Uncovering the Myth of 400 Carries (1 Viewer)

[Dancing Bear]

Folks,

As a quick summary, the following RB's all have had 400 carries or more in a season :

Jamal Anderson

Eric Dickerson

Eddie George

Larry Johnson

James Wilder

In the year following their feat [N+1], 2 of these RB's suffered season ending injuries [Anderson and Dickerson]. George was plagued by injury the entire season and was a shadow of his previous self. However James Wilder did not suffer a dramatic fate. In fact, he still had over 1,700 total yards, and 10 TD's!

That being said I have to be frank and say that I do not understand the mind set associated with stating that rushing touches are different than receiving touches. These RB's are still getting tackled by the same defensive players whether it is a rush or a pass. John Lynch does not say "Oh well, Larry Johnson's just caught the ball in the flat so therefore I'm just going to touch him with two-hands and call it good." John Lynch is going to punish the RB with his tackle no matter how he gets the ball, and so is every other Defensive player.

So, we're going to expand our sample size to include all RB's who averaged 25 touches per game in a season. This expands the probable instances to years where a RB only participated in 12 or 14 possible games as well.

There have been 68 instances of this 400 touch feat in NFL history, and 41 different RB's have contributed to these instances.

4 of them are active players and their instances were in 2006. These players are:

Shaun Alexander

Steven Jackson

Larry Johnson

LaDanian Tomlinson

That leaves us with a total of 64 instances for our sample size. Now before we dig into the math, let me say that the reason we primarily care about this is fantasy points. So we are going to assess both touches and fantasy points in year N+1.

a) 23 of the 64 instances suffered a downswing of more than 10% in both touches and fantasy points [36%].

b) 4 of the 64 instances suffered a downswing of more than 10% in touches but not in fantasy points [6%].

c) 17 of these instances did not suffer a downswing of more than 10% in touches but did in fantasy points [27%].

d) 20 of these instances did not suffer a downswing of more than 10% in either touches and fantasy points [31%].

What's it all mean?

A RB who eclipses the 25 touches/ game workload has a 58% chance of repeating the feat in year N+1.

It also means that it is nearly an equal probability that a given RB will fall into category a) or d)!

 

[David Yudkin]

I wrote an article on this last year if you look in the 2006 article archives . . .

 

[jurb26]

Here's the problem I have with this, not to take away from what is otherwise fantastic work. LJ had over 28 (28.5) touches per game last year. I'd say that is a significant difference than 25.

 

[jetpack]

I don't ~quite~ believe that receptions = rushes in terms of anything But that said, I would be interested in seeing the n+1 performance after 2 or 3 years in a row of 400+ "touches". I say that because then you've got data to look at for Terrell Davis, Priest Holmes, and Jamal Lewis (I think...) to consider. I recall reading somewhere that Terrell Davis had the most (or maybe 2nd most) # of "touches" in a 3 year period. Then, of course, he burned out badly. today. It's at least something to consider with the pace that modern RBs are on. Thanks.

 

[Clayton Gray]

That being said I have to be frank and say that I do not understand the mind set associated with stating that rushing touches are different than receiving touches. These RB's are still getting tackled by the same defensive players whether it is a rush or a pass. John Lynch does not say "Oh well, Larry Johnson's just caught the ball in the flat so therefore I'm just going to touch him with two-hands and call it good." John Lynch is going to punish the RB with his tackle no matter how he gets the ball, and so is every other Defensive player.

Are we sure this is correct? It would seem that a rushing RB would be more likely to be tackled by a 300 lb linemen while a receiving RB would be more likely to be tackled by a 200 lb DB.

 

[The Man With No Name]

I think you have to take age and career touches at the time of the 400+ season into account. What were their ages and career touches when they had their 400 touch season?

 

[nygiants56]

Folks,As a quick summary, the following RB's all have had 400 carries or more in a season :Jamal AndersonEric DickersonEddie GeorgeLarry JohnsonJames WilderIn the year following their feat [N+1], 2 of these RB's suffered season ending injuries [Anderson and Dickerson]. George was plagued by injury the entire season and was a shadow of his previous self. However James Wilder did not suffer a dramatic fate. In fact, he still had over 1,700 total yards, and 10 TD's!That being said I have to be frank and say that I do not understand the mind set associated with stating that rushing touches are different than receiving touches. These RB's are still getting tackled by the same defensive players whether it is a rush or a pass. John Lynch does not say "Oh well, Larry Johnson's just caught the ball in the flat so therefore I'm just going to touch him with two-hands and call it good." John Lynch is going to punish the RB with his tackle no matter how he gets the ball, and so is every other Defensive player.So, we're going to expand our sample size to include all RB's who averaged 25 touches per game in a season. This expands the probable instances to years where a RB only participated in 12 or 14 possible games as well.There have been 68 instances of this 400 touch feat in NFL history, and 41 different RB's have contributed to these instances.4 of them are active players and their instances were in 2006. These players are:Shaun AlexanderSteven JacksonLarry JohnsonLaDanian TomlinsonThat leaves us with a total of 64 instances for our sample size. Now before we dig into the math, let me say that the reason we primarily care about this is fantasy points. So we are going to assess both touches and fantasy points in year N+1.a) 23 of the 64 instances suffered a downswing of more than 10% in both touches and fantasy points [36%].b) 4 of the 64 instances suffered a downswing of more than 10% in touches but not in fantasy points [6%].c) 17 of these instances did not suffer a downswing of more than 10% in touches but did in fantasy points [27%].d) 20 of these instances did not suffer a downswing of more than 10% in either touches and fantasy points [31%].What's it all mean?A RB who eclipses the 25 touches/ game workload has a 58% chance of repeating the feat in year N+1.It also means that it is nearly an equal probability that a given RB will fall into category a) or d)!

only 2 out of 5? I'll take those odds with LJ!!

 

[bostonfred]

Johnson's coming off a season where he got the crap beat out of him, he lost a hall of fame offensive lineman, his coach wants him to get fewer touches, they're changing quarterbacks, and the rest of the teams in the division improved with the exception of San Diego who is just better than KC. I really don't care how many other backs with 400 touches have done well or poorly in the past, just looking at his situation I don't want to spend a top 5 fantasy pick on him.

 

[Hairy Snowman]

Id like to see it brought down to 375+ carries to get a larger sample size.

I agree to this premise though. Only get hit so many times by bigger lineman before you wear down.

 

[AB in DC]

That being said I have to be frank and say that I do not understand the mind set associated with stating that rushing touches are different than receiving touches. These RB's are still getting tackled by the same defensive players whether it is a rush or a pass. John Lynch does not say "Oh well, Larry Johnson's just caught the ball in the flat so therefore I'm just going to touch him with two-hands and call it good." John Lynch is going to punish the RB with his tackle no matter how he gets the ball, and so is every other Defensive player.

Are we sure this is correct? It would seem that a rushing RB would be more likely to be tackled by a 300 lb linemen while a receiving RB would be more likely to be tackled by a 200 lb DB.

Football Outsiders did a study of this and found that #carries was a much better predictor of injury than #touches.

[edited to add link]

 

[Family Matters]

That being said I have to be frank and say that I do not understand the mind set associated with stating that rushing touches are different than receiving touches. These RB's are still getting tackled by the same defensive players whether it is a rush or a pass. John Lynch does not say "Oh well, Larry Johnson's just caught the ball in the flat so therefore I'm just going to touch him with two-hands and call it good." John Lynch is going to punish the RB with his tackle no matter how he gets the ball, and so is every other Defensive player.

Are we sure this is correct? It would seem that a rushing RB would be more likely to be tackled by a 300 lb linemen while a receiving RB would be more likely to be tackled by a 200 lb DB.

:X Football Outsiders did a study of this and found that #carries was a much better predictor of injury than #touches.

[edited to add link]

Thanks for posting that. It's an interesting read. But like everything else you have to read the disclaimer:"Just so people understand, there’s nothing magical about carry number 370 that makes a running back blow out his ACL, any more than there is something special about pitch 100 that makes a pitcher’s arm fall off. It’s simply a useful shorthand to represent the fact that overworking your running back with too many carries is a bad thing. The punishment gets worse and worse with more carries, and 370 is a close approximation of the tipping point."

IOW-what happens to 1 player doesn't mean it will happen to another. You can say player A suffered fter x number of carries and I can say player B did just fine. But what doesn that have to do with player C?

The answer is nothing. We have no way of knowing how player C will perform. We identified some possible outcomes, because of what heppened to others, but we don't which way this player will turn out.

It's certainly not a stretch to say a guy with 400+ carries might be at risk. But just because he does not qualify him to be at risk. You have to account for what we know about the given player, LJ. He's proven his ability with this workload so I really don't see the concern as an issue. We know he's never been injured or missed time. Knowing what we do know for certain about LJ is that he should be fine.

Now if one wants to say (and some have) that he lost 2 Pro Bowl lineman and his numbers are going to suffer because of that then I think we have more of a reason for concern unless they replace those players with more good lineman, which they will. KC has an excellent track record of replacing lineman with effective options.

I really think if you try to you can find some past performance factor and overlay it on a player and say "see he's going to fail" even if it doesn't fit that player. It's fun to look back but you must balance that percieved risk with known factors about a player and their current circumstances.

 

[Family Matters]

That being said I have to be frank and say that I do not understand the mind set associated with stating that rushing touches are different than receiving touches. These RB's are still getting tackled by the same defensive players whether it is a rush or a pass. John Lynch does not say "Oh well, Larry Johnson's just caught the ball in the flat so therefore I'm just going to touch him with two-hands and call it good." John Lynch is going to punish the RB with his tackle no matter how he gets the ball, and so is every other Defensive player.

Are we sure this is correct? It would seem that a rushing RB would be more likely to be tackled by a 300 lb linemen while a receiving RB would be more likely to be tackled by a 200 lb DB.

Without an audit of every single play we'll never know who made all the tackles of a RB. But to suggest that a RB is taking less of beating by catching the ball would be akin to the QB's arm not being as impacted by throwing to the RB versus the slot WR. It really doesn't matter.A touch si a touch and a guy getting tackled takes it toll. RB's aren't tackled by big lineman on every rushing play. RB's are also at time tackled by lineman on pass plays. Heck, what about the pass protection plays? RB's take a pounding blocking (or at least trying to) DE's, LB's and safeties. I've seen some of these guys get crushed.What I'm getting at is this: It really doesn't matter if it's a carry or reception but you really need to account for all the touches if you want a complete picture. Once you start excepting out certain plays then you distort the outcome of the analysis.

 

[flapgreen]

That being said I have to be frank and say that I do not understand the mind set associated with stating that rushing touches are different than receiving touches. These RB's are still getting tackled by the same defensive players whether it is a rush or a pass. John Lynch does not say "Oh well, Larry Johnson's just caught the ball in the flat so therefore I'm just going to touch him with two-hands and call it good." John Lynch is going to punish the RB with his tackle no matter how he gets the ball, and so is every other Defensive player.

Are we sure this is correct? It would seem that a rushing RB would be more likely to be tackled by a 300 lb linemen while a receiving RB would be more likely to be tackled by a 200 lb DB.

exactly

 

[flapgreen]

You guys really think receivers take as much abuse as rb's with the same amount of touches? That's nuts.

 

[Chase Stuart]

Running backs with the most touches are the running backs you want. Emmitt Smith had 444 carries in 1992, and was the number 1 fantasy RB in 1993. Terrell Davis had 481 freakin carries in 1997, before putting up one of the greatest seasons ever in 1998.

 

[ELM]

That being said I have to be frank and say that I do not understand the mind set associated with stating that rushing touches are different than receiving touches. These RB's are still getting tackled by the same defensive players whether it is a rush or a pass. John Lynch does not say "Oh well, Larry Johnson's just caught the ball in the flat so therefore I'm just going to touch him with two-hands and call it good." John Lynch is going to punish the RB with his tackle no matter how he gets the ball, and so is every other Defensive player.

Are we sure this is correct? It would seem that a rushing RB would be more likely to be tackled by a 300 lb linemen while a receiving RB would be more likely to be tackled by a 200 lb DB.

Without an audit of every single play we'll never know who made all the tackles of a RB. But to suggest that a RB is taking less of beating by catching the ball would be akin to the QB's arm not being as impacted by throwing to the RB versus the slot WR. It really doesn't matter.A touch si a touch and a guy getting tackled takes it toll. RB's aren't tackled by big lineman on every rushing play. RB's are also at time tackled by lineman on pass plays. Heck, what about the pass protection plays? RB's take a pounding blocking (or at least trying to) DE's, LB's and safeties. I've seen some of these guys get crushed.What I'm getting at is this: It really doesn't matter if it's a carry or reception but you really need to account for all the touches if you want a complete picture. Once you start excepting out certain plays then you distort the outcome of the analysis.

How old was james Wilder when he did it? And you are nuts if you think getting hit one on one by a defenisve back is as bad as getting crushed at the line and having six guys fall on you. Or being stood up and then popped by Lynch. Guys dont usually make huge open field tackles. If you overpursue a RB in the flat, he will make you pay. RBs dont get the pattern over the middle that gets them creamed by the safety either.

 

[renesauz]

That being said I have to be frank and say that I do not understand the mind set associated with stating that rushing touches are different than receiving touches. These RB's are still getting tackled by the same defensive players whether it is a rush or a pass. John Lynch does not say "Oh well, Larry Johnson's just caught the ball in the flat so therefore I'm just going to touch him with two-hands and call it good." John Lynch is going to punish the RB with his tackle no matter how he gets the ball, and so is every other Defensive player.

Are we sure this is correct? It would seem that a rushing RB would be more likely to be tackled by a 300 lb linemen while a receiving RB would be more likely to be tackled by a 200 lb DB.

Without an audit of every single play we'll never know who made all the tackles of a RB. But to suggest that a RB is taking less of beating by catching the ball would be akin to the QB's arm not being as impacted by throwing to the RB versus the slot WR. It really doesn't matter.A touch si a touch and a guy getting tackled takes it toll. RB's aren't tackled by big lineman on every rushing play. RB's are also at time tackled by lineman on pass plays. Heck, what about the pass protection plays? RB's take a pounding blocking (or at least trying to) DE's, LB's and safeties. I've seen some of these guys get crushed.

What I'm getting at is this: It really doesn't matter if it's a carry or reception but you really need to account for all the touches if you want a complete picture. Once you start excepting out certain plays then you distort the outcome of the analysis.

How old was james Wilder when he did it? And you are nuts if you think getting hit one on one by a 190# defensive back is as bad as getting crushed at the line and having six 280#+ guys fall on you. Or being stood up and then popped by Lynch.

Guys dont usually make huge open field tackles. If you overpursue a RB in the flat, he will make you pay. RBs dont get the pattern over the middle that gets them creamed by the safety either.

but clarified where needed.The fact is that there simply isn't a good enough sample set if you exclude the catches, but it may not be reasonable to include a guy with 70 receptions barely meeting the touch qualifier.

 

[Routilla]

Running backs with the most touches are the running backs you want. Emmitt Smith had 444 carries in 1992, and was the number 1 fantasy RB in 1993. Terrell Davis had 481 freakin carries in 1997, before putting up one of the greatest seasons ever in 1998.

I always thought this as well. The more touches the better chances for yards/TDs. Worrying about workload is like saying a leadoff batter in baseball has too low of an average to be a good leadoff hitter. He's going to have more at bats and thus more chances to get on base and score runs, which is what we want in Fantasy sports.

 

[Hairy Snowman]

Running backs with the most touches are the running backs you want. Emmitt Smith had 444 carries in 1992, and was the number 1 fantasy RB in 1993. Terrell Davis had 481 freakin carries in 1997, before putting up one of the greatest seasons ever in 1998.

Emmitt was the best running back of all time IMO (though he gets absolutely no credit). Emmit was the exception, the Natural, not the rule. Besides, he had 373 carries in 1992 (481 only if you include the playoffs [which dont count for fantasy purposes]) and then held out the first 2 games of 1993 (a year where he had 283 carries not including playoffs). Emmitt also eclipsed those season yardage/atts totals only 1 time after 1993 the rest of his career (11 more years).

True Terrel had a great season in 1998 following 481 freakin carries(really 345 during the season) , but then what?

After the 1998 season, Davis was plagued with injuries and saw action infrequently. In 1999, Davis tore his anterior and medial collateral ligaments in his right knee while trying to make a tackle on an interception thrown against the New York Jets, during the fourth game of the season. This injury kept him out for the remainder of the year.

In 2000, Davis was sidelined for all but five games because of a stress reaction injury in his lower leg. In 2001, he only played in eight games because of arthroscopic surgery on both knees.

Davis retired during the preseason of 2002. He walked through the tunnel in uniform for the final time during a preseason Denver-San Francisco matchup held at Invesco Field at Mile High. To a standing ovation, he gave a mile-high salute to the fans and was hugged by his teammates. After walking to midfield as the lone Broncos player at the coin toss, Davis retreated to the sideline. He spent the second half in street clothes. The following week, upon his request, he was placed on injured reserve, ending his season and effectively ending his career.

THAT is what we we are pointing to. He lasted 2 years taking that pounding, period.Why do you think Larry Johnson is holding out? Because 400 carries was good for him? Because he thinks he will have an extended career carrying the ball that many times? I garauntee you he is STILL hurting from last year today.

There is a reason most of the league is moving to RBBC. Everyone wants to run the ball 400+ times, but no human can take that beating (except MAYBE Emmitt)

I am still waiting on research on how RBs did in seasons following 375 carries or more. just a better or worse and a percentage would be fine. I think you would find the numbers very revealing.

 

[softball]

Running backs with the most touches are the running backs you want. Emmitt Smith had 444 carries in 1992, and was the number 1 fantasy RB in 1993. Terrell Davis had 481 freakin carries in 1997, before putting up one of the greatest seasons ever in 1998.

This is WAY too logical CS. We beg for #1 FF RBs, then moan when they get too many touches.LOLThere is a simple fact, and I stated it earlier that many people leave out of the "analysis"Larry Johnson has TALENT, and a lot of it. Drat talented football players on your Fantasy Football team and you win.Try and guess when the unpredictable injury/falloff will occur and draft players that aren't as good and you have an average Fantasy Football team.I took LJ 3rd in a 14 Team Draft last night. Love the pick, and love the value people are placing on Steven Jacksons 90 receptions in 2006.

 

[Q-Bert]

Folks,As a quick summary, the following RB's all have had 400 carries or more in a season :Jamal AndersonEric DickersonEddie GeorgeLarry JohnsonJames WilderIn the year following their feat [N+1], 2 of these RB's suffered season ending injuries [Anderson and Dickerson].

Not to single you out but I see this same mistake made all the time. People Eric Dickerson did not suffer a season ending injury in 1987. He was traded after three games and played the rest of the season for the Colts.| Year TM | G | Att Yards Y/A TD | Rec Yards Y/R TD |+----------+-----+--------------------------+-------------------------+| 1983 ram | 16 | 390 1808 4.6 18 | 51 404 7.9 2 || 1984 ram | 16 | 379 2105 5.6 14 | 21 139 6.6 0 || 1985 ram | 14 | 292 1234 4.2 12 | 20 126 6.3 0 || 1986 ram | 16 | 404 1821 4.5 11 | 26 205 7.9 0 || 1987 ind | 9 | 223 1011 4.5 5 | 13 133 10.2 0 || 1987 ram | 3 | 60 277 4.6 1 | 5 38 7.6 0 || 1988 ind | 16 | 388 1659 4.3 14 | 36 377 10.5 1 || 1989 ind | 15 | 314 1311 4.2 7 | 30 211 7.0 1 |In the years after he had 404 carries Dickerson finished:

Rushes: 1987-2, 1988-1, 1989-4Rushing yards: 1987-2, 1988-1, 1989-3 Rushing TDs: 1987-10t, 1988-3, 1989-10t Yards from scrimmage: 1987-3, 1988-1t, 1989-7 Rush/Receive TDs: 1988-2t

In fantasy he finished:

Year		Value		Pos. Rank	Overall Rank--------------------------------------------------1987	  87	 3		 111988	 154	 1		  11989	  80	  9		  14

Any discussion of what to expect from a running back based on a comparison to Eric Dickerson is a waste of time. He is a statistical outlier, there is no other player who can be remotely compared to him. The workload and production that he put up over the course of seven years is unprecedented.

 

[David Yudkin]

Bottom line without all the smoke and mirrors and mathematical analysis . . . I have concluded (as have Doug and I believe Chase as well) that the best bets for fantasy players to own are the ones that get the ball the most. That's basically it in a nutshell. All players are at risk to injury on every play (sometimes not even in live game action), so I would rather have a guy that should see the ball 350-400 times than a guy that is slated to get it 200-250 with upside to get a lot more if something quirky happens. IMO, extensive opportunities even trumps talent and ability and that was why I was pimping Chester Taylor last year even though he wasn't the most gifted of RBs.

 

[Hairy Snowman]

Bottom line without all the smoke and mirrors and mathematical analysis . . . I have concluded (as have Doug and I believe Chase as well) that the best bets for fantasy players to own are the ones that get the ball the most. That's basically it in a nutshell. All players are at risk to injury on every play (sometimes not even in live game action), so I would rather have a guy that should see the ball 350-400 times than a guy that is slated to get it 200-250 with upside to get a lot more if something quirky happens. IMO, extensive opportunities even trumps talent and ability and that was why I was pimping Chester Taylor last year even though he wasn't the most gifted of RBs.

David -I agree we all look for opportunity for our fantasy players, and that does equate to value, but IMO you can't turn a blind eye towards risk and especially fatigue. IMO Fatigue leads to a greater likelihood of injury and/or less production. Hence the superbowl jinx (Superbowl teams tend, in general, to have down years following their superbowl run).I still believe you will find that just about every RB that ran the ball 375+ times in a year followed that year with a down year with lower stats. People are only human. You can only take so much punishment in a short period of time and still reccover fully.As a professional technical analyst, I assess risk almost daily. To only look at the logistics of # of opportunities and discount risk IMO presents a flawed model.

 

[Thom Yorke]

Running backs with the most touches are the running backs you want. Emmitt Smith had 444 carries in 1992, and was the number 1 fantasy RB in 1993. Terrell Davis had 481 freakin carries in 1997, before putting up one of the greatest seasons ever in 1998.

Emmitt was the best running back of all time IMO (though he gets absolutely no credit). Emmit was the exception, the Natural, not the rule. Besides, he had 373 carries in 1992 (481 only if you include the playoffs [which dont count for fantasy purposes]) and then held out the first 2 games of 1993 (a year where he had 283 carries not including playoffs). Emmitt also eclipsed those season yardage/atts totals only 1 time after 1993 the rest of his career (11 more years).

True Terrel had a great season in 1998 following 481 freakin carries(really 345 during the season) , but then what?

After the 1998 season, Davis was plagued with injuries and saw action infrequently. In 1999, Davis tore his anterior and medial collateral ligaments in his right knee while trying to make a tackle on an interception thrown against the New York Jets, during the fourth game of the season. This injury kept him out for the remainder of the year.

In 2000, Davis was sidelined for all but five games because of a stress reaction injury in his lower leg. In 2001, he only played in eight games because of arthroscopic surgery on both knees.

Davis retired during the preseason of 2002. He walked through the tunnel in uniform for the final time during a preseason Denver-San Francisco matchup held at Invesco Field at Mile High. To a standing ovation, he gave a mile-high salute to the fans and was hugged by his teammates. After walking to midfield as the lone Broncos player at the coin toss, Davis retreated to the sideline. He spent the second half in street clothes. The following week, upon his request, he was placed on injured reserve, ending his season and effectively ending his career.

THAT is what we we are pointing to. He lasted 2 years taking that pounding, period.Why do you think Larry Johnson is holding out? Because 400 carries was good for him? Because he thinks he will have an extended career carrying the ball that many times? I garauntee you he is STILL hurting from last year today.

There is a reason most of the league is moving to RBBC. Everyone wants to run the ball 400+ times, but no human can take that beating (except MAYBE Emmitt)

I am still waiting on research on how RBs did in seasons following 375 carries or more. just a better or worse and a percentage would be fine. I think you would find the numbers very revealing.

I agree...there's nothing inherently magical about the number 400 vs. 384, or 375...

 

[AB in DC]

I am still waiting on research on how RBs did in seasons following 375 carries or more. just a better or worse and a percentage would be fine. I think you would find the numbers very revealing.

I posted this Football Outsiders link above.For RBs with more than 340 carries, additional carries are negatively correlated with yardage the following year.

That's a pretty striking finding, if you ask me.

 

[David Yudkin]

I still believe you will find that just about every RB that ran the ball 375+ times in a year followed that year with a down year with lower stats. People are only human. You can only take so much punishment in a short period of time and still reccover fully.

As a professional technical analyst, I assess risk almost daily. To only look at the logistics of # of opportunities and discount risk IMO presents a flawed model.

For those that assess risk, one has to be atune with mathematics and probability. The likelihood of ANY RB getting 375-400 opportunities in a season is remote. It doesn't happen very often, so to expect it to happen again is really going against the odds.Using baseball as an example, Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs in a season. Or football as an example. Peyton Manning had 49 TD passes in a season. The likelihood of them doing better the next year was slim, but would you not want one of those guys on your fantasy squad?

Since the advent of the 16-game season in 1978, there have been 4,546 total RB seasons. There have been only 40 times where a RB had 400+ touches and 85 times when a RB had 375+ touches. That works out to 0.88% and 1.87% respectively. There are a TON of reasons why a RB has a slim chance to get that big a workload, injuries being one of the bigger ones.

Be that as it may, the production model for fantasy football is pretty simple. Players don't score fantasy points if they don't get the ball. I'm not disputing that guys with huge workloads may appear to break down more than others (and that one is open for debate -- LINK). The fact still remains that injuries can happen at any time.

IMO, players with extreme workloads seem destined to be less productive based primarily on the fact that it appears unlikely that they will again such an extreme workload. In essence, the same RB will be asked to be more productive in fewer touches to equal the previous years results. Maybe that happens, maybe it doesn't, but IMO they often don't. So a player like Larry Johnson really can only go down in terms of workload, and IMO, that should mean all other things being equal his fantasy production should go down with it. (LJ has other notable issues, most prevalent loses to the OL, that may cause bigger problems).

 

[AB in DC]

Running backs with the most touches are the running backs you want.

That's only half true.Running backs with the most touches in 2007 are the running backs you want in 2007.

Running backs with the most touches in 2006 are not necessarily the running backs you want in 2007.

 

[Dancing Bear]

Q-Bert,

Thanks for the correction on Dickerson for 1987, I did indeed misread the stats.

The distributions are now ...

a) 22 of the 64 instances suffered a downswing of more than 10% in both touches and fantasy points [34.38%].

b) 4 of the 64 instances suffered a downswing of more than 10% in touches but not in fantasy points [6.25%].

c) 18 of these instances did not suffer a downswing of more than 10% in touches but did in fantasy points [28.13%].

d) 20 of these instances did not suffer a downswing of more than 10% in either touches and fantasy points [31.25%].

I would like to propose a scenario ...

1) The average of the following numbers 10,9,8,8,7,6 is 8

2) The average of the following numbers 10,9,8,4,3,2 is 6 [25% lower]

3) The average of the following numbers 7,6,6,6,6,5 is 6 [25% lower]

Stating that RB's who had a particular workload similar say to 1) above, and then following that performance their performance in year N+1 was on average 25% lower does not tell the whole story as either 2) or 3) could be appropriate distributions. This statement can be very misleading unless the full nature of the distribution is portrayed as above. In fact 50% of the RB's in 2) performed equally well in both year N and N+1, while in 3) all RB's suffered a hit in performance from year N to N+1.

Without reviewing the population density of performance vs touches for all RB's between year N and N+1, we really have no idea whether the statistics from a) - d) above present any different risk for downturn than any other number of touches. It might be entirely likely that these same basic distributions result if we were to use a 10 touch cut off instead.

 

[Clayton Gray]

That being said I have to be frank and say that I do not understand the mind set associated with stating that rushing touches are different than receiving touches. These RB's are still getting tackled by the same defensive players whether it is a rush or a pass. John Lynch does not say "Oh well, Larry Johnson's just caught the ball in the flat so therefore I'm just going to touch him with two-hands and call it good." John Lynch is going to punish the RB with his tackle no matter how he gets the ball, and so is every other Defensive player.

Are we sure this is correct? It would seem that a rushing RB would be more likely to be tackled by a 300 lb linemen while a receiving RB would be more likely to be tackled by a 200 lb DB.

Without an audit of every single play we'll never know who made all the tackles of a RB. But to suggest that a RB is taking less of beating by catching the ball would be akin to the QB's arm not being as impacted by throwing to the RB versus the slot WR. It really doesn't matter.A touch si a touch and a guy getting tackled takes it toll. RB's aren't tackled by big lineman on every rushing play. RB's are also at time tackled by lineman on pass plays. Heck, what about the pass protection plays? RB's take a pounding blocking (or at least trying to) DE's, LB's and safeties. I've seen some of these guys get crushed.What I'm getting at is this: It really doesn't matter if it's a carry or reception but you really need to account for all the touches if you want a complete picture. Once you start excepting out certain plays then you distort the outcome of the analysis.

I disagree that they have the same impact on the player.Further, why kind of touch is more likely to result in the player running out of bounds without being tackled: a rush or a reception?

 

[Family Matters]

That being said I have to be frank and say that I do not understand the mind set associated with stating that rushing touches are different than receiving touches. These RB's are still getting tackled by the same defensive players whether it is a rush or a pass. John Lynch does not say "Oh well, Larry Johnson's just caught the ball in the flat so therefore I'm just going to touch him with two-hands and call it good." John Lynch is going to punish the RB with his tackle no matter how he gets the ball, and so is every other Defensive player.

Are we sure this is correct? It would seem that a rushing RB would be more likely to be tackled by a 300 lb linemen while a receiving RB would be more likely to be tackled by a 200 lb DB.

Without an audit of every single play we'll never know who made all the tackles of a RB. But to suggest that a RB is taking less of beating by catching the ball would be akin to the QB's arm not being as impacted by throwing to the RB versus the slot WR. It really doesn't matter.A touch si a touch and a guy getting tackled takes it toll. RB's aren't tackled by big lineman on every rushing play. RB's are also at time tackled by lineman on pass plays. Heck, what about the pass protection plays? RB's take a pounding blocking (or at least trying to) DE's, LB's and safeties. I've seen some of these guys get crushed.What I'm getting at is this: It really doesn't matter if it's a carry or reception but you really need to account for all the touches if you want a complete picture. Once you start excepting out certain plays then you distort the outcome of the analysis.

I disagree that they have the same impact on the player.Further, why kind of touch is more likely to result in the player running out of bounds without being tackled: a rush or a reception?

If you watch most RB's that catch balls, most of the catches are behind or at the line of scrimmage. The ones that go beyond are usually within 3-5 yards. While pass rushing lineman may not be in the in the play, you'll frequently see D lineman involved that close to the line of scrimmage. Add in the LB's and Safety's and you begin to realize this isn't the same as WR's catching the ball.We can agree that the punishment might somehwhat lighter but to the extent that you ignore them as touches is probably not the best laid plan. I think you're much better off counting the catches as touches when considering how much a RB is involved.

 

[Clayton Gray]

That being said I have to be frank and say that I do not understand the mind set associated with stating that rushing touches are different than receiving touches. These RB's are still getting tackled by the same defensive players whether it is a rush or a pass. John Lynch does not say "Oh well, Larry Johnson's just caught the ball in the flat so therefore I'm just going to touch him with two-hands and call it good." John Lynch is going to punish the RB with his tackle no matter how he gets the ball, and so is every other Defensive player.

Are we sure this is correct? It would seem that a rushing RB would be more likely to be tackled by a 300 lb linemen while a receiving RB would be more likely to be tackled by a 200 lb DB.

Without an audit of every single play we'll never know who made all the tackles of a RB. But to suggest that a RB is taking less of beating by catching the ball would be akin to the QB's arm not being as impacted by throwing to the RB versus the slot WR. It really doesn't matter.A touch si a touch and a guy getting tackled takes it toll. RB's aren't tackled by big lineman on every rushing play. RB's are also at time tackled by lineman on pass plays. Heck, what about the pass protection plays? RB's take a pounding blocking (or at least trying to) DE's, LB's and safeties. I've seen some of these guys get crushed.What I'm getting at is this: It really doesn't matter if it's a carry or reception but you really need to account for all the touches if you want a complete picture. Once you start excepting out certain plays then you distort the outcome of the analysis.

I disagree that they have the same impact on the player.Further, why kind of touch is more likely to result in the player running out of bounds without being tackled: a rush or a reception?

If you watch most RB's that catch balls, most of the catches are behind or at the line of scrimmage. The ones that go beyond are usually within 3-5 yards. While pass rushing lineman may not be in the in the play, you'll frequently see D lineman involved that close to the line of scrimmage. Add in the LB's and Safety's and you begin to realize this isn't the same as WR's catching the ball.We can agree that the punishment might somehwhat lighter but to the extent that you ignore them as touches is probably not the best laid plan. I think you're much better off counting the catches as touches when considering how much a RB is involved.

I never advocated ignoring them. Maybe we should count them as half a carry.

 

[Mark Wimer]

Bottom line without all the smoke and mirrors and mathematical analysis . . . I have concluded (as have Doug and I believe Chase as well) that the best bets for fantasy players to own are the ones that get the ball the most. That's basically it in a nutshell. All players are at risk to injury on every play (sometimes not even in live game action), so I would rather have a guy that should see the ball 350-400 times than a guy that is slated to get it 200-250 with upside to get a lot more if something quirky happens. IMO, extensive opportunities even trumps talent and ability and that was why I was pimping Chester Taylor last year even though he wasn't the most gifted of RBs.

David -I agree we all look for opportunity for our fantasy players, and that does equate to value, but IMO you can't turn a blind eye towards risk and especially fatigue. IMO Fatigue leads to a greater likelihood of injury and/or less production. Hence the superbowl jinx (Superbowl teams tend, in general, to have down years following their superbowl run).I still believe you will find that just about every RB that ran the ball 375+ times in a year followed that year with a down year with lower stats. People are only human. You can only take so much punishment in a short period of time and still reccover fully.As a professional technical analyst, I assess risk almost daily. To only look at the logistics of # of opportunities and discount risk IMO presents a flawed model.

HS -Over the years, I have followed NFL players and their injuries closely (I write the early Monday injury report in-season for the site and have done so for many years) - and I too have discussed injury risk analysis with Dr. Drinen. He wrote an analysis a few years back that showed that basically everybody playing NFL football is at risk for an injury on any given play, as David indicated in his post. However, there are different types of injuries and different levels of injury risks at are associated with those different types. Some injuries are single-instance happenings - for example, a broken lower leg bone. As long as the fracture isn't a complicated break requiring extensive surgery to repair (ie. a simple break as opposed to a shattered bone), once the fracture heals, the leg bone is actually usually stronger where the break occurred than prior to the break - so you have a minimal chance of the injury recurring at that spot simply because the bone broke once before. What I'm saying is that when a player loses PT due to a broken bone, in most cases that injury doesn't elevate the player in question's chances of re-injury. On the other hand, certain types of injuries are very likely to recur, and should be considered to elevate a particular player's injury risk (or the athlete's risk of suffering from a chronic complaint that has to be "played through", costing some % of the players' effecitveness week in and week out, or forcing the player to be "platooned" with another player in a RBBC, for example). Severe concussions make a player more liable to suffer repeat concussions in future games - ex-LB Dan Morgan from Carolina and former Jet WR Wayne Chrebet are case studies in the problem of serial concussions at the NFL level. Degeneration of the meniscus cartilage in a player's knee or knees leads to bone-on-bone grinding in the knee, bone chips become loose bodies in the joint and cause pain/the need for "drainage" (removal of excess fluid and blood from the joint after practice/games)/the need for an arthroscopic surgery to remove the "loose bodies" (chunks of torn cartilage and/or chips of bone). Curtis Martin and Marshall Faulk are examples of players whose careers were ended by chronic knee complaints related to degenerated meniscus cartilage in the knee(s). The problem with assessing knee complaints for injury risk in any given calendar year is that, to a certain extent, anti-inflammatory medicine and pain management techniques can allow a player to play through bone-on-bone contact in his knees - at least for a while. But the continuing pounding of the leg bones in these instances worsens the condition of the joint until the player is forced to retire. In those cases where we know a player has a chronic injury condition - Kellen Winslow Jr.'s surgically repaired knee post motorcycle accident, which was a nagging concern all last year and required further intervention this past off-season, for example - that player should go on your draft board with a ? or ?? next to their name due to being, essentially, pre-injured. Winslow's repaired knee is never going to be 100% right, and he's stated that publicly numerous times, so we as fantasy football evaluators should include that chronic condition in our assessment of his injury risk for 2007. In contrast, as far as I know (I could be wrong as I didn't follow his college career in detail) Greg Olsen has not suffered a serious injury requiring surgical intervention so he faces the same injury risk as every other player in the NFL who hasn't previously been seriously injured. As a further point, not all surgical procedures lead to elevated injury risk (appendectomies, for example) - in my opinion, the most worrisome surgeries when we consider a player's PT/% effectiveness are those including connective tissues (tendons and ligaments) or degenerating cartilage. Tendons and ligaments do not heal quickly (restricted blood flow compared to muscles), and (the claims of proponents of micro-fracture surgery aside) cartilage doesn't regrow very much (or not at all, depending on who you believe) - once a joint has lost its cartilage, bone on bone contact is inevitable. Ultimately, I am of the opinion that injury risk assessment is very useful for prioritizing fantasy draft lists (if 2 or 3 or 4 players are tied in my projections at a position, I rank them within that tier or bucket with the pre-injured players lower in the tier or bucket), but it has to be done on a case-by-case basis. Just assigning an arbitrary number of carries to a set of players and saying 340 or 370 or 400 touches (or playing a full 16 game slate, or whatever) automatically increases injury risk for all the people in that class isn't really useful, IMO. However, we can say that a particular human being - ie. Kellen Winslow Jr. with his severely damaged knee that also suffered a staph infection after being repaired - who has aditionally strained his surgically repaired joint or limb with some given number of hits/carries/routes run, IS at an elevated risk for a shortened 2007 season due to the previous injury (in fact, IMO Winslow will always be at an elevated risk compared to a pool of previously uninjured TEs due to the complex and devastating knee injury he suffered during the motorcycle accident). My .02.

 

[Q-Bert]

Bottom line without all the smoke and mirrors and mathematical analysis . . . I have concluded (as have Doug and I believe Chase as well) that the best bets for fantasy players to own are the ones that get the ball the most. That's basically it in a nutshell. All players are at risk to injury on every play (sometimes not even in live game action), so I would rather have a guy that should see the ball 350-400 times than a guy that is slated to get it 200-250 with upside to get a lot more if something quirky happens. IMO, extensive opportunities even trumps talent and ability and that was why I was pimping Chester Taylor last year even though he wasn't the most gifted of RBs.

David -I agree we all look for opportunity for our fantasy players, and that does equate to value, but IMO you can't turn a blind eye towards risk and especially fatigue. IMO Fatigue leads to a greater likelihood of injury and/or less production. Hence the superbowl jinx (Superbowl teams tend, in general, to have down years following their superbowl run).I still believe you will find that just about every RB that ran the ball 375+ times in a year followed that year with a down year with lower stats. People are only human. You can only take so much punishment in a short period of time and still reccover fully.As a professional technical analyst, I assess risk almost daily. To only look at the logistics of # of opportunities and discount risk IMO presents a flawed model.

HS -Over the years, I have followed NFL players and their injuries closely (I write the early Monday injury report in-season for the site and have done so for many years) - and I too have discussed injury risk analysis with Dr. Drinen. He wrote an analysis a few years back that showed that basically everybody playing NFL football is at risk for an injury on any given play, as David indicated in his post. However, there are different types of injuries and different levels of injury risks at are associated with those different types. Some injuries are single-instance happenings - for example, a broken lower leg bone. As long as the fracture isn't a complicated break requiring extensive surgery to repair (ie. a simple break as opposed to a shattered bone), once the fracture heals, the leg bone is actually usually stronger where the break occurred than prior to the break - so you have a minimal chance of the injury recurring at that spot simply because the bone broke once before. What I'm saying is that when a player loses PT due to a broken bone, in most cases that injury doesn't elevate the player in question's chances of re-injury. On the other hand, certain types of injuries are very likely to recur, and should be considered to elevate a particular player's injury risk (or the athlete's risk of suffering from a chronic complaint that has to be "played through", costing some % of the players' effecitveness week in and week out, or forcing the player to be "platooned" with another player in a RBBC, for example). Severe concussions make a player more liable to suffer repeat concussions in future games - ex-LB Dan Morgan from Carolina and former Jet WR Wayne Chrebet are case studies in the problem of serial concussions at the NFL level. Degeneration of the meniscus cartilage in a player's knee or knees leads to bone-on-bone grinding in the knee, bone chips become loose bodies in the joint and cause pain/the need for "drainage" (removal of excess fluid and blood from the joint after practice/games)/the need for an arthroscopic surgery to remove the "loose bodies" (chunks of torn cartilage and/or chips of bone). Curtis Martin and Marshall Faulk are examples of players whose careers were ended by chronic knee complaints related to degenerated meniscus cartilage in the knee(s). The problem with assessing knee complaints for injury risk in any given calendar year is that, to a certain extent, anti-inflammatory medicine and pain management techniques can allow a player to play through bone-on-bone contact in his knees - at least for a while. But the continuing pounding of the leg bones in these instances worsens the condition of the joint until the player is forced to retire. In those cases where we know a player has a chronic injury condition - Kellen Winslow Jr.'s surgically repaired knee post motorcycle accident, which was a nagging concern all last year and required further intervention this past off-season, for example - that player should go on your draft board with a ? or ?? next to their name due to being, essentially, pre-injured. Winslow's repaired knee is never going to be 100% right, and he's stated that publicly numerous times, so we as fantasy football evaluators should include that chronic condition in our assessment of his injury risk for 2007. In contrast, as far as I know (I could be wrong as I didn't follow his college career in detail) Greg Olsen has not suffered a serious injury requiring surgical intervention so he faces the same injury risk as every other player in the NFL who hasn't previously been seriously injured. As a further point, not all surgical procedures lead to elevated injury risk (appendectomies, for example) - in my opinion, the most worrisome surgeries when we consider a player's PT/% effectiveness are those including connective tissues (tendons and ligaments) or degenerating cartilage. Tendons and ligaments do not heal quickly (restricted blood flow compared to muscles), and (the claims of proponents of micro-fracture surgery aside) cartilage doesn't regrow very much (or not at all, depending on who you believe) - once a joint has lost its cartilage, bone on bone contact is inevitable. Ultimately, I am of the opinion that injury risk assessment is very useful for prioritizing fantasy draft lists (if 2 or 3 or 4 players are tied in my projections at a position, I rank them within that tier or bucket with the pre-injured players lower in the tier or bucket), but it has to be done on a case-by-case basis. Just assigning an arbitrary number of carries to a set of players and saying 340 or 370 or 400 touches (or playing a full 16 game slate, or whatever) automatically increases injury risk for all the people in that class isn't really useful, IMO. However, we can say that a particular human being - ie. Kellen Winslow Jr. with his severely damaged knee that also suffered a staph infection after being repaired - who has aditionally strained his surgically repaired joint or limb with some given number of hits/carries/routes run, IS at an elevated risk for a shortened 2007 season due to the previous injury (in fact, IMO Winslow will always be at an elevated risk compared to a pool of previously uninjured TEs due to the complex and devastating knee injury he suffered during the motorcycle accident). My .02.

Damn Just fantastic.

 

[Family Matters]

Bottom line without all the smoke and mirrors and mathematical analysis . . . I have concluded (as have Doug and I believe Chase as well) that the best bets for fantasy players to own are the ones that get the ball the most. That's basically it in a nutshell. All players are at risk to injury on every play (sometimes not even in live game action), so I would rather have a guy that should see the ball 350-400 times than a guy that is slated to get it 200-250 with upside to get a lot more if something quirky happens. IMO, extensive opportunities even trumps talent and ability and that was why I was pimping Chester Taylor last year even though he wasn't the most gifted of RBs.

David -I agree we all look for opportunity for our fantasy players, and that does equate to value, but IMO you can't turn a blind eye towards risk and especially fatigue. IMO Fatigue leads to a greater likelihood of injury and/or less production. Hence the superbowl jinx (Superbowl teams tend, in general, to have down years following their superbowl run).

I still believe you will find that just about every RB that ran the ball 375+ times in a year followed that year with a down year with lower stats. People are only human. You can only take so much punishment in a short period of time and still reccover fully.

As a professional technical analyst, I assess risk almost daily. To only look at the logistics of # of opportunities and discount risk IMO presents a flawed model.

HS -Over the years, I have followed NFL players and their injuries closely (I write the early Monday injury report in-season for the site and have done so for many years) - and I too have discussed injury risk analysis with Dr. Drinen. He wrote an analysis a few years back that showed that basically everybody playing NFL football is at risk for an injury on any given play, as David indicated in his post.

However, there are different types of injuries and different levels of injury risks at are associated with those different types. Some injuries are single-instance happenings - for example, a broken lower leg bone. As long as the fracture isn't a complicated break requiring extensive surgery to repair (ie. a simple break as opposed to a shattered bone), once the fracture heals, the leg bone is actually usually stronger where the break occurred than prior to the break - so you have a minimal chance of the injury recurring at that spot simply because the bone broke once before. What I'm saying is that when a player loses PT due to a broken bone, in most cases that injury doesn't elevate the player in question's chances of re-injury.

On the other hand, certain types of injuries are very likely to recur, and should be considered to elevate a particular player's injury risk (or the athlete's risk of suffering from a chronic complaint that has to be "played through", costing some % of the players' effecitveness week in and week out, or forcing the player to be "platooned" with another player in a RBBC, for example). Severe concussions make a player more liable to suffer repeat concussions in future games - ex-LB Dan Morgan from Carolina and former Jet WR Wayne Chrebet are case studies in the problem of serial concussions at the NFL level. Degeneration of the meniscus cartilage in a player's knee or knees leads to bone-on-bone grinding in the knee, bone chips become loose bodies in the joint and cause pain/the need for "drainage" (removal of excess fluid and blood from the joint after practice/games)/the need for an arthroscopic surgery to remove the "loose bodies" (chunks of torn cartilage and/or chips of bone). Curtis Martin and Marshall Faulk are examples of players whose careers were ended by chronic knee complaints related to degenerated meniscus cartilage in the knee(s). The problem with assessing knee complaints for injury risk in any given calendar year is that, to a certain extent, anti-inflammatory medicine and pain management techniques can allow a player to play through bone-on-bone contact in his knees - at least for a while. But the continuing pounding of the leg bones in these instances worsens the condition of the joint until the player is forced to retire.

In those cases where we know a player has a chronic injury condition - Kellen Winslow Jr.'s surgically repaired knee post motorcycle accident, which was a nagging concern all last year and required further intervention this past off-season, for example - that player should go on your draft board with a ? or ?? next to their name due to being, essentially, pre-injured. Winslow's repaired knee is never going to be 100% right, and he's stated that publicly numerous times, so we as fantasy football evaluators should include that chronic condition in our assessment of his injury risk for 2007. In contrast, as far as I know (I could be wrong as I didn't follow his college career in detail) Greg Olsen has not suffered a serious injury requiring surgical intervention so he faces the same injury risk as every other player in the NFL who hasn't previously been seriously injured. As a further point, not all surgical procedures lead to elevated injury risk (appendectomies, for example) - in my opinion, the most worrisome surgeries when we consider a player's PT/% effectiveness are those including connective tissues (tendons and ligaments) or degenerating cartilage. Tendons and ligaments do not heal quickly (restricted blood flow compared to muscles), and (the claims of proponents of micro-fracture surgery aside) cartilage doesn't regrow very much (or not at all, depending on who you believe) - once a joint has lost its cartilage, bone on bone contact is inevitable.

Ultimately, I am of the opinion that injury risk assessment is very useful for prioritizing fantasy draft lists (if 2 or 3 or 4 players are tied in my projections at a position, I rank them within that tier or bucket with the pre-injured players lower in the tier or bucket), but it has to be done on a case-by-case basis. Just assigning an arbitrary number of carries to a set of players and saying 340 or 370 or 400 touches (or playing a full 16 game slate, or whatever) automatically increases injury risk for all the people in that class isn't really useful, IMO. However, we can say that a particular human being - ie. Kellen Winslow Jr. with his severely damaged knee that also suffered a staph infection after being repaired - who has aditionally strained his surgically repaired joint or limb with some given number of hits/carries/routes run, IS at an elevated risk for a shortened 2007 season due to the previous injury (in fact, IMO Winslow will always be at an elevated risk compared to a pool of previously uninjured TEs due to the complex and devastating knee injury he suffered during the motorcycle accident).

My .02.

Well said Mark. Genarically qualifying players based on unproven criteria will remove you from good players that were artifiacally labeled as "risk". It's fine to note the workload of a given player but I think this thread has allowed us to explore LJ's touches enough to either run away if you are afraid of a player's workload or to recognize he can handle it and therefore see his risk as lower, not higher.

 

[Hairy Snowman]

Great Post Mark.I concede that you have to take injury risk on a case to case basis.For the sake of our discussion lets exclude players we know to have injury risk due to previous degenerative problems. These players already have a higher probability of injury and therefore already have a ??? next to their name. But are there shades of grey in rating some players that have not already had major injuries? Are there conditions that could lead to a higher risk?I am arguing, strictly regarding the RB position, that players that have not sustained previous injury have a greater risk of a worse performance or injury following a year when they carry the ball more than 375 times.This is from Football Outsiders

“A running back with 370 or more carries during the regular season will usually suffer either a major injury or loss of effectiveness the following year, unless he is named Eric Dickerson.”Some recent examples of the 370-carry theory in action include Curtis Martin’s collapse last year [i.e. 2005], Jamal Lewis’s struggles for the last two years, and Ricky Williams falling from 4.8 yards per carry in 2002 to 3.5 yards per carry in 2003. Terrell Davis, Jamal Anderson, and James each tore his ACL a year after going over 370 carries. The 370-carry barrier helped destroy the careers of Earl Campbell, Barry Foster, and Gerald Riggs.

Im not saying it would affect me a ton, but a tinge. A tie-breaker. And regarding LJ, people who think just because he was delivering those blows that he was recieving no contact are fooling themselves. Those hits were violent, and maybe it didn't hurt Larry as much as the other guy, but don't fool yourself into thinking they didn't hurt.just saying. I agree receptions are like 1/2 a rushing attempt too.

 

[Toads]

Johnson's coming off a season where he got the crap beat out of him, he lost a hall of fame offensive lineman, his coach wants him to get fewer touches, they're changing quarterbacks, and the rest of the teams in the division improved with the exception of San Diego who is just better than KC. I really don't care how many other backs with 400 touches have done well or poorly in the past, just looking at his situation I don't want to spend a top 5 fantasy pick on him.

After reading this thread, and owning Johnson in a couple of keeper leagues, I don't think you'll have to worry about him falling to you the 1.06.

 

[Mark Wimer]

Great Post Mark.

I concede that you have to take injury risk on a case to case basis.

For the sake of our discussion lets exclude players we know to have injury risk due to previous degenerative problems. These players already have a higher probability of injury and therefore already have a ??? next to their name.

But are there shades of grey in rating some players that have not already had major injuries? Are there conditions that could lead to a higher risk?

I am arguing, strictly regarding the RB position, that players that have not sustained previous injury have a greater risk of a worse performance or injury following a year when they carry the ball more than 375 times.

This is from Football Outsiders

“A running back with 370 or more carries during the regular season will usually suffer either a major injury or loss of effectiveness the following year, unless he is named Eric Dickerson.”

Some recent examples of the 370-carry theory in action include Curtis Martin’s collapse last year [i.e. 2005], Jamal Lewis’s struggles for the last two years, and Ricky Williams falling from 4.8 yards per carry in 2002 to 3.5 yards per carry in 2003. Terrell Davis, Jamal Anderson, and James each tore his ACL a year after going over 370 carries. The 370-carry barrier helped destroy the careers of Earl Campbell, Barry Foster, and Gerald Riggs.

Im not saying it would affect me a ton, but a tinge. A tie-breaker. And regarding LJ, people who think just because he was delivering those blows that he was recieving no contact are fooling themselves. Those hits were violent, and maybe it didn't hurt Larry as much as the other guy, but don't fool yourself into thinking they didn't hurt.just saying.

I agree receptions are like 1/2 a rushing attempt too.

The notion that 370 (or more) carries leads to injuries due to the ponding on the human body is apparent when we look at the data in the abstract, for any given group of players - we can see that, in general, football is hard on the human body and I'd guess any retired NFL veteran would attest to that fact. However, I don't think that being able to observe that, as a group, RBs who get a lot of carries in any given season have sometimes been injured in succeeding seasons has any predictive power for any particular player who may be in question - you simply have to pay attention to the player's injury history and his own recuperative powers (Terrell Owens, despite all his apparent psychological issues, is a very fast healer, for example). I would also submit that a player's age and length of his NFL career are also somewhat useful in gauging a player's body's recuperative powers - Bronco WR Rod Smith, with his 12 year career and 849 receptions and his now-rehabbing left hip, is more of a concern for me than Ted Ginn Jr. and his Lisfranc sprained foot, simply because Smith is at the end of his career and is in his 30's, while Ginn is starting his pro career and in his early 20's.

Now, if the statistical analysis you cite above also accounted for age and NFL career length, then it might be somewhat useful as a tool for injury risk analysis - or you could use it as a starting point and add in career length/age as other categories on your own and see if there was a correlation between age/career length and season or career-ending injury (I would suspect that there is a strong correlation). As it stands, though, I don't see much utility from a fantasy perspective of saying players with 370+ carries one year should be degraded for ranking/projections purposes, because by that logic we should be dropping LaDainian Tomlinson down our boards due to his workload (but what makes Tomlinson such a fantasy phenomenon is the enormous numbers of touches he gets each year). He's had approximately 400 (some years even more, a high of 451 touches in 2002) since he started his career, and we all know about his phenomenal 31 TD, 2242 combined yards performance from 2006. He is also a remarkably durable "fast healer" who, to date, has only missed one game in his career (I don't recall if that was due to injury, or simply to rest him for the playoffs - it was in 2004. Tomlinson is only one of a host of counter-examples to the thesis that workload = injury risk. There are also a lot of guys who get hurt very early in their careeers and never recover (Robert Edwards from the 1998 Patriots catastrophically injured a knee playing sand volleyball in Hawaii prior to the Pro-Bowl and, while he did get back to play in the NFL with Miami (2002), he was never again a fantasy factor) - and their workload wouldn't have raised a red flag for fantasy owners.

My .02.

 

[Dancing Bear]

First let me say that I discovered a small flaw in my Excel sheet for assessing the various 10% cut-offs that I spoke of earlier in this post, and I apologize for posting erroneous distribution numbers. Below you will find the accurate distribution numbers.

I have tried to take a broader view of things and so for clarity here is the assessment. I have done a review of both RB workload and RB performance. I assumed regular season, Touches [rushes + receptions], and I assumed PPG. We are comparing year N with year N+1. There are 4 possible outcomes.

a) RB has Touches in year N+1 which have fallen off and are a minimum of 10% less than year N : RB has a PPG in year N+1 which has fallen off and is a minimum of 10% less than year N

b) RB has Touches in year N+1 which have fallen off and are a minimum of 10% less than year N : RB has a PPG in year N+1 greater than or within 10% of year N

c) RB has Touches in year N+1 greater than or within 10% of year N : RB has a PPG in year N+1 which has fallen off and is a minimum of 10% less than year N

d) RB has Touches in year N+1 greater than or within 10% of year N : RB has a PPG in year N+1 greater than or within 10% of year N

We are most concerned with projected when a RB will fall into either category b) or d).

I then reviewed the data of two groups 20 touches or greater and 25 touches or greater. For your historical reference, only one RB in history has averaged 30 or more touches for a season and that distinction goes to James Wilder of the 1984 Tampa Bay Buccaneers [30.8]

There have been 68 total RB instances of 25 touches or greater. 41 different RB's have contributed to this distribution. There are 4 current RB's who have no year N+1 to compare to], so the instances are effectively reduced to 64.

There have been 402 total RB instances of 20 touches or greater [yes the 68 from above are included]. 148 different RB's have contributed to this distribution. There are 18 RB's who have no year N+1 to compare to], so the instances are effectively reduced to 384.

Here are the distributions.



20 Touches or greater

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a) 156 - 40.6%

b) 24 - 6.3%

c) 60 - 15.6%

d) 144 - 37.5%

Note that following observations :

It is somewhat more likely for a RB to have 20 Touches or greater in Year N+1 than not.

--> 204 [53%] to 180 [47%].

It is somewhat more unlikely for a RB to exceed their previous PPG in Year N+1.

--> 216 [56%] to 168 [44%].

It is equally likely that a RB will achieve either a) or d) in this group.



25 Touches or greater

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a) 28 - 43.8%

b) 6 - 9.4%

c) 16 - 25.0%

d) 14 - 21.9%

Note that following observations :

It is somewhat more unlikely for a RB to have 25 Touches or greater in Year N+1 than not.

--> 34 [53%] to 30 [47%].

It is more than twice as likely that a RB does not repeat their PPG in Year N+1.

--> 20 [31%] to 44 [69%].

It is twice as likely that a RB will achieve a) rather than d) in this group.



Comparing the two distribution groups

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It is essentially a 50-50 coin toss whether or not a RB will repeat Touches in year N+1 in either group. This means that from a Touches perspective there is no difference between the distributions and we have to realize that it is equally likely for any RB to drop off in Touches.

Additionally, there is a 40% chance that any given RB will fall into a) no matter what.

A RB's chances of falling into our most desired category d) go down tremendously between the 25 Touches or greater and the 20 Touches or greater; from a 37.5% chance down to 21.9% when comparing between the groups. It is not 2 to 1, but this is a substantial decrease in possibility.

A RB's chances of repeating PPG in year N+1 [with either b) or d)] go down some as well between the 25 Touches or greater and the 20 Touches or greater when compared with the alternate outcomes within their distributions; from a 44% chance down to 31% when comparing between the groups.

The following RB's have a 31% chance of repeating their PPG in 2007 :

Shaun Alexander, Steven Jackson, Larry Johnson, LaDainian Tomlinson

The following RB's have a 44% chance of repeating their PPG in 2007 :

Ronnie Brown, Frank Gore, Ahman Green, Edgerrin James, Rudi Johnson, Kevin Jones, Thomas Jones, Jamal Lewis, Willie Parker, Chester Taylor, Brian Westbrook

There is a 50% chance that they will all repeat with 20 Touches or greater