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Plunging into the world of football analytics is without question a great way to find fantasy sleepers for the coming season. Especially in the case of running backs, considering overall elusiveness is arguably the best way to determine how good (or bad) a player's performance was. That's what this is all about.
I will be looking at advanced rushing data from Pro-Football-Reference.com, and on top of that, crossing those numbers with 2022 ADP values from fantasy drafts up to this date in order to find the best sleepers poised to have big seasons this year given their 2020 numbers. All of it will be focused on how many missed tackles these players forced, how often they broke tackles relative to volume, and their tendency to accumulate yardage after contact.
The average draft position definitely plays a role here, considering many of these players can be had at a mid-to-late-round bargain price. Let's get to it!
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Missed Tackles Forced Data
Javonte Williams, Denver Broncos
Let's start at the beginning, and also at the lowest point of the pecking order when it comes to arranging the four rushers covered in this article. Rookie Javonte Williams, in his first season doing it as a pro, was clearly throttled by the presence of veteran Melvin Gordon III in the Broncos backfield. There's no sugarcoating that. Williams rushed the rock 203 times... and MelGo did it precisely 203 other times for a perfect 50/50 split on that front. Gordon outperformed Williams with 16 more rushing yards and 4 more TDs, but it's hard to believe Denver won't turn to the younger Williams soon.
Case in point: Williams was fantastic at everything he did in his first season among men, and that can only get better on a bulkier workload that affords him more reps to rack up numbers. The truth is that, while Denver's OL might have helped both the young and the veteran rushers to put up efficient figures on all rushing fronts (both RBs finished the year with 24+ BrkTkl), it was Williams who clearly had the best individual season among Broncos tailbacks. Williams broke fewer tackles (24) compared to Gordon (31), but he did so at a much better rate (21.7% to 14.3%) and was the only rusher to post such efficiency at breaking tackles (one every 4.6 rushing attempts; no other player did so on fewer than 5.3 ruAtt) on 200+ carries.
Williams' lone blip was the low four-touchdown campaign, but it was an absolute beauty to watch him racking up yards after contact, having the highest YBC/YAC split (74.2% of his yards came after contact) among rushers with more than 55 carries. Gordon, on the other hand, got slightly below 60% of his yards after contact for a raw difference of 122 YAC in favor of Williams through the season. Gordon is entering free agency, and it seems like he and Denver want to reunite forces for at least one more year. That's not clear though, but even if it comes to happen, odds are Williams starts getting more touches and outperforms Gordon for the second year in a row.
Josh Jacobs, Las Vegas Raiders
Not only did Jacobs finish the 2021 season as the RB12 in PPR formats, but he also did so with the lowest volatility among the top-60 rushers of the year! If you want steadiness at the position when it comes to racking up fantasy goodies, you know who to draft next summer. Jacobs helped himself with 348 receiving yards on 54 receptions, but it's not that all of that pass-catching boost turned him into one of the most valuable players out there. It was his rushing more than anything.
Jacobs, just in case, reached his final PPR tally on "only" 15 games played – or 626 snaps, from another angle –while six other players got more plays and/or games than him to overtake him in the leaderboard. give Jacobs a couple of extra games (basically, the full 17-game schedule) and he could have easily finished the year inside the top-5 at the position. Jacobs broke the third-most tackles (41) among rushers in 2021, only topped by Javonte, Najee Harris, and Jonathan Taylor. He also rushed the rock 90 and 115 fewer times than the latter two, just in case!
While Jacobs only logged a 1.49 YAC:YBC rate, he still finished as one of only 22 rushers with a YAC% at 60%+ (min. 100 rushing attempts) and one of only nine such players among those with 200+ carries over the year. Jacobs' posted the sixth-highest BrkTkl% (18.9 percent) among rushers with 100 attempts in 2021, and his 6.30 Elusiveness (following PFF's formula) ranked as the fourth-best among the same group of players.
Sony Michel, Los Angeles Rams
Michel, playing outside of New England for the first time in his career, surely benefited from Cam Akers injury and near full-season absence last year. That doesn't mean he got gifted his production. He still had to fight for touches on a weekly basis, even more with Darrell Henderson appearing in 12 games (to Michel's 17) but virtually tying in terms of snaps played with 506 to Michel's 538 over the full regular season. Michel finished the year averaging 8.6 PPR points per game for a total of 146 over his 17 outings.
Michel's 208 carries turned into 845 rushing yards for an average of 4.1 YPC while scoring four TDs; not bad numbers considering Michel was one of only 14 rushers with 4+ YCP while rushing the ball 200+ times. Michel was the eighth-best tackle-breaker of the year with a 35 BrkTkl tally, doing so on 16.8% of the times defenders got to put their hands on him. Michel had a very balanced split when it came to YAC/YBC, though, with 1.18 YAC for every yard before contact.
Per PFF, Michel was the second most-elusive rusher among those with 100+ carries with a mark of 6.95 (Singletary led all players at 7.31), even though he got stuffed on 39 of his attempts. The minute he solves those issues he could be facing a bona fide top-12 outcome because his combination of broken tackles and YAC-rushing prowess is legit. It is hard to see Michel re-signing with the Rams after getting the chip earlier this year with the two of Cam Akers and Darrell Henderson Jr. in tow already, so we'll see where he lands and hope for a true RB1 role wherever that is.
Devin Singletary, Buffalo Bills
The Bills backfield has been a topic of discussion for a while now, but at this point in time, it doesn't make much sense to keep doubting Singletary at all. Yes, Zach Moss hasn't been bad per se, but he hasn't been even remotely close to Singletary's levels of production either. That's why Singletary racked up almost twice the PPR points Moss produced last year, and why also the former bested his backfield partner on a per-game basis putting up 11.3 FPPG to Moss' 8.0 score.
Singletary did it all last year on 17 games: only 188 carries were enough for him to reach 870 yards on the ground to go with 7 TDs over the 717 snaps he played. That rushing yards figure was the best among RBs with 188 or fewer carries, and only Singletary, Leonard Fournette, James Robinson, and Boston Scott scored 7+ touchdowns on such volume. More impressive though, was Singletary's ability at breaking tackle after finishing the year with 40 (!) such events. He, of course, was the only rusher with more than 30 broken tackles on fewer than 200 carries, and the fifth-best at total BrkTkl without any sort of statistical restriction. Talk about efficiency.
Singletary's 4.7 carries per broken tackle ranked second only topped by Javonte William's 4.6 mark, and the Bills rusher posted one of the most balanced splits in terms of YAC/YBC at 52/48 (452 to 418). Singletary broke a tackle on 21%+ of his total carries, the third-best mark among rushers with 100+ rushing attempts. He is a staple in Buffalo's backfield and that shouldn't change going forward, with the only problem for his upside being the presence of QB Josh Allen and his own rushing prowess. Other than that, Singletary is as solid a draft pick as they come at the position.
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