Good stuff here. I'm a TB fan and have plenty of man-love for Caddy. I think he is going to be a great NFL RB, but his FF value may be lower than I realized.
I do think his TDs will increase some just because his O-line will be better and I think Caddy will be scoring from a distance when his improved O-line gives him some space to do his magic.
But I need to temper that optimism because Tampa Bay just does not seem to score that many TDs on the ground.
Let's not also forget that Caddy is just going to get plain better...look at Emmit's difference in effectiveness from year one to year two.
+--------------------------+-------------------------+ | Rushing | Receiving |+----------+-----+--------------------------+-------------------------+| Year TM | G | Att Yards Y/A TD | Rec Yards Y/R TD |+----------+-----+--------------------------+-------------------------+| 1990 dal | 16 | 241 937 3.9 11 | 24 228 9.5 0 || 1991 dal | 16 | 365 1563 4.3 12 | 49 258 5.3 1 |
I just noticed this and thought that you made Yudkin's point even more.In 241 carries, Emmitt had 182.5 points and in 365 carries he had 260.1 points. If you do points per carry, Emmitt actually went down from .76 in 1990 to .71 in 1991. Even though, overall he improved total points wise, he actually went down in points per carry.
Even in Arizona, yes, horrible running Arizona, 35 year old Emmitt had more fantasy points in 2004 on only 267 carries than Caddy did last year on 290 carries
Based on the fact that Caddy's points per carry was 0.56, he is going to have to improve by 40-50% in order to get into stud fantasy RB territory even with 300 carries. Right now, he pales in comparison to a great fantasy back like Smith.
I would take a guy like Dominick Davis with a solid handcuff for injuries over Caddy since DD has averaged 0.8 points per carry in his 3 years in the league and even missing 5 games in 2005, he still finished higher than Caddy. The Houston backups in 5 games, did way better than Caddy too (they had 82 FPs in 5 games to Caddy's 162 in 15 games).