The Weekly Gut Check - Vol. 65
Workload Splits For Runners
7/4/06

The “Gut Feeling” is often synonymous with a sense of desperation resulting from a lack of preparation. The Gut Check is a huge proponent of studying the numbers, but there’s a point where one can place too much emphasis on the wrong information. This can result in the undervaluing or overlooking a player’s potential. Therefore, The Weekly Gut Check is devoted to examining the frame of reference behind certain number-driven guidelines that fantasy football owners use to make decisions.

Although The Weekly Gut Check doesn’t claim to be psychic, he does believe that he can dispel certain numbers biases and help you make the best choices for your team. We’ll keep a running tally of The Weekly Gut Check’s insights. This way you can gauge his views as something to seriously consider, or at least seriously consider running the opposite way as fast as you can!

Teams will always use a running back by committee approach. The key to understanding how the term relates to fantasy value is not to make assumptions and get answers to some important questions. What is the average workload shared among runners on a depth chart? Is there a trend moving in either direction? If so, how should this impact a fantasy owner’s draft strategy?

Let’s start with the league overall. The table below shows the average rushing totals for the top three ground gainers on an NFL team between 2003-2005 regardless of position:

The Gut Check believes when the general sports fan listens to journalists and analysts harp on the idea that NFL teams need two good backs on a team, he infers from the statement that the coach desires to have a committee approach. This assumption is incorrect: Most teams want a feature back that can stay on the field in passing situations and carry the ball enough times to wear out a defense in the 2nd half. In fact, they want a back that can accomplish these two objectives with a high degree of consistency for hopefully 19 or 20 games.

The reason why teams need two good backs has more to do with this last statement. The position of running back is one of the most punishing in football. The average career for a runner is among the shortest of any position. A starting RB missing time during a season has a noticeable impact on the productivity of a team’s ground game. That’s the true nature of a “ committee” for most teams. If the team doesn’t have a feature back, or loses their star and doesn’t have an adequate substitute, then a committee will be the course of action.

Only Denver and Miami appeared to have a true plan to split the workload between their top two runners. The rest of the teams where the 2nd back account for at least 30% of the rushing game did this by necessity in 2005. This was no different in 2004. Even Pittsburgh intended to use Bettis more as a goal line option and not an every down back, but Staley’s injury increased the Bus’ workload.

The exception was 2003 and that year might be the reason for so much hype surrounding the committee approach. There were five teams that had a pre-determined plan to use a backfield by committee and stuck with it:

All five of these teams clearly moved towards acquiring a feature back within two seasons after 2003. The talk of the NFL moving towards a committee system of runners makes little sense from this perspective. One key to landing a good fantasy running back is to pick a player that remains durable throughout the year—that’s generally where the luck factor falls into place. Things you can observe is if the runner is a good fit within the offensive philosophy, or possess an all-around game so when he is on the field in passing situations his presence still makes it believable for the defense to play pass when the call will be run.

Before The Gut Check identifies some of these players, let’s look at the level of production that separates the average from the good, and the good from the great. The Gut Check calculated the workload for the average NFL back within specific yardage tiers.

Proponents of value-base drafting will argue that Stud RB strategists are drafting to fill the position over those players’ true value. As a result, VBD owners believe the Stud RB strategy can force you to miss out on the best players. On the other hand, if the value-based drafter in a 12-team league picks a couple of receivers or a quarterback-receiver with his first two picks and the rest of the league picks runners, he could wind up with only the lowest tiers of backs on his roster. The VBD owner will often say he’ll just use his great value picks as collateral to trade for a runner. The problem is that owner will need to find someone that will agree to a trade! Even if he does, will the deal net him what he believes his players are worth?

Both strategies have their risks and rewards, but no draft theory will work for you unless you know your league. If you don’t have a bead on the league tendencies prior to the draft, it’s a good idea to look up from your calculations and observe what is actually happening in your draft. Going against the grain can be highly beneficial, but only to a point. The Gut Check has frequently heard experienced owners use the excuse “these backs were grossly over valued, so I loaded up on other positions.” Have these owners ever thought that maybe they grossly over valued their theory at the expense of adjusting to what was actually happening in front of them! We all make mistakes, but blaming a league’s tendency as strange rather than making the adjustment is a cop-out. Intelligence and wisdom are separate qualities. Having a good pre-draft strategy shows intelligence, but demonstrating the ability to use that strategy as a guideline and not the rule shows wisdom.

The point is the Gut Check doesn’t believe these numbers give you a definitive reason to pursue one draft strategy over another. The information thus far shows if anything, the more games a starter plays, the greater he produces in the stat column. A more practical application for this research is to see which players accounted for the highest percentage of their team’s ground attack in key categories. Based on the stats you’ll read about below, The Gut Check believes than in order for you to feel good about your starting backfield, you need to target two runners you think will earn at least 20 attempts per game and rush for at least 1200 yards. 75% of the top 12 scorers on the ground were the all-purpose backs in their offense.

So what do these backs have in common from a broader perspective?

• 10 of the 12 (83%) backs had a quarterback with at least 3400 yards passing.
  
  
• 10 of the 12 (83%) backs had a quarterback with at least 20 touchdown throws.
  
  
• 8 of the 12 (67%) backs had a quarterback with at least a 60% completion pct.
  
  
• 11 of the 12 (93%) backs were on an offense with one player (TE or WR) with at least 60 receptions, and another with at least 50 catches.
  
  
• 13 receivers had at least 70 receptions while splitting opportunities with 11 of these backs.

It’s clear most of the top runners last year were on highly productive passing offenses. What someone should take from this is the true meaning of a balanced offense doesn’t mean a close to 50/50 split between run and pass. Balance is more about teams effectively running and passing with high productivity when they choose to do so.

Speaking of attempts per game, let’s focus this much-discussed topic. The Gut Check overhears a lot of fantasy owners correcting each other about the fact that runners rarely get 20 rushes per game. They claim this number is more a sum of rush attempts and targets as receivers. Is this true? Here’s another look at the average output of runners by their tiers of production.

Naturally, attempts per game carries over to consistency of performance. 70% of the backs with a top 10 Crank Score for their position were also in the top 10 for attempts per game.