![]() But extremes are, by definition, rare - if you look at five-year rolling averages, the biggest yards-per-carry delta you'll find is 0.37 yards (2012 peak to 1997 trough) And naturally, with a difference of 0.4 yards per rush, 15 carries per game equates to 96 yards per season. If we revisit this analysis, we'll remove the quarterbacks and show only the top-tier running backs in a given season We’ll have to take a closer look at the hash mark moves in 19, though there does not seem to have been immediate impact on yards per carry (at least not until 1947 in the latter case) Simpson) averaged 4.3, 6.0, 4.2, and 5.5 yards per carry from 1972 through 1975 Case in point, this study's protagonist (O.J. Note that w hile league-wide yards-per-carry averages are fairly stable, Chase Stuart at Football Perspective has written extensively about how yards per carry for individual rushers can vary wildly from year-to-year, and even within a single season. 1947 through 2015, seasons equally weighted. In any case - and with everything discussed in this section in mind - our approach in the next section will itself indirectly account for yards per carry and attempts per game trends among lead backs.Īppendix II: The Best Running Backs and Rushing Seasons in NFL History Should we dock Adrian Peterson's 2012 because he did it in a high league-wide yards-per-carry season, or inflate Barry Sanders's 1994 because he did it in a low one? And what of the early days, when league-wide averages were low but top-back averages were elevated and volatile?Īdjusted yards per carry makes for its own interesting analysis, and we may well revisit this study to see how it shakes things up, but we're going to shy away from applying it directly this time around. In that regard, three, four, five, and six yards per carry mean pretty much the same thing throughout NFL history (save for the game's infancy). ![]() On the other hand, those yards-per-carry bands are pretty tight - seasons fall within three percent of the long-term average 67% of the time, and within five percent of the long-term average 90% of the time. So you can see the merit in controlling yards per carry for era. At 15 carries per game, 0.2 yards per rush equates to 48 yards per season. On one hand, those incremental differences are not immaterial. In two of every three seasons since 1947, NFL rushers averaged between 3.91 and 4.15 yards per carry, and in nine of every ten seasons, they averaged between 3.83 and 4.23 yards. Potential adjustments are riddled with complexity, and we need to be careful about anesthetizing everything to the point where all we end up doing is multiplying yards per carry by some cooked-up carries per game number. To invoke Bill Parcells, running backs ultimately are what their real-life yards per carry and carries per game say they are. Would Peterson have rushed more then? Would Simpson have rushed more now? In the end, they’re two great seasons predicated on efficient running and a lot of carries. In 2012, Peterson ran for 6.0 yards per carry on 21.8 carries per game, good for 86% of his team’s attempts. In 1973, Simpson ran for 6.0 yards per carry on 23.7 carries per game, which represented only 55% of his team’s rushing attempts. Simpson played now he would do X, or if Adrian Peterson played in the 1970s he would do Y. So it’s extremely difficult to say that if O.J. The very best backs see really high carry volume across most eras, regardless of what the the rest of the league or other top-level backs were doing. įor these reasons, if we really want to control for individual lead backs' rushing attempts across eras, we should do it based on the number of carries top-tier rushers were getting in each era - not the number of carries all running backs were getting. Meanwhile, lead backs in the late 1990s and early 2000s - who carried the ball more than anyone in history - would unfairly benefit simply because they played in an era of low league-wide attempts. Teams ran a lot in those decades, but lead backs did not. If we adjusted a back’s attempts according to league-wide rushing attempts (the blue line above) - revising carries downward for backs who played in high-rush eras and upward for backs who played in low-rush eras - it would be unfair to running backs in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and 1970s. And while top backs today receive fewer carries than they did a decade ago, they’re still handed the ball about as much as they were in the 1970s and 1980s. ![]() Teams ran far more in the 1970s than the 2000s, but the typical lead back in the 2000s actually carried the ball more than his 1970s counterpart. ![]() ![]() Teams rushed a ton in the NFL’s early decades, but those carries were very spread out. ![]()
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