Where Have All the Bell-Cow RBs Gone?

November 6, 2020

Chris O'Reilly looks as the value of "bell cow" running backs in 2020 fantasy football to assess whether having a solid RB1 is as important to winning as it seems.

Picture this: It's not 2020 and you're not as old as you actually are. Instead, you're back in middle school, let's say seventh grade. Last night, you forgot (or intentionally neglected) to do your science homework because it was too nice out to be bothered with academics and you spent the evening riding your bike or playing two-hand tag football with your friends instead. But now it's the next day, and you find time has dragged you away from the carefree after-school existence and back to the inescapable snare of science class.

The teacher is taking attendance and you know he or she is mere moments away from asking for a show of hands to see who completed yesterday's assignment. You're dreading it. The fear of being ostracized, isolated in a classroom full of other kids who are going to give you weird looks when the teacher singles you out for not doing what you were supposed to.

And then the moment of truth comes, but to your surprise, you are not, in fact, alone. Of the 25 students in the classroom, only 17 of them raise their hands. Instead of ridiculing you exclusively, the teacher scolds all the students who did not finish their homework. You and seven courageous comrades are now bound together forever (or, probably, just for the rest of that school day) in an alliance that can only be shared by young kids willing to risk the consequences of ignoring simple instructions in school. You have been saved. This is, of course, a metaphor for the current state of the running back position in fantasy football (...wait, what?).

Do You Need a Bell Cow?

There was a time when the "Bell-Cow" running back was just prevalent enough in the first round of fantasy drafts that if you didn't get one, you were in the minority among your league mates. There is an isolation in that--going into the season feeling like you're already behind the 8-ball. Being the only kid in your league who didn't complete his homework assignment.

The NFL game is evolving, however, and the Bell-Cow RB population is dwindling alongside that timeline. The 2020 season has very much continued in this direction; very few NFL teams rely solely on one RB under ideal circumstances, and even fewer RBs in the league are dominant enough to command such a role anyway.

It could be argued that from a simple availability standpoint, the Bell-Cow RB has begun to mirror the top-tier TE in fantasy: you're actually in the minority if you do have one, and you don't feel like you're on some kind of island if you don't. Plenty of your league mates "forgot to do their homework" right there with you.

Those of us who are obsessively invested in all facets of fantasy football have already begun to turn our attention toward how this phenomenon is going to impact future drafts and seasons. Up ahead, we'll discuss some of the reasons behind the endangerment of the Bell-Cow RB with deep dives into years past, changes in coaching philosophies and the way offenses are run nowadays, and how front offices have begun to value (or devalue) the running back position at large.

Measuring Touch Counts vs. Production

The simplest path to Bell-Cow status is a high touch count, but that's only half the battle. Your offensive coordinator can lean on you as much as he wants, but it isn't making much of a difference in fantasy lineups if you're not doing something with the opportunity. That said, we do have to factor volume into the Bell-Cow equation, so let's highlight the players who are seeing a healthy portion of it in 2020.

The true-blue workhorses of the league can be counted on to average in the neighborhood of 20 touches (rushing attempts and pass receptions) per game. That's not the most reasonable threshold to hold the rest of the position to, though, as not every running back plays in a situation in which it's realistic to give him that much volume (guys on teams who are always playing from behind, players in pass-heavy offenses, etc.). So for the sake of simplifying this segment, let's set the baseline at 240 touches in a season, which would average out to 15 per game over 16 games.

As of this writing, there are 20 running backs on a mathematical pace to reach the 240-touch plateau based on average touches per game and the number of games they've actually played or have left to play. That may seem like a high number, so let's narrow the focus to players who are converting their touches into consistent, solid fantasy production.

Of the 20 RBs on pace to see 240 touches:

• Four (20%) are averaging 4.0 receptions or more per game, giving them decent weekly PPR value.
• Six (30%) are averaging 5.0 yards per touch or higher, which would give them at least 1,200 scrimmage yards on exactly 240 touches--hardly an unreasonable ask of a star fantasy running back.
• Seven (35%) have scored on at least 4.5% of their touches, meaning they could reasonably be expected to score 10 or more touchdowns on 240 touches. Again, we're not asking for average production here, so expecting a Bell-Cow to rack up a double-digit touchdown total in a full season is not out of line.

As was mentioned above, touch count is only half the battle. Even though there are 20 players seeing workhorse-level volume, a large majority of them have left something to be desired in at least one area of production. Alvin Kamara, Aaron Jones, Derrick Henry, and Dalvin Cook are the only players among these 20 running backs who appear in at least two of the above categories. Kamara is the only one to appear in all three, and to be fair his pass-catching prowess truly puts him alone above anyone else on the list.

Now it's time for some visual references. Below you'll see charts pertaining to 240-touch running backs from the 2015-19 seasons, with an emphasis on how many of these running backs produced like true Bell-Cows in scrimmage yards and scoring.

The first takeaway here is that including 2019 and half of 2020, the last 25 weeks of regular-season football have featured significantly more 240-touch RBs (or RBs on pace to hit 240 touches) than the previous four years. The second is that the uptick has not correlated to more players hitting double-digit touchdowns.

This chart is a little more revealing. From 2015-18, a running back was very likely to hit the 1,200-yard threshold if he saw 240 touches. That number dropped far enough to raise an eyebrow or two in 2019. And as I mentioned above, only 30% of 240-touch-pace RBs in 2020 would get to 1,200 yards on exactly 240 touches. The rest would all need considerably more opportunities to reach the 1,200-yard plateau at their current paces.

Data like this is open to be interpreted from multiple angles, especially since my 240-touch baseline isn't some hard-and-fast number and is simply what I personally consider to be a fair benchmark by which to evaluate Bell-Cow running backs. On one hand, you could look at this information with a baseball mindset: If a batter gets seven hits in 10 at-bats, his batting average for that sample is .700. It would literally be unheard of for any batter to maintain that pace over the course of a full season, so the percentage of at-bats in which he gets a hit will plummet drastically the more times he goes to the plate. The increase in RBs with 240 touches in 2019-20 could reflect those "extra at-bats" for a baseball player, if you will. The simple fact that more running backs are seeing high touch counts does not, by itself, mean that more of them should produce like Bell-Cows.

In a different light, these numbers could also indicate that there are more average or below-average running backs seeing high levels of volume over the last season and a half. And if that's the case, the question becomes: Why are coaching staffs giving relatively ineffective players so many chances to touch the football?

The Changing Landscape of NFL Offenses

It's easy to look at the NFL right now and shout, "It's a pass-happy league!" This also isn't entirely correct. The average number of passes attempted by an NFL team in 2015 was 571.8, which is the highest that number has been from 2015-19. What is markedly different about the current iteration of the league from past versions, though, is the number of quarterbacks who can run.

Per Pro Football Reference, 37 quarterbacks attempted 60 or more rushes in a single season between 2000-09. That isn't many to begin with, and then you take into account a lot of "QB runs" during that span were borne out of necessity. Plays broke down and the better athletes at QB could extend them by scrambling. There weren't a ton of designed runs being drawn up for QBs back then.

Once again courtesy of Pro Football Reference, that number then nearly doubled to 66 from 2010-19, and this is obviously no accident. The influx of mobile quarterbacks into the league over the last decade has been accompanied by an increased willingness among coaching staffs to embrace such a skill set (I've always said Michael Vick got here a decade too early, because he'd have been perfect for the modern NFL). Halfway through 2020, there are already two quarterbacks with at least 60 rush attempts, one with 59, and one with 58. The NFL is not a pass-happy league. It's a quarterback-who-can-pass-and-blow-your-doors-off-with-his-speed league.

How does this affect the running back position? Well, if you grew up in the '90s like I did, you know running plays used to be pretty vanilla back in the day. You'd line up in a formation that shouted, "We're running the ball," you'd hand it off to your guy two yards behind the line of scrimmage, and you'd be happy if he could buck and truck his way between the tackles for a four-yard gain. Running backs were once asked and expected to be largely responsible for the offensive success of the team.

Nowadays with the emergence of fast QBs, read-options, run-pass-options, and so on, running plays are a lot more about deception and misdirection. Kyler Murray isn't handing the ball off to a running back 30 times a game; it'd be a complete waste of his abilities. So now, many running backs' value to their respective teams is less about how well they could individually carry a load if they were asked to, and more about how well they complement their QB. Can they run routes? Catch passes? Be counted on as a check-down option? Are they enough of a threat with the ball in their hands that defenses can't just sit on the QB on option plays?

RBs who are reliable in one aspect aren't always reliable in the others. Hence, it's no wonder many NFL teams deploy two or three of them regularly based on different situations within a game. And when you have a committee of RBs, it's very unlikely any of them are outstanding from a production perspective. They simply serve their roles, play their snaps, get their touches, and ultimately prevent each other from achieving Bell-Cow status.

Dollar Signs and Roster Construction: Phasing Out the High-Priced RB

According to Spotrac, the franchise-tag value for running backs coming into 2020 was $10.278 million--the lowest of any position on offense or defense. Tight end was valued slightly higher at $10.607 million, with safety (lowest defensive position value) coming in at $11.441 million. Considering the impact some of the league's top RBs can have, it might seem a little ridiculous for the position to be valued higher only than kickers and punters for franchise-tag purposes. On that note, let me throw out some examples of why the economics of the RB position have gotten here.

Of the 10 highest-paid running backs in the league in terms of total contract value, only two of them play for teams that appear playoff-bound in 2020: Alvin Kamara and Derrick Henry. Four of them are on injured reserve, with only Christian McCaffrey poised to return anytime soon. Right off the bat we've established that paying a running back does not directly correlate to winning, which means you're essentially throwing away money if he gets injured.

Do you remember when Le'Veon Bell sat out the entire 2018 season, opening the door for James Conner to rack up 1,470 scrimmage yards and 13 total touchdowns? How about when McCaffrey went down with an injury in Week 2 of this year, dooming the Panthers and fantasy teams alike? Mike Davis, who is on his fourth team in six years, has filled in pretty admirably: 519 total yards, four total touchdowns, 30 receptions in six games without McCaffrey. I'm not of the mind that "running backs don't matter," but it's also clear that replacement-level players can fill in admirably at the position with the right surroundings and offensive scheme.

A healthy Saquon Barkley is arguably the best running back in the NFL. The Giants are often criticized for drafting him second overall in 2018. Why? Because they had so many other needs that a running back wasn't going to make them a competitive team. Their combined record in the two seasons Barkley has played is 9-23. Barkley is a game-changing talent and his team finished 14 games under .500 in the two years immediately after drafting him.

The Jaguars gave Leonard Fournette 341 touches in 2019, then cut him just days before the 2020 season. He didn't have many suitors once he became a free agent despite plenty of teams around the league who could've used a running back. The Jets signed Le'Veon Bell to a four-year, $52.5-million deal before 2019, then released him in 2020 after getting virtually no return on their investment. Like Fournette, Bell had only a handful of teams lining up to acquire him upon his release. Both were free agents who could be had on the cheap and possessed track records of being able to handle Bell-Cow workloads. And barely anyone in the league even batted an eyelash when they became available.

Some of the larger RB contracts notwithstanding, what this all adds up to is that front offices have begun not to care about having big-name or high-priced running backs--even if they can get them without having to pay much. The Jaguars, who aren't in a position to contend and thus were never going to extend Fournette anyway, turned their backfield over to undrafted rookie James Robinson, and they aren't experiencing any drop-off in production. Even bad teams like Jacksonville are evidently embracing the idea that running back is not a primary concern in building a roster. The Jets... well, let's just call the Bell saga what it was: a totally predictable disaster.

With coaching staffs utilizing multiple running backs in games, the Bell-Cow is fading from the field. With front offices refusing to sign or acquire running backs at anything short of extreme discounts (except former Texans shot-caller Bill O'Brien; he'll gladly give you the best wide receiver in the world for David Johnson), the Bell-Cow is fading from the bigger picture of roster construction. Should these trends continue as they have in recent years, we may have to prepare for the possibility that the Bell-Cow will eventually fade from fantasy football as well. If so, we could find ourselves pivoting to a more WR-heavy approach in the early rounds of future drafts.

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