In this series of articles, I’m looking at the fantasy football breakout potential of running backs heading into the 2021 NFL season. (Find the entire series on breakout running backs here.)
This builds off of my recent breakout receiver articles that profiled each of the second-year wide receivers. My research on 10 years of historical data points to second- and third-year running backs as the most likely to break out and also most likely to generate the most excess value.
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This article will focus on Indianapolis Colts RB Jonathan Taylor. One of the best ways to determine the range of outcomes and the probability of success for fantasy players is comparing them to similar historical players. In this analysis, I’ll compare the potential breakout running backs to hundreds of running backs drafted since 2006 and project the likelihood of a breakout based on those who had the most similar size, speed, draft position, college production and rookie metrics.
I’ll be especially focused on the receiving potential for these backs, as the outperformance in receiving volume and efficiency has been the most common trait for breakout running backs in the past.
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METHODOLOGY
The matching methodology is similar to what we used to focus on 2021 wide receiver and running back prospect comps, where I found the closest statistically comparable players using principal component analysis (PCA) and the euclidean distance between the players' components, and then gave each a “Similarity” score based on percentile of distance.
The metrics for PCA are draft position, weight, 40-yard dash time, best-season collegiate market share of total team yards, rookie rushing attempts, rookie rushing yards and rookie targets per game. We'll also use rookie PPR fantasy points per game and top-24 weekly finishes.
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