The Running Game Is Alive! NextGen Stats Analysis

3 years ago by Antonio Losada

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We're officially past mid-season and if that doesn't make you sad enough, how about the fact that even the trade deadline has passed us now? Eh? Was that what ultimately broke your hopes of football staying on forever? Too bad. The good news, as always, is that a new week full of games is ahead. And most importantly for us (and me, who writes this) is that another week is in the books and we're ready to crunch some more data!

To gain the biggest edge in your fantasy football league, it's necessary to understand how to apply the advanced statistics being used in sports nowadays. Back in the day, it was all about wins and losses, passing yards, and touchdowns scored. It's not that those stats are now worthless, they just don't offer enough information to savvy analysts. While football is still in its infancy compared to baseball in terms of analytics, the evolution the sport has seen lately in those terms is notable.

Each week, I'll be tackling NFL's Next Gen Stats, bringing you data from the previous week's games with notable takeaways you should consider when assessing fantasy players for the upcoming week. In case you're new to the series, or Next Gen Stats altogether, I recommend you read our NGS-primer. Now, let's get to the data!

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Week 8 - Running Back Takeaways from NextGenStats

I have mentioned one of the most important concepts to consider when analyzing players through this series of articles: air yards. The metrics around it are key to know who is really over-performing or under-performing among receivers and passers, but it doesn't have much to do with rushers. For this last group, which mostly features on the ground, we can look at time, speed, and efficiency metrics.

Today, I'll present each of the stats from the NFL's advanced metrics site, its correlation with rushers-fantasy points, and a list of leaders and trailers in each category along with some notes and takeaways on both the players' and the metrics' impact on fantasy football as a whole.

Last season, the NFL introduced the concepts of:

Expected Rushing Yards (xRY; How many rushing yards is a ball-carrier expected to gain on a given carry based on the relative location, speed, and direction of blockers and defenders?)
Rushing Yards Over Expectation (RYOE; The difference between actual rushing yards and expected rushing yards on an individual play or series of plays)
Rush Pct Over Expected (ROE%; The percentage of runs where a ball-carrier gained more yards than expected)

I will only focus on fantasy production as pure rushers, eliminating the pass-catching element from their game. This will concentrate entirely on their total rushing yardage and rushing touchdowns in terms of the fantasy points per game numbers shown (labeled ruFP/G). I will also include an extra column, "ruFP/15Att", which is accounts for the fantasy points a rusher is getting per 15 rushing attempts, which would be considered an RB1 workload on average and allows us to know how different players in different roles would be doing if given the same opportunities.

So let's dive in. Note: The cutoff is set at 40 rushing attempts.

Running Backs Efficiency

Correlation with Rushing Fantasy Points (based on the 2020 season): negative-32%

Leaders and Trailers:

Leaderboard Notes:

Remember, the more "efficient" a rusher is, the lower amount of yards he "wastes" going headfirst toward the opposite goal line in a straight route.
Eight weeks into the season, no rusher is still a below-3.0 EFF player. There were three back in W2, only one last time we checked, and it's now not a single qualifier into that realm: in fact, only two (Chase Edmonds and Tony Pollard) are below 3.25 EFF.
Neither Edmonds nor Pollard are averaging more than 6.5 FPPG (remember, I'm only using rushing FP), though, but immediately behind them Jonathan Taylor and James Robinson are putting up 11.2+ FPPG so you get an idea how lightly you should take this metric.
At the other end of the leaderboard, Phillip Lindsay is truly making yardage-wasting history with his ridiculous 6.32 EFF mark through Week 8. That value is 1.61 yards above second-highest D'Andre Swift's 4.71 EFF, which the same distance between Swift and... lowest-EFF-averager Chase Edmonds! Insane!

Among all 50 qualifiers for W8 leaderboards, the average EFF is down from W5 (4.00 yards) and now sits at 3.93. The difference is minimal, though, and it will be even less noticeable as things keep stabilizing now with half of the season completed and already in the books.
As is the case in this leaderboard and pretty much all of them given his dominance, Derrick Henry will make for a fantastic case study as the second half of the season gets underway. Henry is going to qualify no matter what when all is said and done as he has rushed the rock 219 times already, so it'd be fun to see where he ends in all cats. For example, Henry is the only RB averaging more than 12 FPPG while having an EFF above 3.88 (Cook is second at 4.24 with an average of 11.3 FPPG).

Players with the 20-highest EFF marks have averaged two TDs over the eight games played, while those with the 20-lowest marks have scored an average of three TDs.
Among the five qualifiers still to score a touchdown, their EFF marks range from 4.42 to 3.77. In other words, they are spread up and down the leaderboard without much significance to it.

The group of 16 RBs averaging 10+ ruFP per game is posting an average EFF of 3.71.
The group of 17 RBs averaging <6 FPPG is at a 4.13 EFF.

Percentage of Stacked Boxes Faced

Correlation with Rushing Fantasy Points (based on the 2020 season): 8%

Leaders and Trailers:

Leaderboard Notes:

The correlation between stacked boxes and fantasy points is so minimal that it doesn't make much sense to be overly worried about it if anything at all.
Don't throw away stacked boxes completely given that almost non-existent relation, but keep in mind that it is heavily related to the role a player has on his offense and to what teams expect from him.

Finally, all qualifiers through W8 have faced at least one stacked box--in fact, Myles Gaskin is the rusher with the fewest such plays but he's already seen two packed D-fronts going against him.
Unsurprisingly, and in a descriptive way of how Kansas City operates as an offensive unit, two Chiefs rank second- and third-lowest in the percentage of stacked boxes faced with CEH and Darrell Williams both below eight percent. It already happened back in W5 and they are still right there.
David Montgomery is the only rusher who has faced 8+D on a fairly low basis (<13%) and has still been able to average more than 8 FPPG (12.2) through Week 8.

Christian McCaffrey should be back this week and he's been able to retain the no. 1 spot with 42.3% of his rushes happening against stacked boxes. The sample is minimal, though, at 52 carries. The true Stacked-Box King to date is freshest-Saint Mark Ingram II as he's almost at 100 carries (98) while having faced 8+D in 40.8% of his attempts.
Of the 13 rushers who have faced stacked boxes in 25% of their carries or more, the Y/A sits at 4.4. That compares to an average of 4.2 Y/A for those (14 of them) that have faced them <15% of the time.
Again, King Henry has had a ridiculous year as he's faced 8+D in 36.5% of his carries to no success from the defensive side of the equation. He's still put up 4.3 yards per carry, scored 10 freaking TDs, and posted positive RYOE over eight weeks of play. Jesus.

Stacked boxes are often employed in the red zone. That probably explains why 10 of the 15 rushers with the highest rate in 8+D% have already scored two or more touchdowns, with Matison, Dillon, McCaffrey, Ingram, and Mike Davis the only ones to have either one or no TDs so far this season. They are the ones tasked with carrying the ball through the goal line, so defenses lock heavily into them when they reach that zone.
Rushers with 90+ carries through W8 see stacked boxes 22.6% of the time while those with <70 carries so far see them 18.0% on average.

Looking at the metric from a pure FPPG perspective, the top-12 per-game scorers at the position have faced 8+D an average of 23.7% of their attempts. This group includes Henry (36.5%) and David Montgomery (8.7%).
On the other hand, the bottom-12 FPPG rushers (min. 60 carries) are facing stacked boxes 21.3% of the time on average. This group includes Gaskin (3.0%) and Mark Ingram (40.8%).

Average Time Behind The Line Of Scrimmage

Correlation with Rushing Fantasy Points (based on the 2020 season): 21%

Leaders and Trailers:

Leaderboard Notes:

You might think that TLOS and EFF are related, as a north-south rusher should spend less time behind the line of scrimmage. With five weeks on the books already, the relation sits at a ridiculous 0.5%. I mean... Nothing linked between these two things, I'm afraid.
The relation between TLOS and actual fantasy points is also pretty much nonexistent, so this metric can be discarded when analyzing players in fantasy leagues and trying to predict their outcomes.

God bless Ronald Jones II because he's seemingly always in a hurry. RJ2 has the lowest TLOS registered this season over eight games, though it's also true that he's only rushed the rock 44 times to second-quickest AJ Dillon's 68 totes.
The true quickest guy with a bulky rushing load would be Antonio Gibson and his 2.56 seconds on average in 111 carries. Second place goes to Leonard Fournette with a close 2.59 seconds in 101 carries himself.

Hyper-quick rushers tend to get lower Y/A than those that take it a little more patiently. Those putting up the 12th-lowest TLOS marks are averaging 4.0 Y/A. Those putting up the 12th-highest TLOS are averaging 4.7 Y/A.
The "fastest" rushers to cross the TLOS (those below 2.65 seconds) are averaging 6.0 FPPG and only one of them is putting up double-digit FPPG numbers (Josh Jacobs). The "slowest" (above 2.85 seconds) are averaging 8.9 FPPG through W8 with only one player below 5.0 FPPG (Alexander Matison).

The top-16 running backs in FPPG (10.0+) are averaging a 2.83 TLOS
The bottom-16 (<6.0 FPPG) players are averaging 2.75 seconds behind the LOS.
There is something to this, but it's ridiculously insignificant to give it any importance at all for fantasy purposes.

ATT & YDS & Y/A & TD

Correlation with Rushing Fantasy Points (based on the 2020 season): 83% / 90% / 53% / 86%

Leaders and Trailers:

Leaderboard Notes:

Shout-out to Tony Pollard, the real 2021 King of the YPC eight weeks into the season and all three times we've checked the leaderboards. He's gone from 7.7 to 5.5 and now back to a higher 5.8 Y/A in 68 carries to date, and leads the league in yardage on a per-carry basis.
Three more rushers sit at 5.5+ Y/A, and the split is even in terms of their actual fantasy per-game production: Pollard and Edmonds are averaging fewer than 7.0 FPPG compared to Robinson and Chubb who both are at 11+ FPPG.

It must take an effort to put on Phillip Lindsay numbers this deep into the season. Yes, he barely qualified for this week's leaderboard with just 41 carries, but the 2.6 Y/A are down 0.6 yards from the second-lowest mark of D'Andre Swift.
When you hear the discussion about James Conner murdering Chase Edmonds season, you better believe it. Conner is putting up a measly 3.8 YPR but he has eight (!!!) touchdowns to his name already. Edmonds is rushing the rock for the second-most yards per carry but has only one score through Week 8.

On a 15-carry basis, Kareem Hunt, Conner, Robinson, Austin Ekeler, Josh Jacobs, and Jonathan Taylor are the only players averaging more than 12 rushing FP/15Att on the season. The problem, of course, is that all of them have scored five-plus TDs on the season and that's truly helping those averages.
Removing touchdowns from the rushing FP calculations, Conner and Jacobs go all the way down to 5.7 and 5.1 FP/15Att while James Robinson loses the smallest production staying at 8.2 FP/15Att.

RYOE & RYOE/A & ROE%

Correlation with Rushing Fantasy Points (based on the 2020 season): 67% / 53% / 33%

Leaders and Trailers:

Leaderboard Notes:

Starting last year, the NFL introduced the concept of Rushing Yards Over Expectation. Basically, it comes down to the extra yards a rusher gained (or lost) in a given play given the context of that play (down, distance, defender positional data, etc...).
The RYOE metric indicates how many extra yards the rusher gained/lost on his carries over/under those he actually rushed for. Ex: YDS = 100, RYOE = 10, then the rusher was expected to rush for 90 yards, but overperformed that mark by 10 (RYOE) thus getting to 100.
The RYOE/A metric indicates the average extra yards gained/lost per rushing attempt. Ex: Y/A = 0.5, RYOE/A = -1.5, then the rusher was expected to rush for 2.0 Y/A but underperformed that mark by -1.5 (RYOE) thus getting 0.5 Y/A.
The ROE% metric indicates the percentage of rushing attempts the rusher exceeded the expected yards (gained more yards than expected). Ex: ATT = 10, ROE% = 50.0, then the rusher gained more yards than expected in 5 of 10 (50.0%) of his carries.

Kudos to Jonathan Taylor because he has both the highest RYOE raw mark at 183 yards above expectation and the highest average RYOE/A at 1.6. In fact, none of those marks are even close to second-highest in RYOE (Chubb at 116 yards) and RYOE/A (Robinson and Edmonds both at 1.2 yards per attempt).
Funny to find the split of over/under producers among qualifiers: 23 players have rushed for at least one more yard than expected, 26 have rushed for at least one fewer yard than expected, and exactly one player (Clyde Edwards-Helaire) sits even at 0 yards over/under expectations.
If we add/remove the over/underachieved yards through Week 8, Joe Mixon would be the best Non-Henry rusher out there as he'd be sitting at 538 yards compared to his actual 572, followed by Ezekiel Elliott's 491 to his real 571.

Kareem Hunt, CEH, Damien Harris, and Jonathan Taylor are the only rushers still overperforming on 45% or more of their rushing attempts. Considerable for the first two as they have carried the ball just 69 and 65 times, but quite a neat outing for the later two as they both have 118+ carries through Week 8.
Even though Zack Moss has overperformed the expectations in 43.5% of his carries, he's underperformed them overall with -42 yards compared to those he should have gotten over his full rushing workload.
Moss is, in fact, one of the least efficient rushers out there putting up -0.7 ROYE/A this season, tied for the sixth-worst mark among qualifiers this week.

Darrell Henderson Jr. is the only rusher averaging 11.0+ FPPG to have a negative RYOE/A (-0.1) through Week 8 of the season. King Henry is close at +0.1, but that's absolutely reasonable considering he's carried the ball a freaking 219 times!
On the other hand, AJ Dillon is the lone rusher with a positive RYOE/A (+0.4) that is averaging fewer than 5.0 FPPG. Ronald Jones is part of that group and is carrying a neutral 0.0 RYOE/A mark so far.

The correlation is sky-high (positive-54% r-squared value between ROE% and FPPG) and the most consistent overperformers are those averaging the most fantasy points per game so far, which makes all of the sense in the world.

That's it for today. Until we meet again next week, I hope you can crush your waiver wire, set up the best possible lineup, and get ready for another weekend full of fireworks!

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