So
here is an article talking about RB performance declining after the player has 1800 total carries. Seems pretty straight forward right? But the sample only includes 8 players. I don't think that is enough.
Reaching this number of carries is a feat within itself as there are only
51 players to have 1800 or more rushing attempts. This would be the sample to use to see if this found trend for 8 players actually applies to all of them or not and to what extent?
At an average of 300 rushing attempts per season this would be 6 seasons to reach this number. Which is where we see decline in RB performance from my study, after six seasons. It still isn't clear to me what the cause is. Is it the number of carries? The mileage? Or is it because of the players age? It takes time to accumulate that many rushing attempts and by the time they do, they are also old by then. So was it the carries? Or was it because of their age?
Obviously a ton of players production declines before they reach 1800 carries, with only 51 players ever reaching this threshold. The RB necessarily must be old by the time they do reach 1800.
I will run the numbers on the 51 players and see what that says, but I am already seeing how cooked the books are here though and I think the conclusion of the author I quoted is misleading.
FWIW Elliot currently has 1319 rushing attempts. So by this method he still has 580 to go before reaching this threshold. At 20 carries per game career average this is 29 more games 7 of which will be played this season, so 22 more left or a season and a half before he reaches the 1800 mark. The decline is not necessarily precipitous either but gradual. So Elliot may still be valuable beyond 1800 even if his performance sees a 18% decline in rushing yards.
For the purpose of this study I will not include players who retired before their decline like Barry Sanders. I also won't include players who fell off because of injury. We are trying to identify the players who wear down due to mileage, not fall off a cliff for things completely unrelated to that.