Yard Per Touch (1 Viewer)

[wiscstlatlmia]

I dont know about everyone else, but since I started playing fantasy football I have judged RBs by YPC. It seems like any RB that had one below 4.0 in a given year I instantly downgraded them. For instance guys like Matt Forte, Jahvid Best and Tim Hightower In the past I have been quoted saying they are below average runners. This is not the case. After actually watching all these guys in the games it is extremely noticable, There lines suck! There are no holes to get through and theres nothing they can do about getting tackled 5 yards behind the line of scrimmage. Matt forte is the prime example for me, the bears forcefeed him the ball in many different ways knowing they cant run block well for him well. Look at him in the first two weeks this year. His YPC is better than past years, but hes gotten 20 targets in two games and almost 100 more yards recieving than rushing(90 more). Yes, his YPC is a solid 4.5, but his YPT(yard per touch) was 7.9. So far in the first 2 games hes gotten 21 and 20 touches. So if you really look at it, the bears are trying to get him 20 touches a game, be it by rushes or receptions and they know the best way to get him the ball is by screen plays and quick passes out of the backfield. Now lets look at LeGarrette Blount Last year. He was one of the most affective runners in the league last year( 5.0 YPC on the dot). The problem with Blount is he only got 5 catches for 15 yards( Total YPT=4.96). So even though Blount was a fantastic runner last year, his affectivness was obsolete to guys like Arian Foster(YPT5.65), Lesean Mccoy(YPT=5.87) and Darren Mcfadden(YPT=6.16) Purely because they catch the ball better out of the backfield and have better teams with better systems. My big point in all of this is that you cant get away with just being a good runner anymore, you have to be a solid all around player to get the YPT to be a fantasy stud (passblocking and catching out of the backfield).

 

[az_prof]

1) Whether ypt makes more sense than ypc in judging a HB may depend on your scoring system.

2) If you are interested in accounting for receiving yards as well as rushing yards, wouldn't it make more sense to look at total yards (rushing plus receiving)? A guy could have a high ypt but he may just be very productive on a few receptions, which would inflate his ypt. Honestly, from a fantasy perspective, you could care less if he gets 10 yards/reception or 15 ypr; what counts is how many yards (and in PPR, receptions).

3) If you are trying to make long term assessment, for dynasty for example, then it is wise to look at something else beyond ypc. You are absolutely right that ypc can be deceptive and misleading about a back's talent. But I don't know that there is an easy, metric way to do it. I am not sure that ypt does that. I think you just need to adjust for their OL and offensive scheme in your rankings.

From my way of looking, I think you are right to be suspicious of ypc as a perfect evaluation tool of running back skill. But I am not convinced ypt is going to be better in all or even many situations/leagues.

 

[az_prof]

I am intrigued by this and so I looked at a few interesting samples.

Here are two backs who play for the same team. This team, in my judgement, has a poor run scheme and poor run block line. It does have a good passing strategy and success.

The back most people consider BY FAR to be the better back has a ypt for his career of 4.68. The other back, most people currently judge a "bust" has a ypt of 4.84.

The first back is Joseph Addai; the second, with the higher ypt, is Donald Brown. Hmmmm. Either that means that Brown is better than almost everyone in fantasy football thinks, or else this metric may not be very good....

Let's look at a few more samples, both of whom are considered top backs, but one of whom is considered a HOF type back. The HOF type back has a career ypt of 5.28. The good but not yet great back, has a ypt of 5.4!

The great HOF back? Adrian Peterson. The good back, whom most would consider in a talent tier below Peterson? Ray Rice.

How about this? Let's compare two power type backs. One is recognized as a great back. The other is thought to be a very good backup. The great power back has a career ypt of 4.8. The very good backup? 4.9. The very good backup is Michael Bush, and according to this metric he is more talented than Steven Jackson.

I think the metric is just not very accurate. That's all I can conclude.

 

[tenaka]

Yea any back who catches a lot of balls in proportion to his touches is going to inherently have a larger ypt than a 'pure runner'. Passes go farther. So I would have a hard time using that as a prognosticator. While its true that more and more backs need to catch balls to be successful in the league, if you're talented it doesn't matter (see AP).

And conversely, if a guy's line sucks it sucks. Its probably going to suck next year too, so a guy being weighed down by his line will usually continue to be weighed down by his line. You use Forte as an example of a low ypc guy, but he has always actually been successful just from purely looking at total yards. 1700, 1400, 1600. So he should have always been looked at as a good fantasy option. Ypt didn't reveal that from where I'm sitting.

 

[wiscstlatlmia]

Yea any back who catches a lot of balls in proportion to his touches is going to inherently have a larger ypt than a 'pure runner'. Passes go farther. So I would have a hard time using that as a prognosticator. While its true that more and more backs need to catch balls to be successful in the league, if you're talented it doesn't matter (see AP). And conversely, if a guy's line sucks it sucks. Its probably going to suck next year too, so a guy being weighed down by his line will usually continue to be weighed down by his line. You use Forte as an example of a low ypc guy, but he has always actually been successful just from purely looking at total yards. 1700, 1400, 1600. So he should have always been looked at as a good fantasy option. Ypt didn't reveal that from where I'm sitting.

wait, so explain to me again how YPT didn't better explain Forte's value than YPC ...

 

[wiscstlatlmia]

I am intrigued by this and so I looked at a few interesting samples.Here are two backs who play for the same team. This team, in my judgement, has a poor run scheme and poor run block line. It does have a good passing strategy and success. The back most people consider BY FAR to be the better back has a ypt for his career of 4.68. The other back, most people currently judge a "bust" has a ypt of 4.84. The first back is Joseph Addai; the second, with the higher ypt, is Donald Brown. Hmmmm. Either that means that Brown is better than almost everyone in fantasy football thinks, or else this metric may not be very good....Let's look at a few more samples, both of whom are considered top backs, but one of whom is considered a HOF type back. The HOF type back has a career ypt of 5.28. The good but not yet great back, has a ypt of 5.4!The great HOF back? Adrian Peterson. The good back, whom most would consider in a talent tier below Peterson? Ray Rice.How about this? Let's compare two power type backs. One is recognized as a great back. The other is thought to be a very good backup. The great power back has a career ypt of 4.8. The very good backup? 4.9. The very good backup is Michael Bush, and according to this metric he is more talented than Steven Jackson.I think the metric is just not very accurate. That's all I can conclude.

Your using a bunch of completely irrelevant players against guys who have a lot of touches. Compare this stat with two guys that have over 300 touches in one year.... Then maybe you have some leverage to your argument

 

[tenaka]

Yea any back who catches a lot of balls in proportion to his touches is going to inherently have a larger ypt than a 'pure runner'. Passes go farther. So I would have a hard time using that as a prognosticator. While its true that more and more backs need to catch balls to be successful in the league, if you're talented it doesn't matter (see AP). And conversely, if a guy's line sucks it sucks. Its probably going to suck next year too, so a guy being weighed down by his line will usually continue to be weighed down by his line. You use Forte as an example of a low ypc guy, but he has always actually been successful just from purely looking at total yards. 1700, 1400, 1600. So he should have always been looked at as a good fantasy option. Ypt didn't reveal that from where I'm sitting.

wait, so explain to me again how YPT didn't better explain Forte's value than YPC ...

It needed explaining? See Forte. See Forte catch. See Forte have value./endWhat more explanation did it need?

 

[Holy Schneikes]

YPT is "worse" than YPC for evaluating overall talent. YPT is just going to heavily favor pass-catching backs. A guy could be absolutely horrible runner, and catch a lot of outlet passes. His YPT could be fairly high (you generally get more yards from passes than from rushes), but he isn't a good RB overall. It would be like comparing a WR's YPT to a RB's YPT - fairly meaningless.

YPC is far from perfect of course, we can agree on that. Line and scheme have a ton to do with that number.

When possible, the best indicators are situations where one guy has significantly better numbers in the same situations than other guys on his team (who obviously play behind the same line in the same scheme). But the data sets for those scenarios tend to be pretty small, so even that is dicey.

 

[DoubleG]

I am intrigued by this and so I looked at a few interesting samples.Here are two backs who play for the same team. This team, in my judgement, has a poor run scheme and poor run block line. It does have a good passing strategy and success. The back most people consider BY FAR to be the better back has a ypt for his career of 4.68. The other back, most people currently judge a "bust" has a ypt of 4.84. The first back is Joseph Addai; the second, with the higher ypt, is Donald Brown. Hmmmm. Either that means that Brown is better than almost everyone in fantasy football thinks, or else this metric may not be very good....Let's look at a few more samples, both of whom are considered top backs, but one of whom is considered a HOF type back. The HOF type back has a career ypt of 5.28. The good but not yet great back, has a ypt of 5.4!The great HOF back? Adrian Peterson. The good back, whom most would consider in a talent tier below Peterson? Ray Rice.How about this? Let's compare two power type backs. One is recognized as a great back. The other is thought to be a very good backup. The great power back has a career ypt of 4.8. The very good backup? 4.9. The very good backup is Michael Bush, and according to this metric he is more talented than Steven Jackson.I think the metric is just not very accurate. That's all I can conclude.

Your using a bunch of completely irrelevant players against guys who have a lot of touches. Compare this stat with two guys that have over 300 touches in one year.... Then maybe you have some leverage to your argument

You're not paying attendtion. If you go back and re-read his numbers, Addai is 4.7 - while SJax is 4.9. I think it is obvious that any metric that puts those two RBs anywhere close is likely flawed to some degree.His other point (which he elaborated on accross several posts), is that YPT is not necessarily a very helpful stat when determing RB value FF-wise. The reason is that 3rd down backs will have an artificially infalted YPT due to the fact that any pass receiver has a higher YPT than an RB has YPC. Teams that utilize a "3rd down" back will often swap him out for a power runner in short yardage type situations (think of Felx and Barber were utilized in the past). The problem there is that the "pounder" gets many short yardage/goal-line carries (the GL ones being extremely valuable) that keep his YPT down. While the 3rd down player gets 2 or 3 receptions for 18 yards and has a huge YPT. The point to all that is that total yards is probably the best for determing RB value in terms of FF - as that's what you get scored on. If Cedric Benson has 25 rushes for 100 yards (4.0 YPT), he scores more points than a guy who rushes 8 times for 48 yards and catches 3 passes for 18 yards (even though the 2nd back has a 6.0 YPT) - even in PPR.Another factor, as was also mentioned is scoring system. Many league have bonuses at various "high threshold" levels (i.e. bonus points for 100 yards rushing, etc.). As such, sometimes a guy who simply is good at one aspect is worth more than you might think (Cedric Benson above, for example). Whereas a guy who divides his touches, may actually lessen his chances of reaching those bonuses (unless of course, your league awards a "total yardage" bonus)Finally, it is the OP's position that needs support as to why YPT would be a better metric than others.

 

[wiscstlatlmia]

I am intrigued by this and so I looked at a few interesting samples.Here are two backs who play for the same team. This team, in my judgement, has a poor run scheme and poor run block line. It does have a good passing strategy and success. The back most people consider BY FAR to be the better back has a ypt for his career of 4.68. The other back, most people currently judge a "bust" has a ypt of 4.84. The first back is Joseph Addai; the second, with the higher ypt, is Donald Brown. Hmmmm. Either that means that Brown is better than almost everyone in fantasy football thinks, or else this metric may not be very good....Let's look at a few more samples, both of whom are considered top backs, but one of whom is considered a HOF type back. The HOF type back has a career ypt of 5.28. The good but not yet great back, has a ypt of 5.4!The great HOF back? Adrian Peterson. The good back, whom most would consider in a talent tier below Peterson? Ray Rice.How about this? Let's compare two power type backs. One is recognized as a great back. The other is thought to be a very good backup. The great power back has a career ypt of 4.8. The very good backup? 4.9. The very good backup is Michael Bush, and according to this metric he is more talented than Steven Jackson.I think the metric is just not very accurate. That's all I can conclude.

Your using a bunch of completely irrelevant players against guys who have a lot of touches. Compare this stat with two guys that have over 300 touches in one year.... Then maybe you have some leverage to your argument

You're not paying attendtion. If you go back and re-read his numbers, Addai is 4.7 - while SJax is 4.9. I think it is obvious that any metric that puts those two RBs anywhere close is likely flawed to some degree.His other point (which he elaborated on accross several posts), is that YPT is not necessarily a very helpful stat when determing RB value FF-wise. The reason is that 3rd down backs will have an artificially infalted YPT due to the fact that any pass receiver has a higher YPT than an RB has YPC. Teams that utilize a "3rd down" back will often swap him out for a power runner in short yardage type situations (think of Felx and Barber were utilized in the past). The problem there is that the "pounder" gets many short yardage/goal-line carries (the GL ones being extremely valuable) that keep his YPT down. While the 3rd down player gets 2 or 3 receptions for 18 yards and has a huge YPT. The point to all that is that total yards is probably the best for determing RB value in terms of FF - as that's what you get scored on. If Cedric Benson has 25 rushes for 100 yards (4.0 YPT), he scores more points than a guy who rushes 8 times for 48 yards and catches 3 passes for 18 yards (even though the 2nd back has a 6.0 YPT) - even in PPR.Another factor, as was also mentioned is scoring system. Many league have bonuses at various "high threshold" levels (i.e. bonus points for 100 yards rushing, etc.). As such, sometimes a guy who simply is good at one aspect is worth more than you might think (Cedric Benson above, for example). Whereas a guy who divides his touches, may actually lessen his chances of reaching those bonuses (unless of course, your league awards a "total yardage" bonus)Finally, it is the OP's position that needs support as to why YPT would be a better metric than others.

First, the thing with Benson getting 25 carries for 100 and the other guy getting 8 for 48 and 3 for 18 ...Benson is getting 25 touches and the other guy is getting 11. If they got the same amount of touches then that would be a completely different story and the nameless one would outscore benson by a lot. I mean you have to use logic when your looking at this type of thing. Obviously guys like Darren Sproles Kevin Faulk and Reggie Bush are going to dominate this stat because of the receptions to rush ratio, but the thing is these guys are never going to get the amount of touches to compete on a weekly basis. I would say you have to set a minimun amount of touches before this stat becomes relevant (not sure if its 250, 275 or 300) so third down backs like that dont sneak in. You used benson as an example. Lets compare Benson to Forte. Who do you think would get more fantasy points with 20 touches in a game? I'm not saying Forte is a better player than Benson(although I think he might be), I'm just saying for fantasy purposes I think this stat is helpful in deciding who will be more affective points-wise.The reason Addai and Sjax are so close in YPT (Addai actually in the lead for there respective careers) is the percentage of rushes to receptions. But the difference being Sjax averaged so many more touches per season than Addai its completely irrelevant . Would anyone disagree with me when I say that when Addai was the lead guy, he was a solid to low end RB1? Which is exactly what Sjax has been his entire career. When Addai's touches were up, he was a fantasy stud. The big thing that made me think of this was this past weekends games. Some of the biggest scorers had less than stellar YPC, but played great and made a really big impact. The first being Darren McFadden. 20 carries for 72 yards which amounts to 3.6 YPC. If you are judging him by that stat I dont think its fair to the amount of impact he had on the game. He also added 7 catches for 71 yards which is fantastic. Now lets compare this to Adrian peterson who you guys would obviously choose to use as an example because hes a monster runner and can be an affective fantasy RB without catching a lot of passes. He had a very impressive game, rushing the ball 25 times for 120 yards. His YPC was a very impressive 4.8, but he only added 2 catches for 21 yards. So, even though the YPC wasn't even close, they still had the same affect on the game( 141 yards on 27 touches for peterson and 143 yards on 27 touches for McFadden). This is one example of why I think YPT is a better fantasy indicator of fantasy success than just YPC. Edit: two words were stuck together.I do not actually think this is the perfect stat yet to be hones, which is why i brought it to you guys. I think it would be a fantastic stat if we could figure out some way to add in touchdowns to this equation. If you have any thoughts lemme know.

 

[wiscstlatlmia]

top Yard per touch in 2011 (over 200 touches):

1.Fred Jackson 6.58

2.Matt Forte 5.83

3.Ryan Mathews 5.68

4.Ray Rice 5.64

5.Arian Foster 5.56

6.Reggie Bush 5.33

7.Maurice Jones Drew 5.13

8.LeSean McCoy 5.06

9.Adrian Peterson 4.89

10.Steven Jackson 4.89

11. Willis McGahee 4.79

12.Chris Johnson 4.76

13.Michael Bush 4.76

14.Michael Turner 4.74

15.Ahmad Bradshaw 4.52

16.Marshawn Lynch 4.52

17.Shonn Greene 4.46

18.Frank Gore 4.43

19.Rashard Mendenhall 4.40

20.Chris Wells 4.31

21.Cedric Benson 3.99

*Darren Sproles had easily the best YPT, but he only had 173 touches.