Adrian Peterson 14 games 238 rushing attempts 1341 rushing yards 12 TD 5/6 yards per carry 28 targets 19 receptions 268 receiving yards 1 TD 9.6 yards per target 257 touches 6.3 yards per touch 1609 total yards.
Peterson was inactive for 2 games during his rookie season. I forget why that was. But anyhow this just happens to be a pretty apples to apples comparison here with both having 14 games played so far.
Peterson had 40 more touches in 14 games than Robinson ok lets account for that difference at Robinsons 5.2 yards per touch so far. Thats 208 more yards. His total would be 1332 total yards then. Thats still 277 less yards than what Peterson had as a rookie. Fewer TD and much fewer explosive plays as you can tell by the ypc ypt yards per touch numbers.
What about if you were using LT or CMC's rookie year production instead as a basis to try and say he's not elite? You are welcome to your opinion but I don't think any excuses need to be made for Bijan's play, he's looked the part to me.
Those were not players brought up for comparison before this. Do you think Robinson should be compared to them?
They were top 10 picks at the RB position as Robinson was.
I didn't compare him to Saquon Barkley who was a player brought up as generational talent comparison. I didn't think it was a very close way to compare them as Barkley had 352 touches and over 2k total yards in his rookie season. Not much point in that given that Barley had 100 more touches than what Robinson is on pace for. Fading Eli Manning likely in Barkleys favor compared to Ridder as well. Barkley happens to be one of the unusual RB who had their best season so far as a rookie which is outside of the norm where on average the rookie season is the worst of their first 6 seasons. FWIW Barley had 5 ypc and 6 yards per target as a rookie.
I mainly brought up Peterson because well I am a Vikings fan, and they both happened to have 14 games in their careers right now. Peterson also time shared with Chester Taylor. Both had bad QBs to work with. So I thought there were a lot of similar circumstances between the two, but that Petersons performance numbers were significantly better. So more of an apples to apples type of comparison that could perhaps isolate the difference in talent.
Robinson is on pace for 248 touches in 16 games to try to make that type of comparison even. Robinson may play 17 games. In a few years from now we will have more data of players potentially playing 17 games to work with, right now that is still fairly new. So at least for now I think it makes sense to compare players by 16 games.
LT had almost 400 touches as a rookie. His yards per carry was 3.6 and his yards per target was 5. He averaged 4 yards per touch so significantly less than Robinsons 5.2 right now. A lot of people thought he wasn't that great as a rookie, just that he had a lot of touches. Which there is some truth to that. LT is one of the examples of the average RB career path, where their rookie season is the worst of their first 6 seasons. LT goes on to have 3 different 2k combined yard seasons and he was always pretty close to that for his first 7 seasons. The epic 6th season where he had 2323 yards and 31 TDs. But LT is also getting the ball about 400 times per season. He had Marty Shottenheimer and Norv Turner as his coaches for those years. These coaches really work their RB a lot. I think we know that efficiency stats go down the more a player gets the ball typically. Those explosive plays get aggregated more towards the mean. So anyhow I am not seeing much useful from the comparison. If you think Robinson = LT in talent then yeah you are hoping his touches rise to LT levels in his 2nd to 6th seasons.
CMC being more recent is one we know pretty well. He struggled with only 3.7 ypc as a rookie on 117 rushing attempts. Robinson is almost on pace to have double that number of rushing attempts in a 16 game sample. He time shared with Johnathan Stewart who was used more as a runner in CMCs rookie year. It is known that CMC added weight and focused on becoming a better runner than he was as a rookie. CMC had 113 targets 80 receptions 70.8% catch rate 5.8 yards per target. So while not the runner that Robinson has been as a rookie he was a much better receiver. CMCs career yards per target is is 6.9 the rookie season was his worst ypt. At least by this metric I would say CMC is a more elite receiving RB than Robinson is. CMC improves as a runner and has two about 2k seasons after this. Then is injured years 4 and 5 but comes close to 2k again in this 6th season and is now on pace to do so again in his 7th season.
Not sure what to think after looking at that except that Robinson should be better in the next few seasons.
Robinson is currently on pace for 1365 total yards if he plays at the same level for 17 games. Adjust that to 1284 for 16 games. This is not bad. Not bad at all for a rookie season. However it does fall short of the 1500 combined yards that most of the elite RB have had as rookies that has propelled them to close to 2k seasons after that when they improved. As a whole this is the threshold target or the per game type of pace we are looking for in many of the RB one might consider to be elite for FF purposes before they ascend to near the 2k level.
Robinson while good is falling short of that.
As far as the rest of your post that makes sense. I was not at all bothered by your comments in this thread. I appreciate you and look forward to hearing what you say. Whether we agree or not.
Yards After Catch: 67
