rushing attempts with Ekeler rushing the rock only 193 times to date.

As things stand, nine players have already broken the 1,000-yard barrier. If everybody is able to keep up with their pace, doesn't suffer an injury next week, and does what he's expected to do, there might be as many as 15 rushers hitting 1,000 yards this year in the NFL. Here's hoping.

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

Correlation with Rushing Fantasy Points (based on the 2020 season): 78% / 51% / 33% / 40% / 22%

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.

Travis Etienne has gone from outperforming the expectations by 2.4 RYOE/A nine weeks ago to doing so by 1.5, then 1.0, and now 1.3 yards per attempt. He rebounded a bit this week after nearly falling from the top 10 the last time we checked, and he's in a very good position to finish as a top-5 overperformer by this time next week.

Herbert and Pollard, who led at some points in prior weeks when it comes to the RYOE/A leaderboard, are back at the top of the chart albeit having many fewer carries than Etienne and Chubb, who rank immediately behind them.

The distance between Herbert's 1.6-yard RYOE/A and top-6 Foreman/Drake/Jones is the same as the one between those three and four other rushers ranked joint-31st with an exact 0.0 ROYE/A (that means, doing exactly what the model expected them to do on their carries).

There were two players sharing the worst RYOE/A figure three weeks ago: Kansas City Chiefs' Melvin Gordon III and Clyde Edwards-Helaire, both at minus-0.7. The former will qualify for the final leaderboard (90 carries) while the latter already missed this last update.

Among players with 100+ carries, Michael Carter, James Robinson (both Jets), and Leonard Fournette trail everybody with figures below minus-0.3 RYOE/A. There must be something in the Tampa/NYC/Kansas water, though, as five of the bottom-6 rushers rank in that clip.

On a per-15-attempt basis, only three RBs are averaging 10+ ruFP while underperforming the expectations: Ezekiel Elliott (minus-0.2).

On the other hand, Travis Etienne Jr. is the only two rusher putting up fewer than 10 ruFP/15Att while outperforming the expectations by 1.0+ RYOE/A.

Aaron Jones is the only player outperforming the expectations on 50%+ of his carries with only one game to go. Just four players have outperformed the expectations on fewer than 35% of their total carries, including (how not?) both of the aforementioned Jets RBs.

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 2022 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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