Now that four weeks are in the books, I’d like to try and value every RB by adjusting their performance thus far by the strength of defenses they’ve faced, and then from there, forecast rest of season production. I don’t always think forecasting using schedule analysis is beneficial, but in this case I do because now we know what defenses are bogus and which are here to stay. Before the season you would have pegged Denver as one of the worst defenses in the league, but now they are one of the best.
WARNING!!! If you want to skip all this technical mumbo-jumbo, go right to the last chart with the title, The Big Picture, with commentary after.
I will do that by looking at two metrics. The first is YPT, which is yards per touch, or to put it another way, total yards / (carries + receptions). This takes into account not just rushing efficiency, but also receiving. Let’s face it; in the world of fantasy football today, running backs do a lot of damage catching the ball out of the backfield. There’s no longer the 30 carry workhorse back. There is the 20 carry, five catch horse. I’ll also be looking at TPTD, or touches per touchdown. It visually shows you how often a player scores a touchdown.
Here are the stats of the top ten fantasy running backs on the season, including their YPT and TPTD as an example.
Rank |
Player |
Squad |
Touches/G |
YPT |
TPTD |
FFPts/G |
1 |
Pierre Thomas |
NO |
19 |
6.7 |
13 |
21.7 |
2 |
Adrian Peterson |
MIN |
23 |
5.1 |
18 |
19.2 |
3 |
Chris Johnson |
TEN |
20.8 |
6.6 |
28 |
18.3 |
4 |
Maurice Jones-Drew |
JAC |
19.8 |
5 |
16 |
17.3 |
5 |
Willis McGahee |
BAL |
11 |
5.8 |
6 |
16.9 |
6 |
Ronnie Brown |
MIA |
19.5 |
5.4 |
20 |
16.5 |
7 |
Frank Gore |
SF |
15.7 |
6.3 |
15 |
16.2 |
8 |
Marion Barber |
DAL |
15.7 |
6.4 |
16 |
16.1 |
9 |
Mike Bell |
NO |
23 |
5.2 |
46 |
14.9 |
10 |
Fred Jackson |
BUF |
22 |
5.6 |
88 |
13.8 |
Now what I’ll do is adjust YPT and TPTD by the strength of defenses they’ve faced. After all, how much can you believe about a running back’s numbers if he faced the Lions, Chiefs, Texans and Browns? If this was the case, it would be hard to tell if the back was for real even with good stats versus these teams.
But even before doing that, I am going to adjust the defenses by the strength of rushing offenses they’ve faced. In the same way that you can’t value a RB if he has only faced all easy defenses, you can’t value a defense if they have only faced easy offenses. Got me?
Thank God for the lookup function within excel, otherwise I would never even think about attempting the data entry hours it would take to do this. Here are defenses vs. RBs, adjusted by the strength of the RBs they faced so far this season. The column all the way to the right shows the fantasy points each defense would give up to the same 20 touch, average running back. Just so you can gauge what each normally gives up to a typical No. 1 RB, Tennessee being the best, Houston the worst. (non-PPR scoring) AGAIN. Click to Skip to the Conclusion
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Offense-Adjusted |
|
|
| Rank |
Team |
YPT |
TPTD |
FFPts 20 Touch RB |
| 32 |
Houston Texans vs. RB |
5.9 |
20.6 |
17.6 |
| 31 |
Detroit Lions vs. RB |
5.8 |
21.5 |
17.2 |
| 30 |
Kansas City Chiefs vs. RB |
4.9 |
19.7 |
15.9 |
| 29 |
Seattle Seahawks vs. RB |
5.6 |
27.5 |
15.7 |
| 28 |
Dallas Cowboys vs. RB |
5.3 |
27.0 |
15.1 |
| 27 |
New England Patriots vs. RB |
5.7 |
32.4 |
15.0 |
| 26 |
Cleveland Browns vs. RB |
5.1 |
25.5 |
15.0 |
| 25 |
Oakland Raiders vs. RB |
4.9 |
23.5 |
14.8 |
| 24 |
San Diego Chargers vs. RB |
5.4 |
32.1 |
14.6 |
| 23 |
Philadelphia Eagles vs. RB |
4.4 |
21.3 |
14.5 |
| 22 |
Buffalo Bills vs. RB |
5.0 |
28.1 |
14.3 |
| 21 |
New York Giants vs. RB |
5.3 |
34.5 |
14.0 |
| 20 |
Atlanta Falcons vs. RB |
5.2 |
44.2 |
13.1 |
| 19 |
Carolina Panthers vs. RB |
5.0 |
40.9 |
12.9 |
| 18 |
Chicago Bears vs. RB |
5.0 |
44.3 |
12.7 |
| 17 |
Baltimore Ravens vs. RB |
4.9 |
40.8 |
12.7 |
| 16 |
Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs. RB |
4.5 |
35.2 |
12.4 |
| 15 |
St. Louis Rams vs. RB |
4.7 |
43.6 |
12.1 |
| 14 |
New Orleans Saints vs. RB |
4.6 |
42.9 |
12.0 |
| 13 |
Cincinnati Bengals vs. RB |
4.5 |
46.5 |
11.6 |
| 12 |
Washington Redskins vs. RB |
4.9 |
75.3 |
11.5 |
| 11 |
Jacksonville Jaguars vs. RB |
4.4 |
50.7 |
11.2 |
| 10 |
Minnesota Vikings vs. RB |
5.0 |
119.3 |
11.1 |
| 9 |
Denver Broncos vs. RB |
4.0 |
40.7 |
10.9 |
| 8 |
New York Jets vs. RB |
4.6 |
70.1 |
10.9 |
| 7 |
Miami Dolphins vs. RB |
4.3 |
52.0 |
10.9 |
| 6 |
San Francisco 49ers vs. RB |
4.9 |
109.0 |
10.9 |
| 5 |
Indianapolis Colts vs. RB |
4.2 |
52.2 |
10.7 |
| 4 |
Arizona Cardinals vs. RB |
4.0 |
53.3 |
10.2 |
| 3 |
Pittsburgh Steelers vs. RB |
4.0 |
87.2 |
9.4 |
| 2 |
Green Bay Packers vs. RB |
4.1 |
104.6 |
9.3 |
| 1 |
Tennessee Titans vs. RB |
3.5 |
137.9 |
7.9 |
Okay now I’ll use the adjusted defense vs. RBs to adjust the RBs themselves. Now this theoretically shows what the stats would look like for RBs if every team faced the same exact, average defense through the first four weeks. The RBs are adjusted by the strength of the defenses vs. RBs they have faced thus far. The amount by which they are adjusted depends on the change, up or down, from the average. For example the average strength of YPT schedule is 4.8 for all teams through the first four weeks. Baltimore has faced defenses that, on average, give up 5.3 YPT to RBs (KC 4.9, SD 5.4, CLE 5.1, NE 5.6). Therefore Willis McGahee and Ray Rice’s YPT will be reduced by about 9 percent because their schedule was 9 percent easier than the average. Same thing goes for TPTD. (non-PPR scoring) Remember a high YPT (yards per touch) is good and a low TPTD (touches per touchdown) is good...PAGE 2...Last Page
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