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A lot of elements go into making a running back desirable for fantasy football. Opportunity, a good offensive line, and a good offense are all key elements. However, something equally important is how elusive those running backs are, this includes breaking tackles and gaining yards after contact.
Often, players who have these traits fall into the category of the best rushers in the league. Unfortunately, sometimes elusive running backs do not have a great opportunity, a good offensive line, or a good offense, leading to them being pushed down draft boards. If those running backs can get the opportunity, then their ability to be elusive can be enough to make them fantasy-relevant despite their offense or offensive line.
Today, I'm looking at running backs' elusive rating from the 2021 season using PFF's Elusive Rating formula "[Forced Missed Tackles / (Carries + Receptions) * (Yards After Contact per Attempt] * 100", trying to highlight four potential busts from 2022 fantasy football drafts given their 2021 numbers.
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2022 Elusive Rating Busts
Ezekiel Elliott and Tony Pollard, Dallas Cowboys
What if this whole Zeke drama is not about Zeke, but rather about Dallas' OL or just a flaw on Zeke and backup-RB Pollard? I mean, not going to jump to conclusions quickly here, but the fact that both Elliott and Pollard have struggled mightily to advance the rock after getting touched by D-men is quite interesting. The Cowboys rushers finished 2021 with 13 (Tony) and 16 (Zeke) broken tackles over the full season... while only 14 players total broke 16 or fewer among the 41 to log 150+ touches. Hmm...intriguing at the very least.
Zeke and Pollard got 3+ targets per game last year, quite high marks, but that didn't help them a lot as they had bottom-four figures in ELU with marks of 2.25 (Zeke) and 2.56 (Tony), only better than those of Devontae Booker (2.16) and Cordarrelle Patterson (2.44). Both RBs from Dallas posted higher yardage after than before contact, though the ratios weren't incredible (Elliott got the better one at 1.43:1 YAC:YBC). I saved the worst for last: Elliott needed 17.8 touches between every BrkTkl he got (third-worst figure)... and was the absolute worst ELU100 rusher with a ridiculous 0.79 figure that looks even worse considering Joe Mixon had the second-lowest mark already at 1.14. Ugh.
Jamaal Williams, Detroit Lions
The Lions decided to bring Jamaal to Detroit to share backfield duties with sophomore D'Andre Swift, and that's in fact what happened in Motown at least when it came to the rushing game: Swift got 151 carries to Williams' 153. The passing game was entirely skewed toward Swift, though, as the young man got 78 targets to Williams' 28. Anyway, I'm here only to hit JWill and his rather mediocre ELU through his first season donning Lions-blue threads. And the fact that his teammate finished as a top-five ELU-rusher last season isn't helping poor Jamaal.
William's ELU figure of 3.03 was the seventh-worst mark among RBs with 150+ touches over the 2021 campaign and his 13 total broken tackles over the season were tied for the sixth-fewest. Only the low amount of touches (179) compared to other rushers in this group saved him a bit on a per touch basis. The BrkTkl rate was down to 7.3% considering both the passing and rushing game, another bottom-seven mark while looking at that same group of 150+ touch players. Williams clearly did more damage on YAC than YBC, but the fact that he struggled mightily to break tackles clearly hurt that upside.
Darrel Williams, Kansas City Chiefs
I'm all in for fading Clyde Edwards-Helaire early in drafts and favoring Darrel Williams with a lower pick, but not even that might turn into a sound decision entering the 2022 fantasy draft season. Williams is coming off his best season as a pro after topping 70 PPR points for the first time in his four-year career to finish RB19, racking up 196 FP over 17 games played (he only "started" seven of those over CEH, though). The eight TDs from scrimmage (six rushing, two receiving) were good, but you can't rely on that type of stat and D-Will was almost better on pass-plays (452 yards) than rushing the rock (558).
Something must explain that, and an interesting data point might be the absolute incapacity of Williams to evade and break tackles: he was nearly the absolute worst rusher at both stats. Williams evaded 1.8 tackles per game (worst among RBs with 500+ snaps) and only broke 10 over the season for a rate of 5.2% in 2021 (second-worst only above Devontae Booker, already cut by NYG). Williams' ELU (3.03) wasn't remotely close to the worst of the worst (Booker/Elliott) but was a bottom-10 mark nonetheless. Williams was a clear before-contact rusher for KC, putting up only 0.81 YAC per every YBC he logged last season for a 55/45 split rushing the rock. Don't overpay for CEH but don't get too crazy about Darrel, either.
Cordarrelle Patterson, Atlanta Falcons
Let me tell you about the two sides of Patterson. Pre-2021 Patt: 84 PPR points per season, average WR93. 2021-Patt: 234 PPR points, RB9. Something right there is very wrong and screams glitch, doesn't it!? Patterson is coming off perhaps his first reasonably normal season in terms of usage, and thus the one in which he posted career-highs in virtually all statistical categories from targets to receptions, carries, yardage, all sorts of touchdowns, etc. Patterson, by the way, was signed to back up RB1 Mike Davis, who was coming off his own career year with Carolina in 2020... and look at how things went for good old Mikey. Just saying.
Patterson was great, don't get me wrong. But for someone super well versed on fooling defenses on special plays (I mean we're talking about the Return Gawd), his evaded/broken tackles numbers suck too hard. He ranked in the 9th percentile in evaded tackles per game among rushers with 500+ snaps, and he could only break 12 tackles over a full 16-games-played, 205-balls-touched campaign. That yielded a stupid 5.9% BrkTkl rate that ranked as the fourth-lowest among rushers with 150+ touches in 2021, and although his 1.50 YAC per carry mark was an above-average figure, they weren't that useful considering he just couldn't break tackles to save his damn life. Thus, the putrid 2.44 ELU and even worse 1.19 ELU100 figure, both inside the bottom-six in their respective leaderboards. Yikes.
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