Carries vs. Touches (1 Viewer)

[GroveDiesel]

So the common thought is that 400+ carries is a heavy workload for a RB and can cause future problems. Is total touches an indicator as well? Are receptions as hard on a RB as rushes? If not, what kind of impact are we looking at?

I know a lot of people are concerned about LJ because of all of his carries the past two seasons, but LT and S-Jax seem to have a lot of total touches. Last year LJ had 457 total touches, a heck of a lot. S-Jax had 436. LT had 404. LT's total touches over the past 3 years have been 392, 390 and 404.

Should we be concerned about those guys too?

 

[Family Matters]

This is a good discussion and there are people all over board on this. IMO-all touches need to be looked at. Are they the same? I think you can say that a carry up the middle is likely to have more physical contact that pass in the flat. But that alone won't conclude it. For example, if a guy gets a carry up the middle and goes untouched to the endzone or runs out of bounds versus a pass to the flat whereby he's flattened by a linebacker then you can see things are not so easy to resolve with a banket qualifier. You almost have to witness the plays in order to determine what's happening. Sweetness had no problem lowering his shoulder if need be but he was smart enough to run out of bounds when he could.

At the end of the day you won't get a qualified answer to this. But I feel a good indicator is that if a guy getting a bigger than normal load is still running hard at the end of the season and hasn't been nicked up then it's a testament to his strength. Guys like LT and LJ are pure studs and they are the exception rather than the rule.

 

[Mark Wimer]

This is a good discussion and there are people all over board on this. IMO-all touches need to be looked at. Are they the same? I think you can say that a carry up the middle is likely to have more physical contact that pass in the flat. But that alone won't conclude it. For example, if a guy gets a carry up the middle and goes untouched to the endzone or runs out of bounds versus a pass to the flat whereby he's flattened by a linebacker then you can see things are not so easy to resolve with a banket qualifier. You almost have to witness the plays in order to determine what's happening. Sweetness had no problem lowering his shoulder if need be but he was smart enough to run out of bounds when he could.At the end of the day you won't get a qualified answer to this. But I feel a good indicator is that if a guy getting a bigger than normal load is still running hard at the end of the season and hasn't been nicked up then it's a testament to his strength. Guys like LT and LJ are pure studs and they are the exception rather than the rule.

Running style (or for receivers, type of receptions usually made) and a players' personal ability to recuperate from injuries are factors to consider coupled with the number of touches. WRs who go over the middle and are often going up the ladder to make catches get spammed by DBs much more often than ball-possession type guys who run down the sidelines and pull in 5-10 yard receptions for first downs... Similarly, RBs like Chris Brown who run upright and don't shy from contact seem to get injured more often than explosive, shifty backs like Barry Sanders. But a lot of that equation also has to do with conditioning and resiliency/recuperative power of the individual's body. Also, age is a factor here. I'd tend to worry about a guy Warrick Dunn's age (32, entering his 11th NFL season) getting 400+ touches more than I would Steven Jackson, STL (24 come regular season, entering his 4th NFL season). Recuperative ability declines as people age.

 

[SSOG]

Football Outsiders ran a regression analysis and found that the correlation between number of catches and performance the following season isn't just extremely weak... it's actually POSITIVE (but very, very, very weakly positive). In other words, an RB with 350 carries and 20 catches would essentially be the same as an RB with 350 carries and 80 catches (if anything, the RB with 20 catches would be barely, barely, barely more likely to collapse than the one with 80 catches, if historical data is anything to go on).