Birds And The Bees Of Runningbacks

[Jamalisms]

Where do runningbacks come from? A testing of popular Maxims.

 

“Runningbacks can start day one and produce.”
“Don’t pay a runningback. They only last three years on average.”
“You can find one anywhere, even with a mid or late round pick.”
“Guys off the street do well in the NFL all the time.”
“Teams that sign these guys to second or third contracts are idiots.”

 

You’ve heard all of the popular maxims about runningbacks. Chances are you’ve said at least one. Most people believe them to be true. That’s why they’re maxims.

I’ve been thinking about these things as free agency and the draft approach. Plenty of teams are in need of a better tailback. Should they nibble at free agency or look to the draft? Maxims would suggest looking to the draft.

Certainly there is anecdotal evidence to support these maxims. Arian Foster was undrafted and Alfred Morris was a late round pick. Doug Martin and Morris were rookies last year and both cracked the top five rushers.

To go about this logically, I’m going to break the issue into two major sections. Part one will deal with the maxims about older rushers. Part two will look at maxims regarding early-drafted and late-drafted rushers.

Part 1:
How much faith should teams place in rookies / draft picks and how old is too old?

Instant Production
The first part of this is fairly simple. If runningbacks don’t need an acclimation period in the NFL, there should be a decent number of them producing right away. If this holds true, the draft is the one and only place to find a tailback. This is what the maxims argues.

It sounds great in theory but actual production doesn’t support this. Thirteen backs have been drafted in the first round over the past five years. Only two of them, Chris Johnson and Doug Martin, crossed the 1,000 yard mark in their first year. Only Doug Martin was a full-time back.

To come at it from a different angle - of the seventy-nine 1,000 yard seasons during the past five years, only six were done in a player’s rookie year. To put that in perspective, the same number of 1,000 yard seasons came from players in their ninth year or after.

Sustained Production
Tailbacks may not be instantly productive, but maxims state that careers only average three years. If you believe the maxims, the draft is still the place to find a runningback. Second contracts are bad investments because they’ll come after three years. Third contracts are even worse.

Again this is a great theory but actual production says otherwise. Only thirty-two of the seventy-nine 1,000 yard seasons were achieved in a given player’s first three years. The other 59%+ came after the three year bright line suggested by maxims.

In fact, more seasons came in year five or after (thirty-six) than came in year three or earlier (thirty-two). Evidence shows that good players continue to produce. Logic states that bad players never really start producing. The three year average is for all players. It includes all sorts and sundry bad players. It is an irrelevant number.

If you are looking for a better number to use, the one to shoot for is year five. Players don’t tend to produce in year one, but they pick up in year two and continue on through year five. At that point the number of 1,000 yard seasons produced takes a hit and keeps going down. Eleven of seventy-nine seasons came in a player’s second year, fifteen in the third, eleven more in the fourth and thirteen in year five. Year six drop to seven and it goes down from there.

 

Crazy People
Maxims argue that teams signing runningbacks to second deals are crazy. If this is right, free agency is definitely not the right place to find a starting tailback.

To assess the maxims on this front, let’s look at a few lists. The first list is leading rushers from 2012.

 

 

Each of the top ten backs ran for over 1,200 yards in 2012. Three of the top five and five of the top ten rushers in 2012 were on their second contracts. Another was on his third contract. Actual production trends towards second contracts.

The second list is total yards from scrimmage in 2012.
 

 

The second list is pretty similar to the first except that one rookie contract, Stevan Ridley, dropped off and another second contract, Ray Rice, moved into the top ten. Three of the top five and six of the top ten yards from scrimmage leaders (among runningbacks) were on their second contract in 2012. A seventh player in the top ten was on his third contract. Again, actual production in the NFL defied the maxims.

Make a list of the top ten runningbacks in the NFL. If your list doesn’t include a majority of second or third contract players, you’re doing it wrong.

In just the past two years teams have signed Adrian Peterson, Chris Johnson, Marshawn Lynch, Arian Foster, DeAngelo Williams, Matt Forte, Frank Gore, Ray Rice, LeSean McCoy, and Jamaal Charles to second contracts. Maurice Jones-Drew got a second contract in 2009 while Steven Jackson and Michael Turner were signed in 2008. That’s more or less a who’s who list of all top non-rookie performers in the past few years.

Good backs get second deals. Rushers in second deals produce. This makes sense, as most second contracts will have been signed before year five and top backs produce well past year five.

Free Agency
The majority of top tier production at runningback in 2012 came from players in their second contracts. This would seem to indicate that free agency is a viable option for finding a lead back, but is that true?

Not all players hit free agency before they get a second contract. In fact, most good runningbacks will stay with their original team until respective careers are essentially over. If you look at the second list above, note how many of the top backs resigned with the team that drafted them. Adrian Peterson, Jamaal Charles, Arian Foster (undrafted free agent to Houston), Ray Rice, Chris Johnson, and Frank Gore are all playing for the teams who drafted them. Only Marshawn Lynch is with a different team and that came with some extenuating circumstances.

Buffalo likes drafting runningbacks high. Willis McGahee (1^st round pick) was replaced by Marshawn Lynch (1^st round pick) and has continued on to have a viable career since leaving Buffalo. Marshawn Lynch was replaced by CJ Spiller (1^st round pick) and has continued on better than before in Seattle. CJ Spiller was more or less replaced by Fred Jackson (guy off the street) until the latter got injured. The Buffalo shuffle aside, Marshawn Lynch simply had too many run-ins with the law. His exit from Bills-town was reasonable. He is, after all, a founding member of my “don’t draft stupid” club in fantasy football.

Finding a premier runningback via free agency is a rare event. Lynch didn’t even taste the free agency rainbow. He was traded. Going back to 2011, the aforementioned Willis McGahee went to his third team and produced almost 1,200 yards while Michael Turner was a free agency pickup continuing to produce. Only Turner was a FA pickup from the top ten rushers of 2010. Thomas Jones and Cedric Benson each cracked the top ten of 2009 and each was essentially finished as a top ten runningback (Ricky Williams was traded to Miami). In 2008 it was just Michael Turner and Thomas Jones (Clinton Portis was traded to Washington).

The full list for the past five years is Thomas Jones, Michael Turner, Cedric Benson and Willis McGahee. Less than one player per year is not a good rate.

Actual production paints a pretty clear picture. Second contracts are fine but smart teams should distinguish between second contracts and second contracts for free agents from other teams. The real key to finding a top runningback is to draft him and then resign him if he merits it. Don’t resign someone else’s cast-off unless you’re feeling really lucky.

Part 2:

If smart teams initially acquire their tailbacks via the draft, then the draft merits consideration. Maxims suggest plenty about the draft, namely that runningbacks don’t need to be drafted early. Does this prove out or not?

The Baseline – NFL Drafts
Whether you look back five years or a full decade, the average number of runningbacks drafted per round is fairly comparable. As this is the case, we’ll use five years. It’s a cleaner reference point and more closely aligns with the continuing trend towards a passing league.

To dig into this we’ll utilize draft history data from ESPN. After taking out players listed as full-backs, the total number of runningbacks drafted in the past five years is an even one hundred. The breakout by round is as follows:
 

 

What is evident right away is the fairly even distribution by round, which becomes even more evident when looked at as a pie chart.
 

 

Though fairly even by round, when looking the draft in terms of early picks and late picks the pie shows that more RBs are drafted late than are drafted early.
 

 

The draft process is simple. A player is drafted early if he is believed to be superior when compared to his peers. A player who falls to the latter part of the draft does not carry the expectations of an early pick and has more to prove with fewer chances. Early-drafted runningbacks will get chances to start almost right away. Late-drafted runningbacks will have to prove their value.

Popular maxims suggest that early-drafted runningbacks are not far superior to peers and that gems are found late in the draft in fairly ample measure. They suggest that there is an abundance of talent at the runningback position. If this is true, late-drafted rushers should be able to prove themselves with relative frequency. Nobody would expect an exact match. Early picks should outperform late picks, but the margin of difference matters.

There will be no bright line as we try to see if this holds true but the closer that late round rushers are able to match production to their draft percentages, the truer the maxims are.

1,000 Yard Rushers – Early / Late
There have been seventy-nine 1,000 yard rushing campaigns over the past five years, accomplished by forty different rushers. How does the breakout of early and late drafted rushers compare to actual 1,000 yard rushers?

Of the seventy-nine 1,000 yard campaigns, sixty-one were accomplished by early-drafted rushers. Only 18 times has a back drafted in round four or after (including undrafted players) rushed for 1,000 yards. Below you can compare this breakout to the actual draft. Remember - the closer these pie charts match one another, the truer the maxims are.
 

 

The charts are not at all alike. Despite that 62% of rushers were drafted in or after the fourth round, actual 1,000 yard seasons are largely achieved by early-drafted runningbacks (77%).

To look at this another way, recall that there were forty rushers who passed 1,000 yards at least once in the past five years. Of those forty runningbacks, twenty-nine were drafted early. The same principle applies - the closer this matches the actual draft, the truer the maxim is.
 

 

Forty rushers crossed the 1,000 yard mark at least once and 73% of them were drafted in rounds 1 – 3. Again the charts look nothing alike. This suggests that late round rushers (rounds four and after) are finding success hard to come by. In fact, something else is evident in the data. If you scroll back up, note that early picks made up a larger portion of the pie for seasons (77%) than they do for individual players (73%). This suggests that early drafted runningbacks are not only significantly more likely to rush for 1,000 yards but they do it more often as well.

To illustrate the point further, there have been sixty-two rushers drafted in rounds 4 – 7 since 2008. Only two of them, Peyton Hillis and Alfred Morris, have rushed for 1,000 yards. Over the same time period two undrafted players, Arian Foster and Benjarvus Green-Ellis, have rushed for 1,000 yards (and done so with more frequency).

The same ratio holds true when looking at all 1,000 yard seasons in the past five years, regardless of when players were drafted. Recall that there have been eighteen 1,000 yard seasons accomplished by eleven late round picks. The split between undrafted free agents and players taken in rounds 4 – 7 is almost perfectly split. Nine of the seasons were achieved by five undrafted players.

Later round picks, it would seem, are later round picks for a reason. Given the success of undrafted free agents compared to fourth round and after picks, an argument could be made for only ever drafting runningbacks in the first three rounds. After that, teams may be better off spending the picks elsewhere and relying on undrafted players at runningback.

This is pretty much the opposite of the maxim that argues teams need not draft runningbacks high.

1,000 Yard Rushers – Early Only
What we’ve figured out so far is that late round picks are not accounting for very many 1,000 yard seasons. This doesn’t fit with the maxim that they are “doing it all the time” and it doesn’t jive very well with the idea that you can find a workhorse back later in the draft. If a team is trying to find a future premier runningback in the draft, they need to start looking early. The best talent is drafted early and, more importantly, the vast majority of actual production is drafted early. One wonders, though – How early is early?

Frank Gore and Jamaal Charles were drafted in the third round. Are third round draft picks providing the production of first round draft picks? What about second round picks? Maurice Jones-Drew, Ray Rice, LeSean Mccoy and Matt Forte were each second round picks. Clearly a guy drafted in the first round will get more starting consideration than a guy in the seventh round but second round rushers are pretty big investments from a draft point of view and third round picks are nothing to scoff at. Nobody drafts a guy in round two or three to be a career backup.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that there may be a basis for holding off on drafting a runningback in the first round. What does the data show?

Recall that there was pretty even distribution of the number of rushers drafted in rounds 1 – 3. Over the past five years there have been fifteen tailbacks selected in the first round, thirteen drafted in the second round and a final ten were picked in the third round. What does the round-by-round breakout of early draft picks look like in terms of players who have rushed for 1,000 yards?

Since 2008 there have been sixty-one 1,000 yard seasons by a player drafted in the first three rounds. Thirty-seven of those sixty-one times (61%) involved someone drafted in the first round.

 

 

Those sixty-one seasons were accomplished by twenty-nine individual rushers who each crossed the threshold at least one time. Nineteen of the twenty-nine individual players (66%) were first round draft choices.

 

First round picks aren’t just the flashy names, they are also the producers by a wide margin. In fact, getting back to all drafted runningbacks - whether broken out by seasons or individual players, a first round pick is involved in almost half of all 1,000 yard campaigns in the past five years.

From another angle, of the fifteen rushers taken in the first round since 2008, eight of them (53%) have already crossed the 1,000 yard threshold at least once. This compares to three of thirteen (23%) for second round picks and four of ten (40%) for third round picks.

Assessing Maxims
Looking back at the maxims, there are only half-truths and outright falsehoods.

The first rounds is where runningbacks come from. That one round alone accounts for almost half of all players to rush for 1,000 yards or more. If you draft a tailback after round three then you wasted a pick. You’re as likely to get top-level production from an undrafted free agent. The top backs are predominantly second contract players. Five years is where the real drop-off is, not three. Even then, five years isn’t the end of the world.

Only one maxim holds true, kind of, accidentally, for the wrong reasons. Avoid free agency. Don’t do it because second contracts are evil, do it because teams don’t tend to let go of players who can produce. Free agency is not where smart teams look to find top runningbacks. Smart teams draft them, draft them early, and then resign them.

All in all, teams are doing it right.

As a final note: New rookie contracts are significantly cheaper and last a standard four years. Teams also get a fifth year option on first round draft picks. Five years? Sounds familiar. Score a point for the owners.

Click here to view the article

[ctm]

If the Titans are going to upgrade the OL and run a 2 TE power running scheme, then it only makes sense to have a complete stable of RBs. I'd draft one like Le'veon Bell who excells in short yardage and another similar to Kenjon Barner who fits the 3rd down passing game.

 

Harper has no special skills and is a waste of a roster spot.

[Dmeade-]

Nice analysis.

[Guest]

Awesome break down--a lot of quality here.

[oldschool]

You ignore that not all rookie RBs are given the required carries to break 1000 yards.

[titanruss]

great effort

[freakingeek]

Nicely done. You get an A for effort. I think the norm in the nfl is that you can get median production from most good quality college RBs. The exception to the rule is guys like AP, Walter Payton, Barry Sanders who were not only consistently great but enjoyed longevity too because it's difficult to sustain that type of production. If you're lucky enough to get a guy like that you have to hang on to him. The fact of the matter is that offenses are depending less and less on RBs and more and more on the passing game which devalues the position's importance in the offense which in turn reduces the money teams should allocate towards it. RBs salaries go down and CBs and pass rushers go up. 

[titanruss]

Nicely done. You get an A for effort. I think the norm in the nfl is that you can get median production from most good quality college RBs. The exception to the rule is guys like AP, Walter Payton, Barry Sanders who were not only consistently great but enjoyed longevity too because it's difficult to sustain that type of production. If you're lucky enough to get a guy like that you have to hang on to him. The fact of the matter is that offenses are depending less and less on RBs and more and more on the passing game which devalues the position's importance in the offense which in turn reduces the money teams should allocate towards it. RBs salaries go down and CBs and pass rushers go up. 

AP has not achieved longevity yet 

[freakingeek]

That is true. I threw his name in there because I think he's #1 right now and not showing signs of slowing down. It'll be interesting to see if he can keep running over people. Eddie couldn't.

AP has not achieved longevity yet 

[Jamalisms]

I'll take no less than an A for awesome.

It is not ignored, Oldschool. It is inherent in the increase from yer one to two and that they don't get carries is part and parcel with the point. They aren't not getting carries for the hell of it. There is an acclimation period. Even first round runningbacks aren't just plugged in and if they are... success is not on par with future years.

[WG53]

I'll take no less than an A for awesome.

It is not ignored, Oldschool. It is inherent in the increase from yer one to two and that they don't get carries is part and parcel with the point. They aren't not getting carries for the hell of it. There is an acclimation period. Even first round runningbacks aren't just plugged in and if they are... success is not on par with future years.

No, it is usually because they are sharing carries with the previous starter.

[oldschool]

I'll take no less than an A for awesome.

It is not ignored, Oldschool. It is inherent in the increase from yer one to two and that they don't get carries is part and parcel with the point. They aren't not getting carries for the hell of it. There is an acclimation period. Even first round runningbacks aren't just plugged in and if they are... success is not on par with future years.

Did you account for rookie RBs that don't see third down because they need to adjust to the NFL passing game?

[Jamalisms]

Obnoxious defined.  Moving on.

[NashvilleNinja]

FWIW, CJ will be entering into his 6th season in 2013.

[OILERMAN]

A "1,000yd season" by a RB is no way to judge a RBs real production

 

Eddie George had back to back 1000yd seasons after he was completely washed up and was sent packing

 

CJ got 1000yds in 2011 and it was a pitiful season

 

LW had  1100yds, was terrible and the Titans replaced him that off season