After three straight articles on numbers used to evaluate the quarterback, it’s time to move on to the next most popular position in football, the running back. The statistics historically kept for running backs are attempts, yards, touchdowns and fumbles, with a rate stat of yards per run as well. The one we’ll take a deeper look at today is rushing yards.
First off, let’s consider two rushers, Kansas City's Thomas Jones and Brandon Jacobs of the Giants. Each shared the load for their team, and in some regards, had similar results. Jones ran for 896 rushing yards, scored six touchdowns, and fumbled three times, while Jacobs had 819 yards, nine touchdowns and also lost three fumbles. It looked like they had fairly similar years, but when you add in the fact that Jones ran the ball 245 times – nearly 100 more than Jacobs’ 148 – it’s clear that Jacobs performed better.
Rushing yards mean something, but not much without context. While rushing yards can be an indicator of how good a running back is, there are a number of factors that make it misleading.
What Really Matters
The best thing a running back can do on any given running play is score a touchdown. Next best is getting a first down. If it’s 3rd and 15, and a running back runs for 14 yards, that doesn’t carry nearly the same impact as running for 15 yards would have. On the other hand, the difference between a 15-yard and a 16-yard run isn’t as significant in this situation.
This is telling us is that not all yards are created equal. Getting the team closer to its goal is most important and while a touchdown is the ultimate goal on any given drive, the short-term goal is earning a new set of downs. However, it’s a lot more common for us to judge running backs in terms of total yards than total first downs.
A few players with high yards to first downs ratios in 2010 were LeGarrette Blount, Darren McFadden and Chris Johnson. Some players who had a relatively high number of first downs compared to their yards were Felix Jones, Chris Ivory and Maurice Jones-Drew.
Inflating the Statistic
There are two major ways in which rushing yards are inflated. The first comes at the end of games when a team is ahead. Teams with late leads typically run the ball more to keep the clock spinning. This gives a rusher more attempts, and therefore, opportunities to gain more yards. This is also why teams with more rushing attempts typically win – not because teams who run well are winners, but because of clock-killing strategy.
Ben-Jarvis Green-Ellis, Ricky Williams and Ahmad Bradshaw are all players who saw over 25% of their yards come in the fourth quarter when their team had a lead. Issac Redman of the Steelers saw 44% of his yards come in the fourth quarter when the Steelers were up.
While these late-game carries inflate yardage totals, they don’t have an effect on yards per attempt. One thing that does affect both yards and yards per attempt, however, is the long run. In Week 9, LeSean McCoy and the Eagles faced the Colts. His rushing numbers for the day were 16 carries for 95 yards with no touchdowns or fumbles. That looks like a good day, but one of his runs was for 62 yards. Taking that out of the equation, he earned just 33 yards on 15 carries – not a good day at all. Over the course of the season, 24% of McCoy’s 1080 rushing yards came from carries of 40 yards or more.
This isn’t to say that the running backs mentioned in here are bad running backs, just that in needs to be noted that they got their rushing yards differently than others. It doesn’t make sense to compare Bradshaw to McCoy simply by counting up their total rushing yards because they came about them in such different manners. For a fair comparison, you would need to compare them in similar situations.
Kneel Downs
I know, you thought you were done with quarterbacks, but since we’re on rushing yards, this is a problem I’ve had that has a simple solution and we can deal with it quickly. You’ll often see a quarterback kneel down to run out the final seconds of a game. On the stat sheet, it gets logged as a rushing attempt with anywhere from zero to 3-yards lost. If there is enough time left, a quarterback might do this two or three times in succession.
We want rushing yards and rushing yards per attempt to help tell us how good a player is at running the ball. For some quarterbacks, a large number of “rushing attempts” are kneel downs, yet kneel downs do nothing to describe a quarterback's running ability. Look at Peyton Manning’s carreer rushing numbers. In two of the past four seasons, he’s had a negative rushing yard total. Kneel downs are marked in the normal play by play data, so it should be easy enough to have them removed from rushing totals.
Closing Thoughts
The problem with rushing yards isn’t that the stat is greatly flawed, but just that it isn’t telling enough of the story. Not all yards are created equal, yet we treat them like they are. While long runs are entertaining, and being capable of breaking them is certainly a sign of a good running back, they can skew the story of a rusher’s day.
As a last note, raw rushing yards aren’t even just about how good a running back is, but how good the runner and his blockers are together. Attempting to account for such things is further motivation for us to produce our ratings.
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