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are you going to draft Arian Foster? (1 Viewer)

ATSS_0100

Footballguy
955 carries in 45 games the past three years.

This guy has been ran into the ground. I'm avoiding him. Are you?

 
He has just a good of chance at being a bust as anyone else if not more! I don't have him or AP in my top 5 RB!

 
I'm seeing this stuff so much that I really wonder if some of you guys actually are believing this or if you are fishing to try to get the perception of Foster down so you can snag him. Instead of this speculaiton about "Oh my GOD, so many carries, YPC is plummenting", why don't we talk about some facts.

-The guy is 26 years old. 26 year old athletes can do a lot and bounce back pretty quickly.

-He is THE key piece that his entire offense's principles are built around.

Normally, in FF, these are the guys that everyone drools to try to find but for some reason, people are actually holding that against Foster.

-He has about 20 more carries than Adrian Peterson over the last three years and about 60 maybe more than Rice in that span but for some reason that is detrimental to Foster yet people can't see anything except #1 for Peterson, despite the fact that history clearly tells us that when a back has a 2000 yard season, only twice in the history of the NFL has a RB came back the next year to play in all the games. So, everyone wants to cite history on the big carries to pull Foster down but they want to completely ignore that same information plus the additonal info re: 2k seasons when it is another player. And just for fun, let's ignore the fact that, for the career, the guy that no one ever seems to have a "concern" about is 2 years older, has 700+ more career carries on his tires.

-He played with an entirely new right hand side of his o-line last year and those players missed games during the year. Doesn't anyone think that when they look at his stats and see that his rushes to the right slid last year, that there might be a correlation there (production to right is less...players on the right injured and new...any connection?). We talk all the time about the horrible Cardinals line and the horrible Chargers line and we can see clearly how it affects those teams but somehow nobody notices this aspect with theTexans?

So if we can explain these things, then it must be production you guys are worried about, right? Well, he's been a top 1-4 Rb for about three years straight now; normally that is something people seek and not avoid in a young RB. People like production and consistency and youth...normally.

So maybe its more about quality from that position? Well, if someone told me that, from a RB, a pretty good day is either

- 150 rushing yards

-100+rushing yards with a TD

-or some rushing yards and 2 TDs

I would say, yeah, that's pretty good produciton no matter how you slice it because that puts me in that 18-20+ point range that top RBs produce.

Ok, so, if someone told me "Did you know that for the last three years, Arian Foster has led the league in that stat?" I would have to say, "well then, I guess he has been the type of guy I would want."

For reference, Foster hit that number 11 times last year while guys like Calvin hit it 6 times. In the last two seasons, Foster has hit that number about 70% of the time while guys like Peterson are well under 50%.

I didn't mean to turn this into a comparison against Peterson so much but did so just to show that, against what everyone considers to be the gold standard, Foster is right there, has been right there, and there is nothing in your crystal balls that indicate otherwise that doesn't also apply to the gold standard (and even more so towards the gold standard actually).

Yet, somehow, someway, people are hell bent on manufacturing the news instead of just observing it. Talkin about whether or not I would be interested in drafting Arian Foster? My God.

 
This is pretty silly.
have a look at this document on the effects of 400+ carries on a RB in the following year..

http://www.footballdocs.com/running_back_carries.html

as far as I can tell, only Ricky Williams had MORE carries the following year..most were lucky to get 1/2

the amount of carries in the following year..

this doc also shows RB's with a breakdown after a substantial increase in carries..most notably, Michael Turner went from 71

carries in 2007 in SD, to 376 in 2008(Atl - a 430% increase), to 178 in 2009..

here is Yudkin's take on it, but it pretty much says the same thing, of the Rb's with 400+ touches ( not just carries), the avg ranking of the RB the following year, was RB 17.8..

http://www.footballguys.com/06yudkin_400touches.php

the point the OP was making is that there is overwhelming evidence to suggest a significant drop-off in production

from Foster after his monster workload in 2012..

Ben Tate is in a contract year, Houston *might* want to have a long look at what he can provide and determine if they'll keep him around for 2014 and beyond..

one trend I noticed with Foster last year is that Houston used him sparingly in December, and it paid off - he avg'd a season high 4.39 ypc, but only averaging 16.4 carries/gm,down 9 carries/gm from November..so,did the coaching staff realize something

was off with Foster's game ? his rushing yards/gm went from 101 in November, to 72 in December..

 
I'm seeing this stuff so much that I really wonder if some of you guys actually are believing this or if you are fishing to try to get the perception of Foster down so you can snag him. Instead of this speculaiton about "Oh my GOD, so many carries, YPC is plummenting", why don't we talk about some facts.

-The guy is 26 years old. 26 year old athletes can do a lot and bounce back pretty quickly.

-He is THE key piece that his entire offense's principles are built around.

Normally, in FF, these are the guys that everyone drools to try to find but for some reason, people are actually holding that against Foster.

-He has about 20 more carries than Adrian Peterson over the last three years and about 60 maybe more than Rice in that span but for some reason that is detrimental to Foster yet people can't see anything except #1 for Peterson, despite the fact that history clearly tells us that when a back has a 2000 yard season, only twice in the history of the NFL has a RB came back the next year to play in all the games. So, everyone wants to cite history on the big carries to pull Foster down but they want to completely ignore that same information plus the additonal info re: 2k seasons when it is another player. And just for fun, let's ignore the fact that, for the career, the guy that no one ever seems to have a "concern" about is 2 years older, has 700+ more career carries on his tires.

-He played with an entirely new right hand side of his o-line last year and those players missed games during the year. Doesn't anyone think that when they look at his stats and see that his rushes to the right slid last year, that there might be a correlation there (production to right is less...players on the right injured and new...any connection?). We talk all the time about the horrible Cardinals line and the horrible Chargers line and we can see clearly how it affects those teams but somehow nobody notices this aspect with theTexans?

So if we can explain these things, then it must be production you guys are worried about, right? Well, he's been a top 1-4 Rb for about three years straight now; normally that is something people seek and not avoid in a young RB. People like production and consistency and youth...normally.

So maybe its more about quality from that position? Well, if someone told me that, from a RB, a pretty good day is either

- 150 rushing yards

-100+rushing yards with a TD

-or some rushing yards and 2 TDs

I would say, yeah, that's pretty good produciton no matter how you slice it because that puts me in that 18-20+ point range that top RBs produce.

Ok, so, if someone told me "Did you know that for the last three years, Arian Foster has led the league in that stat?" I would have to say, "well then, I guess he has been the type of guy I would want."

For reference, Foster hit that number 11 times last year while guys like Calvin hit it 6 times. In the last two seasons, Foster has hit that number about 70% of the time while guys like Peterson are well under 50%.

I didn't mean to turn this into a comparison against Peterson so much but did so just to show that, against what everyone considers to be the gold standard, Foster is right there, has been right there, and there is nothing in your crystal balls that indicate otherwise that doesn't also apply to the gold standard (and even more so towards the gold standard actually).

Yet, somehow, someway, people are hell bent on manufacturing the news instead of just observing it. Talkin about whether or not I would be interested in drafting Arian Foster? My God.
I am less concerned about his workload than I am with his constant injuries in the preseason and his yards per carry decrease.

2010 - 5.0 ypc

2011 - 4.4 ypc

2012 - 4.0 ypc

Yards per receptions

2010 - 9.2

2011 - 11.6

2012 - 5.4???

4.0 ypc and 5.4 ypr are awful numbers.

The coaches already said they will not allow Foster to get as many carries as last year, so hopefully his awful ypc can increase.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
This is pretty silly.
have a look at this document on the effects of 400+ carries on a RB in the following year..

http://www.footballdocs.com/running_back_carries.html

as far as I can tell, only Ricky Williams had MORE carries the following year..most were lucky to get 1/2

the amount of carries in the following year..

this doc also shows RB's with a breakdown after a substantial increase in carries..most notably, Michael Turner went from 71

carries in 2007 in SD, to 376 in 2008(Atl - a 430% increase), to 178 in 2009..

here is Yudkin's take on it, but it pretty much says the same thing, of the Rb's with 400+ touches ( not just carries), the avg ranking of the RB the following year, was RB 17.8..

http://www.footballguys.com/06yudkin_400touches.php

the point the OP was making is that there is overwhelming evidence to suggest a significant drop-off in production

from Foster after his monster workload in 2012..

Ben Tate is in a contract year, Houston *might* want to have a long look at what he can provide and determine if they'll keep him around for 2014 and beyond..

one trend I noticed with Foster last year is that Houston used him sparingly in December, and it paid off - he avg'd a season high 4.39 ypc, but only averaging 16.4 carries/gm,down 9 carries/gm from November..so,did the coaching staff realize something

was off with Foster's game ? his rushing yards/gm went from 101 in November, to 72 in December..
The short answer to your last part is Ben Tate played in the December games and they were able to run their normal distribution and Foster was actually out of a large chunk of the Vikes game when he had the heart flutter.

Regarding the info about "if a player has 400 touches, he plumments the next year". Ok, if that is the case then Foster's 391 touches last year makes him plumment but Peterson's 288 make him the consensus #1. Explain to me why this does not work for all players if the numbers are based on all players.

 
I'm seeing this stuff so much that I really wonder if some of you guys actually are believing this or if you are fishing to try to get the perception of Foster down so you can snag him. Instead of this speculaiton about "Oh my GOD, so many carries, YPC is plummenting", why don't we talk about some facts.

-The guy is 26 years old. 26 year old athletes can do a lot and bounce back pretty quickly.

-He is THE key piece that his entire offense's principles are built around.

Normally, in FF, these are the guys that everyone drools to try to find but for some reason, people are actually holding that against Foster.

-He has about 20 more carries than Adrian Peterson over the last three years and about 60 maybe more than Rice in that span but for some reason that is detrimental to Foster yet people can't see anything except #1 for Peterson, despite the fact that history clearly tells us that when a back has a 2000 yard season, only twice in the history of the NFL has a RB came back the next year to play in all the games. So, everyone wants to cite history on the big carries to pull Foster down but they want to completely ignore that same information plus the additonal info re: 2k seasons when it is another player. And just for fun, let's ignore the fact that, for the career, the guy that no one ever seems to have a "concern" about is 2 years older, has 700+ more career carries on his tires.

-He played with an entirely new right hand side of his o-line last year and those players missed games during the year. Doesn't anyone think that when they look at his stats and see that his rushes to the right slid last year, that there might be a correlation there (production to right is less...players on the right injured and new...any connection?). We talk all the time about the horrible Cardinals line and the horrible Chargers line and we can see clearly how it affects those teams but somehow nobody notices this aspect with theTexans?

So if we can explain these things, then it must be production you guys are worried about, right? Well, he's been a top 1-4 Rb for about three years straight now; normally that is something people seek and not avoid in a young RB. People like production and consistency and youth...normally.

So maybe its more about quality from that position? Well, if someone told me that, from a RB, a pretty good day is either

- 150 rushing yards

-100+rushing yards with a TD

-or some rushing yards and 2 TDs

I would say, yeah, that's pretty good produciton no matter how you slice it because that puts me in that 18-20+ point range that top RBs produce.

Ok, so, if someone told me "Did you know that for the last three years, Arian Foster has led the league in that stat?" I would have to say, "well then, I guess he has been the type of guy I would want."

For reference, Foster hit that number 11 times last year while guys like Calvin hit it 6 times. In the last two seasons, Foster has hit that number about 70% of the time while guys like Peterson are well under 50%.

I didn't mean to turn this into a comparison against Peterson so much but did so just to show that, against what everyone considers to be the gold standard, Foster is right there, has been right there, and there is nothing in your crystal balls that indicate otherwise that doesn't also apply to the gold standard (and even more so towards the gold standard actually).

Yet, somehow, someway, people are hell bent on manufacturing the news instead of just observing it. Talkin about whether or not I would be interested in drafting Arian Foster? My God.
I am less concerned about his workload than I am with his constant injuries in the preseason and his yards per carry decrease.

2010 - 5.0 ypc

2011 - 4.4 ypc

2012 - 4.0 ypc

Yards per receptions

2010 - 9.2

2011 - 11.6

2012 - 5.4???

4.0 ypc and 5.4 ypr are awful numbers.

The coaches already said they will not allow Foster to get as many carries as last year, so hopefully his awful ypc can increase.
Arian Foster's career yard per attempt is higher than Emmitt Smith, Ladanian Tomlinson, Curtis Martin and about 90% of any other RB ever.

The injury concerns are silly (and I don't mean that to be demeaning in any way..just saying if you look at it in perspective it is).

The only true injury he has had was a hamstring. Name me any RB that has not missed a game in the last three years due to some injury, whatever it may be. Has he really missed any more time than anyone else? No, he hasn't.

Other Rbs have had blown out knees and broken bones and ankle problems yet none of them get the media attention that a calf strain receives on Foster. Is it unreasonable to think that the coaches simply just say "you know what. This is the guy that makes it all go so we aren't going to screw around with him over something small because this is what got us into the problem with the hammy. This time of the year is meaningless. We know what we have in Foster."?

 
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I'm seeing this stuff so much that I really wonder if some of you guys actually are believing this or if you are fishing to try to get the perception of Foster down so you can snag him. Instead of this speculaiton about "Oh my GOD, so many carries, YPC is plummenting", why don't we talk about some facts.

-The guy is 26 years old. 26 year old athletes can do a lot and bounce back pretty quickly.

-He is THE key piece that his entire offense's principles are built around.

Normally, in FF, these are the guys that everyone drools to try to find but for some reason, people are actually holding that against Foster.

-He has about 20 more carries than Adrian Peterson over the last three years and about 60 maybe more than Rice in that span but for some reason that is detrimental to Foster yet people can't see anything except #1 for Peterson, despite the fact that history clearly tells us that when a back has a 2000 yard season, only twice in the history of the NFL has a RB came back the next year to play in all the games. So, everyone wants to cite history on the big carries to pull Foster down but they want to completely ignore that same information plus the additonal info re: 2k seasons when it is another player. And just for fun, let's ignore the fact that, for the career, the guy that no one ever seems to have a "concern" about is 2 years older, has 700+ more career carries on his tires.

-He played with an entirely new right hand side of his o-line last year and those players missed games during the year. Doesn't anyone think that when they look at his stats and see that his rushes to the right slid last year, that there might be a correlation there (production to right is less...players on the right injured and new...any connection?). We talk all the time about the horrible Cardinals line and the horrible Chargers line and we can see clearly how it affects those teams but somehow nobody notices this aspect with theTexans?

So if we can explain these things, then it must be production you guys are worried about, right? Well, he's been a top 1-4 Rb for about three years straight now; normally that is something people seek and not avoid in a young RB. People like production and consistency and youth...normally.

So maybe its more about quality from that position? Well, if someone told me that, from a RB, a pretty good day is either

- 150 rushing yards

-100+rushing yards with a TD

-or some rushing yards and 2 TDs

I would say, yeah, that's pretty good produciton no matter how you slice it because that puts me in that 18-20+ point range that top RBs produce.

Ok, so, if someone told me "Did you know that for the last three years, Arian Foster has led the league in that stat?" I would have to say, "well then, I guess he has been the type of guy I would want."

For reference, Foster hit that number 11 times last year while guys like Calvin hit it 6 times. In the last two seasons, Foster has hit that number about 70% of the time while guys like Peterson are well under 50%.

I didn't mean to turn this into a comparison against Peterson so much but did so just to show that, against what everyone considers to be the gold standard, Foster is right there, has been right there, and there is nothing in your crystal balls that indicate otherwise that doesn't also apply to the gold standard (and even more so towards the gold standard actually).

Yet, somehow, someway, people are hell bent on manufacturing the news instead of just observing it. Talkin about whether or not I would be interested in drafting Arian Foster? My God.
I am less concerned about his workload than I am with his constant injuries in the preseason and his yards per carry decrease.

2010 - 5.0 ypc

2011 - 4.4 ypc

2012 - 4.0 ypc

Yards per receptions

2010 - 9.2

2011 - 11.6

2012 - 5.4???

4.0 ypc and 5.4 ypr are awful numbers.

The coaches already said they will not allow Foster to get as many carries as last year, so hopefully his awful ypc can increase.
Arian Foster's career yard per attempt is higher than Emmitt Smith, Ladanian Tomlinson, Curtis Martin and about 90% of any other RB ever.
While that is cool, it is not relevant to my post. His ypc have decreased. They will need to go up because he will receive less carries this year.

4.0 will not cut it.

It also does not contradict that his ypc have decreased each of the last three years.

 
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I'm seeing this stuff so much that I really wonder if some of you guys actually are believing this or if you are fishing to try to get the perception of Foster down so you can snag him. Instead of this speculaiton about "Oh my GOD, so many carries, YPC is plummenting", why don't we talk about some facts.

-The guy is 26 years old. 26 year old athletes can do a lot and bounce back pretty quickly.

-He is THE key piece that his entire offense's principles are built around.

Normally, in FF, these are the guys that everyone drools to try to find but for some reason, people are actually holding that against Foster.

-He has about 20 more carries than Adrian Peterson over the last three years and about 60 maybe more than Rice in that span but for some reason that is detrimental to Foster yet people can't see anything except #1 for Peterson, despite the fact that history clearly tells us that when a back has a 2000 yard season, only twice in the history of the NFL has a RB came back the next year to play in all the games. So, everyone wants to cite history on the big carries to pull Foster down but they want to completely ignore that same information plus the additonal info re: 2k seasons when it is another player. And just for fun, let's ignore the fact that, for the career, the guy that no one ever seems to have a "concern" about is 2 years older, has 700+ more career carries on his tires.

-He played with an entirely new right hand side of his o-line last year and those players missed games during the year. Doesn't anyone think that when they look at his stats and see that his rushes to the right slid last year, that there might be a correlation there (production to right is less...players on the right injured and new...any connection?). We talk all the time about the horrible Cardinals line and the horrible Chargers line and we can see clearly how it affects those teams but somehow nobody notices this aspect with theTexans?

So if we can explain these things, then it must be production you guys are worried about, right? Well, he's been a top 1-4 Rb for about three years straight now; normally that is something people seek and not avoid in a young RB. People like production and consistency and youth...normally.

So maybe its more about quality from that position? Well, if someone told me that, from a RB, a pretty good day is either

- 150 rushing yards

-100+rushing yards with a TD

-or some rushing yards and 2 TDs

I would say, yeah, that's pretty good produciton no matter how you slice it because that puts me in that 18-20+ point range that top RBs produce.

Ok, so, if someone told me "Did you know that for the last three years, Arian Foster has led the league in that stat?" I would have to say, "well then, I guess he has been the type of guy I would want."

For reference, Foster hit that number 11 times last year while guys like Calvin hit it 6 times. In the last two seasons, Foster has hit that number about 70% of the time while guys like Peterson are well under 50%.

I didn't mean to turn this into a comparison against Peterson so much but did so just to show that, against what everyone considers to be the gold standard, Foster is right there, has been right there, and there is nothing in your crystal balls that indicate otherwise that doesn't also apply to the gold standard (and even more so towards the gold standard actually).

Yet, somehow, someway, people are hell bent on manufacturing the news instead of just observing it. Talkin about whether or not I would be interested in drafting Arian Foster? My God.
I am less concerned about his workload than I am with his constant injuries in the preseason and his yards per carry decrease.

2010 - 5.0 ypc

2011 - 4.4 ypc

2012 - 4.0 ypc

Yards per receptions

2010 - 9.2

2011 - 11.6

2012 - 5.4???

4.0 ypc and 5.4 ypr are awful numbers.

The coaches already said they will not allow Foster to get as many carries as last year, so hopefully his awful ypc can increase.
Arian Foster's career yard per attempt is higher than Emmitt Smith, Ladanian Tomlinson, Curtis Martin and about 90% of any other RB ever.
While that is cool, it is not relevant to my post. His ypc have decreased. They will need to go up because he will receive less carries this year.

4.0 will not cut it.

It also does not contradict that his ypc have decreased each of the last three years.
Adrian peterson's YPC fell in his 2nd and 3rd year in the league.

Barry Sander's YPC fell for three or four straight years.

Again, this is not a point to live and die on. We could go back and look at some games and I guarantee you we will see several games where a 19/115 (6.3 ypc) day turned into a 27/123 (4.5) type of day just based on the sole fact that Tate was not in a lot of these games and there were games where they simply just let him kill the clock by taking the ball, gett a yard or two, wind the clock.

Look at the production and the production per game. Don't be that guy that says "yeah he got 170 yards but he had to carry it 37 times. He got 170 yards man.

 
I have the 2nd pick in my draft and Im fairly certain that I will not be using it on Foster. Don't get me wrong, I like the guy and think he will have a strong season, but he was rode hard last year. Everyone knows this, including the coaching staff. Tate may very well be the best backup in the league. I can't imagine the coaching staff not utilizing him liberally this season to help share the load, insulating Foster for a playoff run. Foster will still finish among the top backs IMO, but I think ADP, Martin and Charles (ppr) have better odds at my pick.

 
I'm seeing this stuff so much that I really wonder if some of you guys actually are believing this or if you are fishing to try to get the perception of Foster down so you can snag him. Instead of this speculaiton about "Oh my GOD, so many carries, YPC is plummenting", why don't we talk about some facts.

-The guy is 26 years old. 26 year old athletes can do a lot and bounce back pretty quickly.

-He is THE key piece that his entire offense's principles are built around.

Normally, in FF, these are the guys that everyone drools to try to find but for some reason, people are actually holding that against Foster.

-He has about 20 more carries than Adrian Peterson over the last three years and about 60 maybe more than Rice in that span but for some reason that is detrimental to Foster yet people can't see anything except #1 for Peterson, despite the fact that history clearly tells us that when a back has a 2000 yard season, only twice in the history of the NFL has a RB came back the next year to play in all the games. So, everyone wants to cite history on the big carries to pull Foster down but they want to completely ignore that same information plus the additonal info re: 2k seasons when it is another player. And just for fun, let's ignore the fact that, for the career, the guy that no one ever seems to have a "concern" about is 2 years older, has 700+ more career carries on his tires.

-He played with an entirely new right hand side of his o-line last year and those players missed games during the year. Doesn't anyone think that when they look at his stats and see that his rushes to the right slid last year, that there might be a correlation there (production to right is less...players on the right injured and new...any connection?). We talk all the time about the horrible Cardinals line and the horrible Chargers line and we can see clearly how it affects those teams but somehow nobody notices this aspect with theTexans?

So if we can explain these things, then it must be production you guys are worried about, right? Well, he's been a top 1-4 Rb for about three years straight now; normally that is something people seek and not avoid in a young RB. People like production and consistency and youth...normally.

So maybe its more about quality from that position? Well, if someone told me that, from a RB, a pretty good day is either

- 150 rushing yards

-100+rushing yards with a TD

-or some rushing yards and 2 TDs

I would say, yeah, that's pretty good produciton no matter how you slice it because that puts me in that 18-20+ point range that top RBs produce.

Ok, so, if someone told me "Did you know that for the last three years, Arian Foster has led the league in that stat?" I would have to say, "well then, I guess he has been the type of guy I would want."

For reference, Foster hit that number 11 times last year while guys like Calvin hit it 6 times. In the last two seasons, Foster has hit that number about 70% of the time while guys like Peterson are well under 50%.

I didn't mean to turn this into a comparison against Peterson so much but did so just to show that, against what everyone considers to be the gold standard, Foster is right there, has been right there, and there is nothing in your crystal balls that indicate otherwise that doesn't also apply to the gold standard (and even more so towards the gold standard actually).

Yet, somehow, someway, people are hell bent on manufacturing the news instead of just observing it. Talkin about whether or not I would be interested in drafting Arian Foster? My God.
I am less concerned about his workload than I am with his constant injuries in the preseason and his yards per carry decrease.

2010 - 5.0 ypc

2011 - 4.4 ypc

2012 - 4.0 ypc

Yards per receptions

2010 - 9.2

2011 - 11.6

2012 - 5.4???

4.0 ypc and 5.4 ypr are awful numbers.

The coaches already said they will not allow Foster to get as many carries as last year, so hopefully his awful ypc can increase.
Arian Foster's career yard per attempt is higher than Emmitt Smith, Ladanian Tomlinson, Curtis Martin and about 90% of any other RB ever.
While that is cool, it is not relevant to my post. His ypc have decreased. They will need to go up because he will receive less carries this year.

4.0 will not cut it.

It also does not contradict that his ypc have decreased each of the last three years.
Adrian peterson's YPC fell in his 2nd and 3rd year in the league.

Barry Sander's YPC fell for three or four straight years.

Again, this is not a point to live and die on. We could go back and look at some games and I guarantee you we will see several games where a 19/115 (6.3 ypc) day turned into a 27/123 (4.5) type of day just based on the sole fact that Tate was not in a lot of these games and there were games where they simply just let him kill the clock by taking the ball, gett a yard or two, wind the clock.

Look at the production and the production per game. Don't be that guy that says "yeah he got 170 yards but he had to carry it 37 times. He got 170 yards man.
This is true but to dismiss it is not reasonable. The more they used him, the more his production/efficiency fell.

Peterson's ypc fell from 5.6 to 4.8. 4.8 is good. Foster's 4.0 is not. This is where the numbers matter.

Barry Sanders never had a season with 4.0 ypc. His lowest was 4.3.

Efficiency is what matters. When a coach said they will not give you the rock as many times, his production WILL fall if he does not increase his ypc.

300 carries at 4.0 is 1200 yds rushing.

I am no saying Foster is bad, I just would not use a top 4 picks on him.

 
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Probably not. I had him #4 on my board for awhile, but I recently bumped him down to #6...which basically means I won't own him.

I don't shy away from declaring he is clearly a Top 4 guy (Peterson, Foster, Martin, Charles) and there is nothing wrong with taking him 2nd-4th (usually on other boards or IRL, I don't need to tell the SP this kind of thing lol).

But he's just not for me this year.

 
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I have the 2nd pick in my draft and Im fairly certain that I will not be using it on Foster. Don't get me wrong, I like the guy and think he will have a strong season, but he was rode hard last year. Everyone knows this, including the coaching staff. Tate may very well be the best backup in the league. I can't imagine the coaching staff not utilizing him liberally this season to help share the load, insulating Foster for a playoff run. Foster will still finish among the top backs IMO, but I think ADP, Martin and Charles (ppr) have better odds at my pick.
Is the point of FF still to score the most points?

Historically, even when Tate was completely healthy, Foster has been the ball carrier about 74% of the time, which is a true bell cow, high number. Even if they scale that number back, he is still going to be at a number that is as high as most any other back in the league but with the additional inputs of

-he catches the ball also (for ppr)

-the Texans are likely to run the ball more than any of the teams you mentioned.

At the end of the day, his opportunity is still greater than almost any RB you can think of and opportunity transitions into points and points is what it all boils down to.

If I could draft a RB that I knew would only get 60 carries a year but I knew that he was on a team that was likely to give him 48 of those carries at the goal line, there is still more value in that player than some guy somewhere else because of the points.

If people are reading into the Texans' statements thinking the Texans intend to put kid gloves on their best chance to get to a Super Bowl, They are wrong. There is a business here with jobs on the line and a rapidly closing window. The Texans will run Arian Foster.

 
I'm seeing this stuff so much that I really wonder if some of you guys actually are believing this or if you are fishing to try to get the perception of Foster down so you can snag him. Instead of this speculaiton about "Oh my GOD, so many carries, YPC is plummenting", why don't we talk about some facts.

-The guy is 26 years old. 26 year old athletes can do a lot and bounce back pretty quickly.

-He is THE key piece that his entire offense's principles are built around.

Normally, in FF, these are the guys that everyone drools to try to find but for some reason, people are actually holding that against Foster.

-He has about 20 more carries than Adrian Peterson over the last three years and about 60 maybe more than Rice in that span but for some reason that is detrimental to Foster yet people can't see anything except #1 for Peterson, despite the fact that history clearly tells us that when a back has a 2000 yard season, only twice in the history of the NFL has a RB came back the next year to play in all the games. So, everyone wants to cite history on the big carries to pull Foster down but they want to completely ignore that same information plus the additonal info re: 2k seasons when it is another player. And just for fun, let's ignore the fact that, for the career, the guy that no one ever seems to have a "concern" about is 2 years older, has 700+ more career carries on his tires.

-He played with an entirely new right hand side of his o-line last year and those players missed games during the year. Doesn't anyone think that when they look at his stats and see that his rushes to the right slid last year, that there might be a correlation there (production to right is less...players on the right injured and new...any connection?). We talk all the time about the horrible Cardinals line and the horrible Chargers line and we can see clearly how it affects those teams but somehow nobody notices this aspect with theTexans?

So if we can explain these things, then it must be production you guys are worried about, right? Well, he's been a top 1-4 Rb for about three years straight now; normally that is something people seek and not avoid in a young RB. People like production and consistency and youth...normally.

So maybe its more about quality from that position? Well, if someone told me that, from a RB, a pretty good day is either

- 150 rushing yards

-100+rushing yards with a TD

-or some rushing yards and 2 TDs

I would say, yeah, that's pretty good produciton no matter how you slice it because that puts me in that 18-20+ point range that top RBs produce.

Ok, so, if someone told me "Did you know that for the last three years, Arian Foster has led the league in that stat?" I would have to say, "well then, I guess he has been the type of guy I would want."

For reference, Foster hit that number 11 times last year while guys like Calvin hit it 6 times. In the last two seasons, Foster has hit that number about 70% of the time while guys like Peterson are well under 50%.

I didn't mean to turn this into a comparison against Peterson so much but did so just to show that, against what everyone considers to be the gold standard, Foster is right there, has been right there, and there is nothing in your crystal balls that indicate otherwise that doesn't also apply to the gold standard (and even more so towards the gold standard actually).

Yet, somehow, someway, people are hell bent on manufacturing the news instead of just observing it. Talkin about whether or not I would be interested in drafting Arian Foster? My God.
I am less concerned about his workload than I am with his constant injuries in the preseason and his yards per carry decrease.

2010 - 5.0 ypc

2011 - 4.4 ypc

2012 - 4.0 ypc

Yards per receptions

2010 - 9.2

2011 - 11.6

2012 - 5.4???

4.0 ypc and 5.4 ypr are awful numbers.

The coaches already said they will not allow Foster to get as many carries as last year, so hopefully his awful ypc can increase.
Arian Foster's career yard per attempt is higher than Emmitt Smith, Ladanian Tomlinson, Curtis Martin and about 90% of any other RB ever.
While that is cool, it is not relevant to my post. His ypc have decreased. They will need to go up because he will receive less carries this year.

4.0 will not cut it.

It also does not contradict that his ypc have decreased each of the last three years.
Adrian peterson's YPC fell in his 2nd and 3rd year in the league.

Barry Sander's YPC fell for three or four straight years.

Again, this is not a point to live and die on. We could go back and look at some games and I guarantee you we will see several games where a 19/115 (6.3 ypc) day turned into a 27/123 (4.5) type of day just based on the sole fact that Tate was not in a lot of these games and there were games where they simply just let him kill the clock by taking the ball, gett a yard or two, wind the clock.

Look at the production and the production per game. Don't be that guy that says "yeah he got 170 yards but he had to carry it 37 times. He got 170 yards man.
This is true but to dismiss it is not reasonable. The more they used him, the more his production/efficiency fell.

Peterson's fell from 5.6 to 4.8. 4.8 is good. Foster's 4.0 is not. This is where the numbers matter.

Barry Sanders never had a season with 4.0 ypc. His lowest was 4.3.

No. Efficiency is what matters. When a coach said they will not give you the rock as many times, his production WILL fall if he does not increase his ypc.

300 carries at 4.0 is 1200 yds rushing.

I am no saying Foster is bad, I just won't use my top 4 picks on him.
Ok, I give up with you. Ignore the best RB in the league over the last three years over semantics and look at his points at the end of the year. Anything can happen but you are more likely to be wrong than right, given proven history. Looking for trends is one thing. Manufacturing news is another. Go back and look at every guy that you will put above him and run the reverse. SHow us all their trends. Are they coming off a heavy workload? a 2k season which historically is not a good trend? Are they, themselves, improving their ypc every year? Spin it the other way and make your case for why player X looks better and then after you have done all that, go to the facts: Where did these guys rank for the last three years?

 
I'm seeing this stuff so much that I really wonder if some of you guys actually are believing this or if you are fishing to try to get the perception of Foster down so you can snag him. Instead of this speculaiton about "Oh my GOD, so many carries, YPC is plummenting", why don't we talk about some facts.

-The guy is 26 years old. 26 year old athletes can do a lot and bounce back pretty quickly.

-He is THE key piece that his entire offense's principles are built around.

Normally, in FF, these are the guys that everyone drools to try to find but for some reason, people are actually holding that against Foster.

-He has about 20 more carries than Adrian Peterson over the last three years and about 60 maybe more than Rice in that span but for some reason that is detrimental to Foster yet people can't see anything except #1 for Peterson, despite the fact that history clearly tells us that when a back has a 2000 yard season, only twice in the history of the NFL has a RB came back the next year to play in all the games. So, everyone wants to cite history on the big carries to pull Foster down but they want to completely ignore that same information plus the additonal info re: 2k seasons when it is another player. And just for fun, let's ignore the fact that, for the career, the guy that no one ever seems to have a "concern" about is 2 years older, has 700+ more career carries on his tires.

-He played with an entirely new right hand side of his o-line last year and those players missed games during the year. Doesn't anyone think that when they look at his stats and see that his rushes to the right slid last year, that there might be a correlation there (production to right is less...players on the right injured and new...any connection?). We talk all the time about the horrible Cardinals line and the horrible Chargers line and we can see clearly how it affects those teams but somehow nobody notices this aspect with theTexans?

So if we can explain these things, then it must be production you guys are worried about, right? Well, he's been a top 1-4 Rb for about three years straight now; normally that is something people seek and not avoid in a young RB. People like production and consistency and youth...normally.

So maybe its more about quality from that position? Well, if someone told me that, from a RB, a pretty good day is either

- 150 rushing yards

-100+rushing yards with a TD

-or some rushing yards and 2 TDs

I would say, yeah, that's pretty good produciton no matter how you slice it because that puts me in that 18-20+ point range that top RBs produce.

Ok, so, if someone told me "Did you know that for the last three years, Arian Foster has led the league in that stat?" I would have to say, "well then, I guess he has been the type of guy I would want."

For reference, Foster hit that number 11 times last year while guys like Calvin hit it 6 times. In the last two seasons, Foster has hit that number about 70% of the time while guys like Peterson are well under 50%.

I didn't mean to turn this into a comparison against Peterson so much but did so just to show that, against what everyone considers to be the gold standard, Foster is right there, has been right there, and there is nothing in your crystal balls that indicate otherwise that doesn't also apply to the gold standard (and even more so towards the gold standard actually).

Yet, somehow, someway, people are hell bent on manufacturing the news instead of just observing it. Talkin about whether or not I would be interested in drafting Arian Foster? My God.
I am less concerned about his workload than I am with his constant injuries in the preseason and his yards per carry decrease.

2010 - 5.0 ypc

2011 - 4.4 ypc

2012 - 4.0 ypc

Yards per receptions

2010 - 9.2

2011 - 11.6

2012 - 5.4???

4.0 ypc and 5.4 ypr are awful numbers.

The coaches already said they will not allow Foster to get as many carries as last year, so hopefully his awful ypc can increase.
Arian Foster's career yard per attempt is higher than Emmitt Smith, Ladanian Tomlinson, Curtis Martin and about 90% of any other RB ever.
While that is cool, it is not relevant to my post. His ypc have decreased. They will need to go up because he will receive less carries this year.

4.0 will not cut it.

It also does not contradict that his ypc have decreased each of the last three years.
Adrian peterson's YPC fell in his 2nd and 3rd year in the league.

Barry Sander's YPC fell for three or four straight years.

Again, this is not a point to live and die on. We could go back and look at some games and I guarantee you we will see several games where a 19/115 (6.3 ypc) day turned into a 27/123 (4.5) type of day just based on the sole fact that Tate was not in a lot of these games and there were games where they simply just let him kill the clock by taking the ball, gett a yard or two, wind the clock.

Look at the production and the production per game. Don't be that guy that says "yeah he got 170 yards but he had to carry it 37 times. He got 170 yards man.
This is true but to dismiss it is not reasonable. The more they used him, the more his production/efficiency fell.

Peterson's fell from 5.6 to 4.8. 4.8 is good. Foster's 4.0 is not. This is where the numbers matter.

Barry Sanders never had a season with 4.0 ypc. His lowest was 4.3.

No. Efficiency is what matters. When a coach said they will not give you the rock as many times, his production WILL fall if he does not increase his ypc.

300 carries at 4.0 is 1200 yds rushing.

I am no saying Foster is bad, I just won't use my top 4 picks on him.
Ok, I give up with you. Ignore the best RB in the league over the last three years over semantics and look at his points at the end of the year. Anything can happen but you are more likely to be wrong than right, given proven history. Looking for trends is one thing. Manufacturing news is another. Go back and look at every guy that you will put above him and run the reverse. SHow us all their trends. Are they coming off a heavy workload? a 2k season which historically is not a good trend? Are they, themselves, improving their ypc every year? Spin it the other way and make your case for why player X looks better and then after you have done all that, go to the facts: Where did these guys rank for the last three years?
You give up because all of your points were rebutted.

Peterson and Sanders have decreased ypc but NEVER to the point that Foster has. They never have had 4.0. What is there to argue? I am not twisting his stats. That's what he did.

Looking at total numbers is not the most reasonable argument, or else we can just use last year's numbers and draft across every position.

When you see a trend, it is not the best idea to just ignore it; embrace it and adjust accordingly.

I am not saying Foster is not a top 6 back. Again, just that I would not use the first 4 picks on him.

 
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Shutout, you're doin' work here. The biggest reason these threads still pop up is that for some reason people still refuse to believe in Foster's talent, situation, and track record, I guess because he wasn't a first or second round pick. Since Morris was also an unheralded prospect, I expect him to get the same treatment if he turns in another superstar season.

 
I'd much rather draft a guy who might only get 250 carries than draft a guy who has shown the ability to have 350.

 
I have the 2nd pick in my draft and Im fairly certain that I will not be using it on Foster. Don't get me wrong, I like the guy and think he will have a strong season, but he was rode hard last year. Everyone knows this, including the coaching staff. Tate may very well be the best backup in the league. I can't imagine the coaching staff not utilizing him liberally this season to help share the load, insulating Foster for a playoff run. Foster will still finish among the top backs IMO, but I think ADP, Martin and Charles (ppr) have better odds at my pick.
Is the point of FF still to score the most points?

Historically, even when Tate was completely healthy, Foster has been the ball carrier about 74% of the time, which is a true bell cow, high number. Even if they scale that number back, he is still going to be at a number that is as high as most any other back in the league but with the additional inputs of

-he catches the ball also (for ppr)

-the Texans are likely to run the ball more than any of the teams you mentioned.

At the end of the day, his opportunity is still greater than almost any RB you can think of and opportunity transitions into points and points is what it all boils down to.

If I could draft a RB that I knew would only get 60 carries a year but I knew that he was on a team that was likely to give him 48 of those carries at the goal line, there is still more value in that player than some guy somewhere else because of the points.

If people are reading into the Texans' statements thinking the Texans intend to put kid gloves on their best chance to get to a Super Bowl, They are wrong. There is a business here with jobs on the line and a rapidly closing window. The Texans will run Arian Foster.

ADP, Martin and Charles won't be bell cows for their respective teams? Who exactly is going to bite into any of their production? Minnesota and TB are both run first teams, whose offensive success will run solely through their lead backs with no one else to help share the load. Unless of course you think Hillis still has something left in the tank. Everyone has seen how Reid likes to use his backs. While Charles won't approach the number of carries that the other three will get, he'll see a ton of balls thrown his way. With his ability in space, he has the potential to be a ppr monster. Foster will still get a very heavy workload. I'm not arguing that, but if they have a lead int he second half of games and IMO they likely will in several, why would you not save your bell cow's legs for your playoff run? That's just good strategy and it's a luxury that the Texans have that the other three teams do not.
 
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I'm seeing this stuff so much that I really wonder if some of you guys actually are believing this or if you are fishing to try to get the perception of Foster down so you can snag him. Instead of this speculaiton about "Oh my GOD, so many carries, YPC is plummenting", why don't we talk about some facts.

-The guy is 26 years old. 26 year old athletes can do a lot and bounce back pretty quickly.

-He is THE key piece that his entire offense's principles are built around.

Normally, in FF, these are the guys that everyone drools to try to find but for some reason, people are actually holding that against Foster.

-He has about 20 more carries than Adrian Peterson over the last three years and about 60 maybe more than Rice in that span but for some reason that is detrimental to Foster yet people can't see anything except #1 for Peterson, despite the fact that history clearly tells us that when a back has a 2000 yard season, only twice in the history of the NFL has a RB came back the next year to play in all the games. So, everyone wants to cite history on the big carries to pull Foster down but they want to completely ignore that same information plus the additonal info re: 2k seasons when it is another player. And just for fun, let's ignore the fact that, for the career, the guy that no one ever seems to have a "concern" about is 2 years older, has 700+ more career carries on his tires.

-He played with an entirely new right hand side of his o-line last year and those players missed games during the year. Doesn't anyone think that when they look at his stats and see that his rushes to the right slid last year, that there might be a correlation there (production to right is less...players on the right injured and new...any connection?). We talk all the time about the horrible Cardinals line and the horrible Chargers line and we can see clearly how it affects those teams but somehow nobody notices this aspect with theTexans?

So if we can explain these things, then it must be production you guys are worried about, right? Well, he's been a top 1-4 Rb for about three years straight now; normally that is something people seek and not avoid in a young RB. People like production and consistency and youth...normally.

So maybe its more about quality from that position? Well, if someone told me that, from a RB, a pretty good day is either

- 150 rushing yards

-100+rushing yards with a TD

-or some rushing yards and 2 TDs

I would say, yeah, that's pretty good produciton no matter how you slice it because that puts me in that 18-20+ point range that top RBs produce.

Ok, so, if someone told me "Did you know that for the last three years, Arian Foster has led the league in that stat?" I would have to say, "well then, I guess he has been the type of guy I would want."

For reference, Foster hit that number 11 times last year while guys like Calvin hit it 6 times. In the last two seasons, Foster has hit that number about 70% of the time while guys like Peterson are well under 50%.

I didn't mean to turn this into a comparison against Peterson so much but did so just to show that, against what everyone considers to be the gold standard, Foster is right there, has been right there, and there is nothing in your crystal balls that indicate otherwise that doesn't also apply to the gold standard (and even more so towards the gold standard actually).

Yet, somehow, someway, people are hell bent on manufacturing the news instead of just observing it. Talkin about whether or not I would be interested in drafting Arian Foster? My God.
I am less concerned about his workload than I am with his constant injuries in the preseason and his yards per carry decrease.

2010 - 5.0 ypc

2011 - 4.4 ypc

2012 - 4.0 ypc

Yards per receptions

2010 - 9.2

2011 - 11.6

2012 - 5.4???

4.0 ypc and 5.4 ypr are awful numbers.

The coaches already said they will not allow Foster to get as many carries as last year, so hopefully his awful ypc can increase.
Arian Foster's career yard per attempt is higher than Emmitt Smith, Ladanian Tomlinson, Curtis Martin and about 90% of any other RB ever.
While that is cool, it is not relevant to my post. His ypc have decreased. They will need to go up because he will receive less carries this year.

4.0 will not cut it.

It also does not contradict that his ypc have decreased each of the last three years.
Adrian peterson's YPC fell in his 2nd and 3rd year in the league.

Barry Sander's YPC fell for three or four straight years.

Again, this is not a point to live and die on. We could go back and look at some games and I guarantee you we will see several games where a 19/115 (6.3 ypc) day turned into a 27/123 (4.5) type of day just based on the sole fact that Tate was not in a lot of these games and there were games where they simply just let him kill the clock by taking the ball, gett a yard or two, wind the clock.

Look at the production and the production per game. Don't be that guy that says "yeah he got 170 yards but he had to carry it 37 times. He got 170 yards man.
This is true but to dismiss it is not reasonable. The more they used him, the more his production/efficiency fell.

Peterson's fell from 5.6 to 4.8. 4.8 is good. Foster's 4.0 is not. This is where the numbers matter.

Barry Sanders never had a season with 4.0 ypc. His lowest was 4.3.

No. Efficiency is what matters. When a coach said they will not give you the rock as many times, his production WILL fall if he does not increase his ypc.

300 carries at 4.0 is 1200 yds rushing.

I am no saying Foster is bad, I just won't use my top 4 picks on him.
Ok, I give up with you. Ignore the best RB in the league over the last three years over semantics and look at his points at the end of the year. Anything can happen but you are more likely to be wrong than right, given proven history. Looking for trends is one thing. Manufacturing news is another. Go back and look at every guy that you will put above him and run the reverse. SHow us all their trends. Are they coming off a heavy workload? a 2k season which historically is not a good trend? Are they, themselves, improving their ypc every year? Spin it the other way and make your case for why player X looks better and then after you have done all that, go to the facts: Where did these guys rank for the last three years?
You give up because all of your points were rebutted.

Peterson and Sanders have decreased ypc but NEVER to the point that Foster has. They never have had 4.0. What is there to argue? I am not twisting his stats. That's what he did.

Looking at total numbers is not the most reasonable argument, or else we can just use last year's numbers and draft across every position.

When you see a trend, it is not the best idea to just ignore it; embrace it and adjust accordingly.

I am not saying Foster is not a top 6 back. Again, just that I would not use the first 4 picks on him.
No, I'm giving up with you because as the man says in the movies, "What we've got here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it. Well, he gets it."

I don't come here to argue or sell cars. Everyone can carry their own opinions. I'm just sharing mine from the perspective of a guy that has watched every Arian Foster game he has played with the Texans and telling you that you are missing something here.

 
Shutout, you're doin' work here. The biggest reason these threads still pop up is that for some reason people still refuse to believe in Foster's talent, situation, and track record, I guess because he wasn't a first or second round pick. Since Morris was also an unheralded prospect, I expect him to get the same treatment if he turns in another superstar season.
I think you are exactly correct. It sounds like conspiracy theory, I admit, but I have long thought that a big part of the reason why there was so much reisistance against Foster in the beginning was because he just "wasn't supposed to do this". People don't like to feel stupid. So they crush it. Then in year 2 they say "show me again. THen in year 3, they say "well..umm...show me again." Then in year 4 they say, "well, he's old and used." Isn't that is what is supposed to happen to the great ones? They hang around long enough to age and get used?

 
I have the 2nd pick in my draft and Im fairly certain that I will not be using it on Foster. Don't get me wrong, I like the guy and think he will have a strong season, but he was rode hard last year. Everyone knows this, including the coaching staff. Tate may very well be the best backup in the league. I can't imagine the coaching staff not utilizing him liberally this season to help share the load, insulating Foster for a playoff run. Foster will still finish among the top backs IMO, but I think ADP, Martin and Charles (ppr) have better odds at my pick.
Is the point of FF still to score the most points?

Historically, even when Tate was completely healthy, Foster has been the ball carrier about 74% of the time, which is a true bell cow, high number. Even if they scale that number back, he is still going to be at a number that is as high as most any other back in the league but with the additional inputs of

-he catches the ball also (for ppr)

-the Texans are likely to run the ball more than any of the teams you mentioned.

At the end of the day, his opportunity is still greater than almost any RB you can think of and opportunity transitions into points and points is what it all boils down to.

If I could draft a RB that I knew would only get 60 carries a year but I knew that he was on a team that was likely to give him 48 of those carries at the goal line, there is still more value in that player than some guy somewhere else because of the points.

If people are reading into the Texans' statements thinking the Texans intend to put kid gloves on their best chance to get to a Super Bowl, They are wrong. There is a business here with jobs on the line and a rapidly closing window. The Texans will run Arian Foster.

ADP, Martin and Charles won't be bell cows for their respective teams? Who exactly is going to bite into any of their production? Minnesota and TB are both run first teams, whose offensive success will run solely through their lead backs with no one else to help share the load. Unless of course you think Hillis still has something left in the tank. Everyone has seen how Reid likes to use his backs. While Charles won't approach the number of carries that the other three will get, he'll see a ton of balls thrown his way. With his ability in space, he has the potential to be a ppr monster. Foster will still get a very heavy workload. I'm not arguing that, but if they have a lead int he second half of games and IMO they likely will in several, why would you not save your bell cow's legs for your playoff run? That's just good strategy and it's a luxury that the Texans have that the other three teams do not.
Didn't the Vikings make the palyoffs last year? Arent the Bucs a contender for a playoff spot? I don't get how the Texans will save their guy and the Vikes and Bucs won't. I don't think wins are as easy in the NFL as you make it out to be. I'm looking at a 3 game stretch the Texans have in 2013 against the Seahawks, niners, and Ravens. Patriots once, Broncos once, Colts twice. So where are all these games they wil be coasting along and showing pan shots of Foster laughing as he sips Gatorade and points at the scoreboard and its 34-17?

 
I'm seeing this stuff so much that I really wonder if some of you guys actually are believing this or if you are fishing to try to get the perception of Foster down so you can snag him. Instead of this speculaiton about "Oh my GOD, so many carries, YPC is plummenting", why don't we talk about some facts.

-The guy is 26 years old. 26 year old athletes can do a lot and bounce back pretty quickly.

-He is THE key piece that his entire offense's principles are built around.

Normally, in FF, these are the guys that everyone drools to try to find but for some reason, people are actually holding that against Foster.

-He has about 20 more carries than Adrian Peterson over the last three years and about 60 maybe more than Rice in that span but for some reason that is detrimental to Foster yet people can't see anything except #1 for Peterson, despite the fact that history clearly tells us that when a back has a 2000 yard season, only twice in the history of the NFL has a RB came back the next year to play in all the games. So, everyone wants to cite history on the big carries to pull Foster down but they want to completely ignore that same information plus the additonal info re: 2k seasons when it is another player. And just for fun, let's ignore the fact that, for the career, the guy that no one ever seems to have a "concern" about is 2 years older, has 700+ more career carries on his tires.

-He played with an entirely new right hand side of his o-line last year and those players missed games during the year. Doesn't anyone think that when they look at his stats and see that his rushes to the right slid last year, that there might be a correlation there (production to right is less...players on the right injured and new...any connection?). We talk all the time about the horrible Cardinals line and the horrible Chargers line and we can see clearly how it affects those teams but somehow nobody notices this aspect with theTexans?

So if we can explain these things, then it must be production you guys are worried about, right? Well, he's been a top 1-4 Rb for about three years straight now; normally that is something people seek and not avoid in a young RB. People like production and consistency and youth...normally.

So maybe its more about quality from that position? Well, if someone told me that, from a RB, a pretty good day is either

- 150 rushing yards

-100+rushing yards with a TD

-or some rushing yards and 2 TDs

I would say, yeah, that's pretty good produciton no matter how you slice it because that puts me in that 18-20+ point range that top RBs produce.

Ok, so, if someone told me "Did you know that for the last three years, Arian Foster has led the league in that stat?" I would have to say, "well then, I guess he has been the type of guy I would want."

For reference, Foster hit that number 11 times last year while guys like Calvin hit it 6 times. In the last two seasons, Foster has hit that number about 70% of the time while guys like Peterson are well under 50%.

I didn't mean to turn this into a comparison against Peterson so much but did so just to show that, against what everyone considers to be the gold standard, Foster is right there, has been right there, and there is nothing in your crystal balls that indicate otherwise that doesn't also apply to the gold standard (and even more so towards the gold standard actually).

Yet, somehow, someway, people are hell bent on manufacturing the news instead of just observing it. Talkin about whether or not I would be interested in drafting Arian Foster? My God.
I am less concerned about his workload than I am with his constant injuries in the preseason and his yards per carry decrease.

2010 - 5.0 ypc

2011 - 4.4 ypc

2012 - 4.0 ypc

Yards per receptions

2010 - 9.2

2011 - 11.6

2012 - 5.4???

4.0 ypc and 5.4 ypr are awful numbers.

The coaches already said they will not allow Foster to get as many carries as last year, so hopefully his awful ypc can increase.
Arian Foster's career yard per attempt is higher than Emmitt Smith, Ladanian Tomlinson, Curtis Martin and about 90% of any other RB ever.
While that is cool, it is not relevant to my post. His ypc have decreased. They will need to go up because he will receive less carries this year.

4.0 will not cut it.

It also does not contradict that his ypc have decreased each of the last three years.
Adrian peterson's YPC fell in his 2nd and 3rd year in the league.

Barry Sander's YPC fell for three or four straight years.

Again, this is not a point to live and die on. We could go back and look at some games and I guarantee you we will see several games where a 19/115 (6.3 ypc) day turned into a 27/123 (4.5) type of day just based on the sole fact that Tate was not in a lot of these games and there were games where they simply just let him kill the clock by taking the ball, gett a yard or two, wind the clock.

Look at the production and the production per game. Don't be that guy that says "yeah he got 170 yards but he had to carry it 37 times. He got 170 yards man.
This is true but to dismiss it is not reasonable. The more they used him, the more his production/efficiency fell.

Peterson's fell from 5.6 to 4.8. 4.8 is good. Foster's 4.0 is not. This is where the numbers matter.

Barry Sanders never had a season with 4.0 ypc. His lowest was 4.3.

No. Efficiency is what matters. When a coach said they will not give you the rock as many times, his production WILL fall if he does not increase his ypc.

300 carries at 4.0 is 1200 yds rushing.

I am no saying Foster is bad, I just won't use my top 4 picks on him.
Ok, I give up with you. Ignore the best RB in the league over the last three years over semantics and look at his points at the end of the year. Anything can happen but you are more likely to be wrong than right, given proven history. Looking for trends is one thing. Manufacturing news is another. Go back and look at every guy that you will put above him and run the reverse. SHow us all their trends. Are they coming off a heavy workload? a 2k season which historically is not a good trend? Are they, themselves, improving their ypc every year? Spin it the other way and make your case for why player X looks better and then after you have done all that, go to the facts: Where did these guys rank for the last three years?
You give up because all of your points were rebutted.

Peterson and Sanders have decreased ypc but NEVER to the point that Foster has. They never have had 4.0. What is there to argue? I am not twisting his stats. That's what he did.

Looking at total numbers is not the most reasonable argument, or else we can just use last year's numbers and draft across every position.

When you see a trend, it is not the best idea to just ignore it; embrace it and adjust accordingly.

I am not saying Foster is not a top 6 back. Again, just that I would not use the first 4 picks on him.
AP/Barry Sanders, I dunno about you guys but I don't win FF championships based on the amount of HOF players I have. Who cares.

Foster averaged 4.1 YPC last year, not the 4.0 you continue to cite.

So why would Foster's YPC go down the last 2 years?

Vonta Leach, ever see him block...stud, he left after the 2010 season.

Eric Winston, arguably the best RT at the time, he left after the 2011 season. He got replaced by a 7th round kid out of Arkansas State.

Remember that stat Shutout was talking about on the right side.

When running outside on the right Foster averaged 3.5 YPC, outside to the left 4.8.

Shutout talked about getting carries late in games. Here is his YPC by quarter:

1=4.3

2=4.7

3=3.9

4=3.3

Might be something to what he's saying. I know I watched the Houston/Chicago game and they forcefed Foster 29 carries(3.5 only). This was due to junky conditions, but he won them the game and Chicago went all out to stop the run.

 
I'm seeing this stuff so much that I really wonder if some of you guys actually are believing this or if you are fishing to try to get the perception of Foster down so you can snag him. Instead of this speculaiton about "Oh my GOD, so many carries, YPC is plummenting", why don't we talk about some facts.

-The guy is 26 years old. 26 year old athletes can do a lot and bounce back pretty quickly.

-He is THE key piece that his entire offense's principles are built around.

Normally, in FF, these are the guys that everyone drools to try to find but for some reason, people are actually holding that against Foster.

-He has about 20 more carries than Adrian Peterson over the last three years and about 60 maybe more than Rice in that span but for some reason that is detrimental to Foster yet people can't see anything except #1 for Peterson, despite the fact that history clearly tells us that when a back has a 2000 yard season, only twice in the history of the NFL has a RB came back the next year to play in all the games. So, everyone wants to cite history on the big carries to pull Foster down but they want to completely ignore that same information plus the additonal info re: 2k seasons when it is another player. And just for fun, let's ignore the fact that, for the career, the guy that no one ever seems to have a "concern" about is 2 years older, has 700+ more career carries on his tires.

-He played with an entirely new right hand side of his o-line last year and those players missed games during the year. Doesn't anyone think that when they look at his stats and see that his rushes to the right slid last year, that there might be a correlation there (production to right is less...players on the right injured and new...any connection?). We talk all the time about the horrible Cardinals line and the horrible Chargers line and we can see clearly how it affects those teams but somehow nobody notices this aspect with theTexans?

So if we can explain these things, then it must be production you guys are worried about, right? Well, he's been a top 1-4 Rb for about three years straight now; normally that is something people seek and not avoid in a young RB. People like production and consistency and youth...normally.

So maybe its more about quality from that position? Well, if someone told me that, from a RB, a pretty good day is either

- 150 rushing yards

-100+rushing yards with a TD

-or some rushing yards and 2 TDs

I would say, yeah, that's pretty good produciton no matter how you slice it because that puts me in that 18-20+ point range that top RBs produce.

Ok, so, if someone told me "Did you know that for the last three years, Arian Foster has led the league in that stat?" I would have to say, "well then, I guess he has been the type of guy I would want."

For reference, Foster hit that number 11 times last year while guys like Calvin hit it 6 times. In the last two seasons, Foster has hit that number about 70% of the time while guys like Peterson are well under 50%.

I didn't mean to turn this into a comparison against Peterson so much but did so just to show that, against what everyone considers to be the gold standard, Foster is right there, has been right there, and there is nothing in your crystal balls that indicate otherwise that doesn't also apply to the gold standard (and even more so towards the gold standard actually).

Yet, somehow, someway, people are hell bent on manufacturing the news instead of just observing it. Talkin about whether or not I would be interested in drafting Arian Foster? My God.
I am less concerned about his workload than I am with his constant injuries in the preseason and his yards per carry decrease.

2010 - 5.0 ypc

2011 - 4.4 ypc

2012 - 4.0 ypc

Yards per receptions

2010 - 9.2

2011 - 11.6

2012 - 5.4???

4.0 ypc and 5.4 ypr are awful numbers.

The coaches already said they will not allow Foster to get as many carries as last year, so hopefully his awful ypc can increase.
Arian Foster's career yard per attempt is higher than Emmitt Smith, Ladanian Tomlinson, Curtis Martin and about 90% of any other RB ever.
While that is cool, it is not relevant to my post. His ypc have decreased. They will need to go up because he will receive less carries this year.

4.0 will not cut it.

It also does not contradict that his ypc have decreased each of the last three years.
Adrian peterson's YPC fell in his 2nd and 3rd year in the league.

Barry Sander's YPC fell for three or four straight years.

Again, this is not a point to live and die on. We could go back and look at some games and I guarantee you we will see several games where a 19/115 (6.3 ypc) day turned into a 27/123 (4.5) type of day just based on the sole fact that Tate was not in a lot of these games and there were games where they simply just let him kill the clock by taking the ball, gett a yard or two, wind the clock.

Look at the production and the production per game. Don't be that guy that says "yeah he got 170 yards but he had to carry it 37 times. He got 170 yards man.
This is true but to dismiss it is not reasonable. The more they used him, the more his production/efficiency fell.

Peterson's fell from 5.6 to 4.8. 4.8 is good. Foster's 4.0 is not. This is where the numbers matter.

Barry Sanders never had a season with 4.0 ypc. His lowest was 4.3.

No. Efficiency is what matters. When a coach said they will not give you the rock as many times, his production WILL fall if he does not increase his ypc.

300 carries at 4.0 is 1200 yds rushing.

I am no saying Foster is bad, I just won't use my top 4 picks on him.
Ok, I give up with you. Ignore the best RB in the league over the last three years over semantics and look at his points at the end of the year. Anything can happen but you are more likely to be wrong than right, given proven history. Looking for trends is one thing. Manufacturing news is another. Go back and look at every guy that you will put above him and run the reverse. SHow us all their trends. Are they coming off a heavy workload? a 2k season which historically is not a good trend? Are they, themselves, improving their ypc every year? Spin it the other way and make your case for why player X looks better and then after you have done all that, go to the facts: Where did these guys rank for the last three years?
You give up because all of your points were rebutted.

Peterson and Sanders have decreased ypc but NEVER to the point that Foster has. They never have had 4.0. What is there to argue? I am not twisting his stats. That's what he did.

Looking at total numbers is not the most reasonable argument, or else we can just use last year's numbers and draft across every position.

When you see a trend, it is not the best idea to just ignore it; embrace it and adjust accordingly.

I am not saying Foster is not a top 6 back. Again, just that I would not use the first 4 picks on him.
AP/Barry Sanders, I dunno about you guys but I don't win FF championships based on the amount of HOF players I have. Who cares.

Foster averaged 4.1 YPC last year, not the 4.0 you continue to cite.

So why would Foster's YPC go down the last 2 years?

Vonta Leach, ever see him block...stud, he left after the 2010 season.

Eric Winston, arguably the best RT at the time, he left after the 2011 season. He got replaced by a 7th round kid out of Arkansas State.

Remember that stat Shutout was talking about on the right side.

When running outside on the right Foster averaged 3.5 YPC, outside to the left 4.8.

Shutout talked about getting carries late in games. Here is his YPC by quarter:

1=4.3

2=4.7

3=3.9

4=3.3

Might be something to what he's saying. I know I watched the Houston/Chicago game and they forcefed Foster 29 carries(3.5 only). This was due to junky conditions, but he won them the game and Chicago went all out to stop the run.
All you Foster supporters have an ax to grind, that is for sure. If you read carefully, you'll notice I brought up Peterson and Sanders because 1 poster insisted on using them as a reference. The 4.0 was data provided by footballguys.com so you can bring that up to them ;) .

First, I stated he is a top 6 back--check.

Second, you cannot ignore the trend. His last year stats were 4.0 or 4.1 (however you decide to cut his stats, it happened) and it has decreased steadily the last 3 years--check. You can reason as to WHY that is, and that is a good thing. I'm not negating there are reasons, just that you need to take into account what was going on with these stats.

His yards per reception was 5.4....read it again, 5.4 TERRIBLE--check. I am not so sure Leech or a better lineman can help this but maybe so.

Again, you can do whatever you want with those stats, but to IGNORE them is unreasonable. You can and should adjust accordingly. To question anyone that thinks and disagrees with you is ignorant. They have their reasons just like you have yours. All you can do is provide the stats and then choose to make an educated guess for one side or the other.

Once again, I like Foster, top 6 back. I just provided reasons as to why there may be SOME concern. Not that this concern will in fact manifest itself. We're here to predict the ceilings and floors of players, taking into account all the data we can-- that is all.

 
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I'm seeing this stuff so much that I really wonder if some of you guys actually are believing this or if you are fishing to try to get the perception of Foster down so you can snag him. Instead of this speculaiton about "Oh my GOD, so many carries, YPC is plummenting", why don't we talk about some facts.

-The guy is 26 years old. 26 year old athletes can do a lot and bounce back pretty quickly.

-He is THE key piece that his entire offense's principles are built around.

Normally, in FF, these are the guys that everyone drools to try to find but for some reason, people are actually holding that against Foster.

-He has about 20 more carries than Adrian Peterson over the last three years and about 60 maybe more than Rice in that span but for some reason that is detrimental to Foster yet people can't see anything except #1 for Peterson, despite the fact that history clearly tells us that when a back has a 2000 yard season, only twice in the history of the NFL has a RB came back the next year to play in all the games. So, everyone wants to cite history on the big carries to pull Foster down but they want to completely ignore that same information plus the additonal info re: 2k seasons when it is another player. And just for fun, let's ignore the fact that, for the career, the guy that no one ever seems to have a "concern" about is 2 years older, has 700+ more career carries on his tires.

-He played with an entirely new right hand side of his o-line last year and those players missed games during the year. Doesn't anyone think that when they look at his stats and see that his rushes to the right slid last year, that there might be a correlation there (production to right is less...players on the right injured and new...any connection?). We talk all the time about the horrible Cardinals line and the horrible Chargers line and we can see clearly how it affects those teams but somehow nobody notices this aspect with theTexans?

So if we can explain these things, then it must be production you guys are worried about, right? Well, he's been a top 1-4 Rb for about three years straight now; normally that is something people seek and not avoid in a young RB. People like production and consistency and youth...normally.

So maybe its more about quality from that position? Well, if someone told me that, from a RB, a pretty good day is either

- 150 rushing yards

-100+rushing yards with a TD

-or some rushing yards and 2 TDs

I would say, yeah, that's pretty good produciton no matter how you slice it because that puts me in that 18-20+ point range that top RBs produce.

Ok, so, if someone told me "Did you know that for the last three years, Arian Foster has led the league in that stat?" I would have to say, "well then, I guess he has been the type of guy I would want."

For reference, Foster hit that number 11 times last year while guys like Calvin hit it 6 times. In the last two seasons, Foster has hit that number about 70% of the time while guys like Peterson are well under 50%.

I didn't mean to turn this into a comparison against Peterson so much but did so just to show that, against what everyone considers to be the gold standard, Foster is right there, has been right there, and there is nothing in your crystal balls that indicate otherwise that doesn't also apply to the gold standard (and even more so towards the gold standard actually).

Yet, somehow, someway, people are hell bent on manufacturing the news instead of just observing it. Talkin about whether or not I would be interested in drafting Arian Foster? My God.
I am less concerned about his workload than I am with his constant injuries in the preseason and his yards per carry decrease.

2010 - 5.0 ypc

2011 - 4.4 ypc

2012 - 4.0 ypc

Yards per receptions

2010 - 9.2

2011 - 11.6

2012 - 5.4???

4.0 ypc and 5.4 ypr are awful numbers.

The coaches already said they will not allow Foster to get as many carries as last year, so hopefully his awful ypc can increase.
Arian Foster's career yard per attempt is higher than Emmitt Smith, Ladanian Tomlinson, Curtis Martin and about 90% of any other RB ever.
While that is cool, it is not relevant to my post. His ypc have decreased. They will need to go up because he will receive less carries this year.

4.0 will not cut it.

It also does not contradict that his ypc have decreased each of the last three years.
Adrian peterson's YPC fell in his 2nd and 3rd year in the league.

Barry Sander's YPC fell for three or four straight years.

Again, this is not a point to live and die on. We could go back and look at some games and I guarantee you we will see several games where a 19/115 (6.3 ypc) day turned into a 27/123 (4.5) type of day just based on the sole fact that Tate was not in a lot of these games and there were games where they simply just let him kill the clock by taking the ball, gett a yard or two, wind the clock.

Look at the production and the production per game. Don't be that guy that says "yeah he got 170 yards but he had to carry it 37 times. He got 170 yards man.
This is true but to dismiss it is not reasonable. The more they used him, the more his production/efficiency fell.

Peterson's fell from 5.6 to 4.8. 4.8 is good. Foster's 4.0 is not. This is where the numbers matter.

Barry Sanders never had a season with 4.0 ypc. His lowest was 4.3.

No. Efficiency is what matters. When a coach said they will not give you the rock as many times, his production WILL fall if he does not increase his ypc.

300 carries at 4.0 is 1200 yds rushing.

I am no saying Foster is bad, I just won't use my top 4 picks on him.
Ok, I give up with you. Ignore the best RB in the league over the last three years over semantics and look at his points at the end of the year. Anything can happen but you are more likely to be wrong than right, given proven history. Looking for trends is one thing. Manufacturing news is another. Go back and look at every guy that you will put above him and run the reverse. SHow us all their trends. Are they coming off a heavy workload? a 2k season which historically is not a good trend? Are they, themselves, improving their ypc every year? Spin it the other way and make your case for why player X looks better and then after you have done all that, go to the facts: Where did these guys rank for the last three years?
You give up because all of your points were rebutted.

Peterson and Sanders have decreased ypc but NEVER to the point that Foster has. They never have had 4.0. What is there to argue? I am not twisting his stats. That's what he did.

Looking at total numbers is not the most reasonable argument, or else we can just use last year's numbers and draft across every position.

When you see a trend, it is not the best idea to just ignore it; embrace it and adjust accordingly.

I am not saying Foster is not a top 6 back. Again, just that I would not use the first 4 picks on him.
AP/Barry Sanders, I dunno about you guys but I don't win FF championships based on the amount of HOF players I have. Who cares.

Foster averaged 4.1 YPC last year, not the 4.0 you continue to cite.

So why would Foster's YPC go down the last 2 years?

Vonta Leach, ever see him block...stud, he left after the 2010 season.

Eric Winston, arguably the best RT at the time, he left after the 2011 season. He got replaced by a 7th round kid out of Arkansas State.

Remember that stat Shutout was talking about on the right side.

When running outside on the right Foster averaged 3.5 YPC, outside to the left 4.8.

Shutout talked about getting carries late in games. Here is his YPC by quarter:

1=4.3

2=4.7

3=3.9

4=3.3

Might be something to what he's saying. I know I watched the Houston/Chicago game and they forcefed Foster 29 carries(3.5 only). This was due to junky conditions, but he won them the game and Chicago went all out to stop the run.
All you Foster supporters have an ax for grind that is for sure. If you read carefully, you'll notice I brought up Peterson and Sanders because 1 poster insisted on using them as a reference. The 4.0 was data provided by footballguys.com so you can bring that up to them ;) .

First, I stated he is a top 6 back--check.

Second, you cannot ignore the trend. His last year stats were 4.0 or 4.1 (however you decide to cut his stats, it happened) and it has decreased steadily the last 3 years--check. You can reason as to WHY that is, and that is a good thing. I'm not negating there are reasons, just that you need to take into account what was going on with these stats.

His yards per reception was 5.4....read it again, 5.4 TERRIBLE--check. I am not so sure Leech or a better lineman can help this but maybe so.

Again, you can do whatever you want with those stats, but to IGNORE them is unreasonable. You can and should adjust accordingly. To question any one that thinks and disagrees with you is ignorant. They have their reasons just like you have yours. All you can do is provide the stats and then choose to make an educated guess for one side or the other.

Once again, I like Foster, top 6 back. I just provided reasons as to why there may be SOME concern. Not that this concern will in fact manifest itself. We're here to predict the ceilings and floors of players, taking into account all the data we can-- that is all.
I actually have no horse in the race, but I read the thread. Was interested in what Shutout said and researched it.

You've cited Yards per Carry and Yards per Reception as things to be alarmed about, but why? I don't get points if my player is high in either category in my FF league. One could just as easily say that 2012 was an outlier for yards per catch based on his career. Unless you think the Texans will suddenly not throw him the football or not give him GL carries or he won't get over 250 carries, I don't understand the concern.

On another note, if you're this alarmed by Foster posting a 4.1, then you must have Trent Richardson way down on your list after his 3.6.

 
Anyone who thinks Foster was breaking down last year is buried in stats and didn't watch the actual games. The ZBS completely depends on the offensive lineman being effective. Foster isn't putting his head down and power running thru the middle of the line, they run ALOT of stretch plays. This requires Foster to wait and use his vision to find the cutback lane as the linemen stretch the defense across the field. The right side of the line was quite terrible which totally destroys the stretch play. Foster ran hard when a cease was there. Now I will say the right side of the line still looks terrible this year, so the problem could remain, but Kubiak isn't going to stop pounding Foster in there. Tate if he can stay healthy will steal some carries, but he isnt nowhere close to the receiver Foster is, so I still see him as mainly a breather for Foster.

 
The ambivalence towards Foster is probably because you know what you are getting with him, but I don't see how that is a bad thing. Not sure why a lot of FF owners seemed bored by a guy who piles up yards, catches a lot of balls and scores a ton. I think it's another case of people wanting to chase the next big thing (Martin, Charles, etc.). Granted, I am high on Charles and Martin, too, but Foster's ceiling is as high as either of those guys', if not higher, so whatever. I am seeing the same thing with Roddy White, as many mocks have him not going as a top 10 WR this year, which is craziness if you ask me, but I will take advantage when the time comes.

 
The guys floor, barring injury, is 1200 and 12. Pretty awesome, I'd happily take that.

 
I had a lot of doubts about drafting him before I read this thread but I've changed my mind. I always liked Foster's talent and ability- I don't think there is a single running back in the league with better vision than him. When it comes to being patient in the backfield and waiting for a crease to develop there's nobody better. I think he's going to lose a chunk of his carries with a healthy Tate around....and I thought his touchdown production was unsustainable until I checked out his game logs from years past.

In the past 3 years he's failed to score in only 10 games (including playoff games). He's reached the end zone in 39 out of 49 games. I've always thought that projecting touchdowns for running backs from year to year was a guessing game but Foster seems to be incredibly consistent when it comes to getting scores. His floor probably is double digit touchdowns. With the exception of AP....I don't think there's a single RB in the NFL that you can say that for.

 
My rule of thumb for RBs is if I have two players closely rated, I'm going to go with youth or the guy who has more tread on the tires. This year I'm staying away from not only Foster, but players like Rice as well. In Auctions, I'm staying away from Peterson. Have I missed out on some great years from older backs over the years? The answer is yes and no actually. By going with youth, I don't lose out on all of the points that a player like Foster gets....just the difference. Some times more, some times less. To me, and especially in this situation, going with youth is the safer pick.

Then later in the draft, I'm going to double down and target Tate. Two studs for the price of one if Foster gets knocked out. If he stays healthy for the whole season, I haven't lost anything other than a possible point per game played.

 
In the past 3 years he's failed to score in only 10 games (including playoff games). He's reached the end zone in 39 out of 49 games. I've always thought that projecting touchdowns for running backs from year to year was a guessing game but Foster seems to be incredibly consistent when it comes to getting scores. His floor probably is double digit touchdowns. With the exception of AP....I don't think there's a single RB in the NFL that you can say that for.
Yep. For the people that bemoan Doug Martin with "take away his big game!", Arian Foster is the perfect tonic. He's the closest thing in the league for people searching for the mythical RB1 who has a weekly floor of 100/1 and is otherwise a disappointment.

 
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My rule of thumb for RBs is if I have two players closely rated, I'm going to go with youth or the guy who has more tread on the tires. This year I'm staying away from not only Foster, but players like Rice as well. In Auctions, I'm staying away from Peterson. Have I missed out on some great years from older backs over the years? The answer is yes and no actually. By going with youth, I don't lose out on all of the points that a player like Foster gets....just the difference. Some times more, some times less. To me, and especially in this situation, going with youth is the safer pick.

Then later in the draft, I'm going to double down and target Tate. Two studs for the price of one if Foster gets knocked out. If he stays healthy for the whole season, I haven't lost anything other than a possible point per game played.
I'm confused. So which RB's are you targeting as RB1/RB2 and who will you draft with a top 5 pick?

 
I actually have no horse in the race, but I read the thread. Was interested in what Shutout said and researched it.

You've cited Yards per Carry and Yards per Reception as things to be alarmed about, but why? I don't get points if my player is high in either category in my FF league. One could just as easily say that 2012 was an outlier for yards per catch based on his career. Unless you think the Texans will suddenly not throw him the football or not give him GL carries or he won't get over 250 carries, I don't understand the concern.

On another note, if you're this alarmed by Foster posting a 4.1, then you must have Trent Richardson way down on your list after his 3.6.
The stats in isolation are not important. So, Richardson would not get a huge knock because we only know what we know from ONE season.

It is when you COMPARE the stats with what someone has done in the past that makes you ponder--"hmm I wonder why that was."

Why did his yards per receptions go from 9.2 to 11.6....to 5.4? Is something wrong with Foster? I don't know, but you cannot simply ignore the number. Make your best educated guess as to what happened and then adjust accordingly IF you feel the need to.

However, when you combine (1) his workload (2) his decrease in yards per carry and (3) his huge decrease in yards per reception, it is NOT unreasonable to question that maybe something is happening and take that into account when you make your projections.

 
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They stats in isolation are not important. It is when you COMPARE them to what he has done in the past that makes you ponder--"hmm I wonder why that was."

Why did his yards per receptions go from 9.2 to 11.6....to 5.4? Is something wrong with Foster? I don't know, but you cannot simply ignore the number. Make your best educated guess as to what happened and then adjust accordingly IF you feel the need to.

However, when you combine (1) his workload (2) his decrease in yards per carry and (3) his huge decrease in yards per reception, it is NOT unreasonable to question that maybe something is happening and take that into account when you make your projections.
If you're still saying "hmm I wonder why that was", you're not reading the posts.

 
Why did his yards per receptions go from 9.2 to 11.6....to 5.4? Is something wrong with Foster? I don't know, but you cannot simply ignore the number. Make your best educated guess as to what happened and then adjust accordingly IF you feel the need to.
From having watched most of his games last year, one big reason part of why his ypc went down last year, too: a weaker zone blocking effort by the Texans than their exemplary efforts in previous years. They weren't doing the best job of engaging linemen and linebackers on screen passes, swing passes, etc., just as they struggled to create running lanes at times.

 
I have the 2nd pick in my draft and Im fairly certain that I will not be using it on Foster. Don't get me wrong, I like the guy and think he will have a strong season, but he was rode hard last year. Everyone knows this, including the coaching staff. Tate may very well be the best backup in the league. I can't imagine the coaching staff not utilizing him liberally this season to help share the load, insulating Foster for a playoff run. Foster will still finish among the top backs IMO, but I think ADP, Martin and Charles (ppr) have better odds at my pick.
Is the point of FF still to score the most points?

Historically, even when Tate was completely healthy, Foster has been the ball carrier about 74% of the time, which is a true bell cow, high number. Even if they scale that number back, he is still going to be at a number that is as high as most any other back in the league but with the additional inputs of

-he catches the ball also (for ppr)

-the Texans are likely to run the ball more than any of the teams you mentioned.

At the end of the day, his opportunity is still greater than almost any RB you can think of and opportunity transitions into points and points is what it all boils down to.

If I could draft a RB that I knew would only get 60 carries a year but I knew that he was on a team that was likely to give him 48 of those carries at the goal line, there is still more value in that player than some guy somewhere else because of the points.

If people are reading into the Texans' statements thinking the Texans intend to put kid gloves on their best chance to get to a Super Bowl, They are wrong. There is a business here with jobs on the line and a rapidly closing window. The Texans will run Arian Foster.

ADP, Martin and Charles won't be bell cows for their respective teams? Who exactly is going to bite into any of their production? Minnesota and TB are both run first teams, whose offensive success will run solely through their lead backs with no one else to help share the load. Unless of course you think Hillis still has something left in the tank. Everyone has seen how Reid likes to use his backs. While Charles won't approach the number of carries that the other three will get, he'll see a ton of balls thrown his way. With his ability in space, he has the potential to be a ppr monster. Foster will still get a very heavy workload. I'm not arguing that, but if they have a lead int he second half of games and IMO they likely will in several, why would you not save your bell cow's legs for your playoff run? That's just good strategy and it's a luxury that the Texans have that the other three teams do not.
Didn't the Vikings make the palyoffs last year? Arent the Bucs a contender for a playoff spot? I don't get how the Texans will save their guy and the Vikes and Bucs won't. I don't think wins are as easy in the NFL as you make it out to be. I'm looking at a 3 game stretch the Texans have in 2013 against the Seahawks, niners, and Ravens. Patriots once, Broncos once, Colts twice. So where are all these games they wil be coasting along and showing pan shots of Foster laughing as he sips Gatorade and points at the scoreboard and its 34-17?
The Vikes and Bucs won't because they can't. They don't have the luxury of having two proven effective running backs on their roster. If in week 1, Houston is up on the Chargers and that calf of his is still giving him some "slight discomfort", do you really not think you wouldn't see a heavy dose of Tate? How about in week two if they are up on the Titans, having to go to Baltimore the very next week? Is it really that ridiculous to speculate that they may shut him down a bit early to rest him for that game? Of course, I'm sure they'll have to ride him in the ground to beat the Raiders and the two games with the Jags as well. Especially considering the the Pats and Colts follow the Jag games. I mean after all, why in the world would you be tempted to sub in your backup that averages 5+ ypc and try to save your starter whose body had to endure over 350 carries last year? Total lunacy right? I'm sorry, but given the circumstances, i do believe most coaches would try to scale him back if at all possible.

 
They stats in isolation are not important. It is when you COMPARE them to what he has done in the past that makes you ponder--"hmm I wonder why that was."

Why did his yards per receptions go from 9.2 to 11.6....to 5.4? Is something wrong with Foster? I don't know, but you cannot simply ignore the number. Make your best educated guess as to what happened and then adjust accordingly IF you feel the need to.

However, when you combine (1) his workload (2) his decrease in yards per carry and (3) his huge decrease in yards per reception, it is NOT unreasonable to question that maybe something is happening and take that into account when you make your projections.
If you're still saying "hmm I wonder why that was", you're not reading the posts.
"hmm I wonder why that was" was simply reflecting that you may want to look into what is going on.

I am ONLY suggesting that you should not GLOSS over the stats because you THINK you have the answer. Creating floors is half the battle in fantasy football predictions. If he has shown he can hit 4.0 or 4.1 ypr in the past, then he sure can do it again, so why not account for this when you make your predictions? You should not just count on "the happy days."

 
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They stats in isolation are not important. It is when you COMPARE them to what he has done in the past that makes you ponder--"hmm I wonder why that was."

Why did his yards per receptions go from 9.2 to 11.6....to 5.4? Is something wrong with Foster? I don't know, but you cannot simply ignore the number. Make your best educated guess as to what happened and then adjust accordingly IF you feel the need to.

However, when you combine (1) his workload (2) his decrease in yards per carry and (3) his huge decrease in yards per reception, it is NOT unreasonable to question that maybe something is happening and take that into account when you make your projections.
If you're still saying "hmm I wonder why that was", you're not reading the posts.
Incorrect. I am ONLY suggesting that you cannot GLOSS over the stats because you THINK you have the answer. Creating floors is half the battle in fantasy football predictions. If he has shown he can hit 4.0 or 4.1 ypr in the past, then he sure can do it again, so why not account for this when you make your predictions? You cannot just count on "the happy days."
People who watch the games gave very valid reasons for the decline in YPC. You said "Why did his yards per receptions go from 9.2 to 11.6....to 5.4? Is something wrong with Foster?" You can choose to use the numbers as a flag, but you shouldn't be wondering why it was. People are telling you why.

 
They stats in isolation are not important. It is when you COMPARE them to what he has done in the past that makes you ponder--"hmm I wonder why that was."

Why did his yards per receptions go from 9.2 to 11.6....to 5.4? Is something wrong with Foster? I don't know, but you cannot simply ignore the number. Make your best educated guess as to what happened and then adjust accordingly IF you feel the need to.

However, when you combine (1) his workload (2) his decrease in yards per carry and (3) his huge decrease in yards per reception, it is NOT unreasonable to question that maybe something is happening and take that into account when you make your projections.
If you're still saying "hmm I wonder why that was", you're not reading the posts.
Incorrect. I am ONLY suggesting that you cannot GLOSS over the stats because you THINK you have the answer. Creating floors is half the battle in fantasy football predictions. If he has shown he can hit 4.0 or 4.1 ypr in the past, then he sure can do it again, so why not account for this when you make your predictions? You cannot just count on "the happy days."
People who watch the games gave very valid reasons for the decline in YPC. You said "Why did his yards per receptions go from 9.2 to 11.6....to 5.4? Is something wrong with Foster?" You can choose to use the numbers as a flag, but you shouldn't be wondering why it was. People are telling you why.
Exactly. The initial thought process is sound, but the development of conclusions is not. You are taking a premise and then choosing a conclusion that you seem to think best fits, but not accepting other choices.

 

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