Fantasy Running Backs and Team Passing Efficiency (1 Viewer)

[JKL]

Over at the PFR Blog, I wrote Fantasy Running Backs and Team Passing Efficiency, which takes a look at the last twenty seasons and all backs finishing at least 80 seasons over baseline, to see where their teams ranked in pass efficiency.

Some of the highlights for those who don't want to look at the charts and read the whole thing:

Before getting to the charts, however, I guess I should point out that I’m not making value judgments about the specific quarterbacks that were on these teams; I’m only going by the end result of passing rank. In some situations, the back may be influencing the team passing efficiency numbers by allowing big plays in the passing game due to team’s overplaying to stop the back, in others, the back may be the beneficiary of a great offensive cast. In many cases, it’s probably a little of both. For example, if I told you that Terry Allen finished first in fantasy points in 1996 with Gus Frerotte as his quarterback, and Ricky Watters finished third with Ty Detmer at quarterback, your gut reaction, without going back and looking at the numbers, is probably that they didn’t have very good passing teams. By the numbers, though, Washington was actually the #1 team in ANYPA in 1996, and Philadelphia ranked #11.

. . .

So, what do we see here? The dominance of the top tier [top 3 passing offenses by Adjusted Net Yards Per Attempt] jumps out at me. Over half of the teams that finished as a top three passing offense produced an elite fantasy running back, and they averaged more fantasy points than the other groups.

. . .

If you can predict which teams are going to finish at the top of the league in passing efficiency, you have a pretty good chance at identifying a top level fantasy running back. But I guess therein lies the rub. If you would have known that Washington was going to go from 20th in 1995 in pass efficiency, when Terry Allen put up a healthy but unspectacular 220 fantasy points, to 1st in 1996, you would have projected Allen to have a monster year.

Notably, after the top tier, though, there doesn’t seem to be much benefit in having a very good passing offense versus a near-average one, as the number of backs from tiers 2-6 are fluctuating and fairly even, as are the average points scored. The numbers begin to drop dramatically, though, as we move from near average to the bad passing offenses. Only 15.9% (22 of 138) of the top fantasy running backs came from the bottom 40% of passing efficiency teams. Only five backs finished with at least 80 points over baseline while playing for a team that finished in the bottom 20% of teams in pass efficiency.

While running backs on elite passing offenses are good bets to finish as top fantasy backs, if you can predict who the elite passing offenses will be, its actually those minority of backs who managed top seasons with bad passing offenses that hold their value the best the next season.

 

[Chase Stuart]

Good stuff, JKL.

Did you break down FP though? I'm generally of the view that RB rushing isn't aided by a good passing offense. That view can be reconciled with your view, since while similar, 1) RB rushing isn't perfectly correlated with RB fantasy points, and 2) good passing offense isn't perfectly correlated with team passing efficiency.

If the RBs are aided because they score lots of TDs -- which I suspect to be the case -- then both our conclusions could jive together.

 

[BigSteelThrill]

Gonna try and look at it more closely a bit later. TY.

But dammit you sprung this with all the drafts hitting this weekend (or last).

 

[JKL]

Good stuff, JKL.Did you break down FP though? I'm generally of the view that RB rushing isn't aided by a good passing offense. That view can be reconciled with your view, since while similar, 1) RB rushing isn't perfectly correlated with RB fantasy points, and 2) good passing offense isn't perfectly correlated with team passing efficiency.If the RBs are aided because they score lots of TDs -- which I suspect to be the case -- then both our conclusions could jive together.

No, I didn't specifically look at the breakdown. I don't have time now, but I will try to look at what % of FP for backs on the top passing offenses were from rushing td's, versus those on poorer passing offenses. I suspect that the advantage that backs on top passing offenses have is not that the passing game makes the running game more efficient (or vice versa), but that the passing game, when good, affords more opportunities overall, and more red zone opportunities.I suspect this is why TD-heavy RB's tend to hold value worse than Yardage-heavy. The Yardage-Heavy backs are probably correlated with worse passing offenses and fewer red zone opportunities. When some of these passing offenses regress toward the mean (and get better) the back has already proven capable of succeeding under worse conditions. TD-heavy backs are more reliant on their teams to get them in position to continue to score td's.