Le’Veon Bell was a dominant fantasy force as a running back since being drafted in the 2nd round by the Steelers in 2013. From that season through 2018, he was in the Top 10 in FP/G (points-per-reception scoring) every year. And except for his rookie season, he was Top 4 or better, even in 2015 when he got suspended to start the year and hurt to end it. He has been in a favorable offense that used him heavily in the passing game: his 397 targets from 2013-2017 easily topped all RBs despite missing 18 games total in that period. And he was 4th in total rushing attempts in those years – the three backs who topped his 1229 carries played 13 to 18 more games than he did.
Then he sat out all of 2018 in a contract dispute. He’s expected to return to play in 2019, although not for the Steelers. We’ll see how free agency plays out, but presumably a team that signs him would want to take advantage of his receiving ability and get their money’s worth by giving him a heavy workload. He probably benefitted a bit from not taking any wear-and-tear in 2018, but he’s a year older and will be 27 in the coming season. Age is generally not kind to running backs, but what can we expect from Bell this season assuming a comparable workload to his past seasons?
I’ve used this method before: pretend we know nothing about Bell from last year, but do have his age 23-25 seasons’ FP/G records. I’m going to identify RBs with comparable FP/G at the same age and then look at their age 27 performance (Scoring system: 10 yards = 1 FP, TD = 6 FP, reception = 1 FP and age is measured as at the end of the calendar year, so anyone who turned 25 in 2017 is considered 25 for the 2017 season). I’m using all RBs since 1988.
The problem in just repeating what I’ve done in the past is that actually very few RBs have been as good for fantasy from age 23-25. I could make a pretty good case that it’s just LaDainian Tomlinson and Emmitt Smith, and maybe Thurman Thomas. Only Tomlinson out-scored Bell in FP/G in those three years. Smith and Thomas were better compared to their contemporaries at those ages: Bell had a Cumulative Rank of 7 in FP/G (he was 4th, 1st, and 2nd in FP/G) while Smith’s Cumulative Rank was 3 (i.e. he was #1 all three years) and Thomas’ was 5 (Tomlinson’s Cumulative Rank was 6). But after those three, I can poke holes in every other comp.
To identify RBs who I’ll call “Most Comparable,” I ranked every RB who played all five years from age 23 to 27 between 1988 to 2018 on two criteria: FP/G from 23-25 and Cumulative Rank from 23-25. Then I summed those two numbers. The ten best (lowest) scores I called “Most Comparable.” You can see the names in the table at the bottom of the article; they’re in bold – there are actually 11 names since Barry Sanders and Maurice-Jones Drew tied for 10th.
But because of the lack of true comparables, I wanted to make the most favorable possible comparison for Bell. To do this, I took the same total sample of RBs who played all 5 years from age 23 to 27 between 1988 to 2018, and selected those who scored the most FP/G at age 27. This will skew the numbers up, which I want to do because Bell has been so good. You can see how much better than his Most Comparables in this graph:
At age 23 and 25, his line is below and then above his Most Comparable RBs, but he’s far above them at 24. As a result, his average from 23-25 was 23.5 FP/G while the Most Comparables averaged “just” 20.7 FP/G at the same age. So he might not slip as much as they did by age 27 (i.e. 2019 for him).
On the other hand, the Most Favorable RBs got continuously better as a group from 23 to 27 (that’s unusual for individual RBs). In fact, even though those names aren’t as glamorous a group as the Most Comparables, they were both very good and, like Marshall Faulk, gradually got into better situations. While their age 23-25 average was 16.2 FP/G, well below both Bell and the Most Comparables, by age 27 the Most Favorable RBs posted 19.1 to 18.3 for the Most Comparables.
From these numbers, I’d say Bell is likely to post something between 18 and 20 FP/G. It’s always dangerous to compare a unique talent to those who came before him, but it’s important to recognize that Bell has been playing with a HoF QB and the best WR in the league. He’s unlikely to end up in as good a situation even if the offense tailors itself to use him like Todd Haley did, so I think continuing to produce above 20 FP/G is unlikely.
Here’s the RBs used as comps for Bell, with their FP/G for ages 23-27. The Most Favorable and Most Comparable RBs lines are the averages of the individual RBs in the lines below. The Most Comparables (in bold) are sorted by average FP/G from age 23-25 (the final column). The Most Favorable group is sorted by age 27 FP/G. Note in particular how good LaDainian Tomlinson and Marshall Faulk were at age 27. Bell has upside if he goes to the Greatest Show on Turf 2.0, despite my skepticism above. But also note how many of the RBs in both groups don’t even score 18 FP/G at age 27: there is downside on my optimism.
|
Player |
23 |
24 |
25 |
26 |
27 |
FP/G |
|
Le’Veon Bell |
18.5 |
26.5 |
23.0 |
|
|
23.5 |
|
Most Favorable RBs |
14.8 |
16.6 |
18.2 |
18.6 |
19.3 |
16.5 |
|
Most Comparable RBs |
20.8 |
20.5 |
20.8 |
20.5 |
18.3 |
20.7 |
|
LaDainian Tomlinson |
24.1 |
27.7 |
22.7 |
23.0 |
30.2 |
24.9 |
|
Emmitt Smith |
23.6 |
21.9 |
24.3 |
26.7 |
18.8 |
23.3 |
|
Arian Foster |
12.2 |
24.8 |
23.8 |
19.1 |
13.3 |
22.5 |
|
Steven Jackson |
26.2 |
17.1 |
19.2 |
16.6 |
15.3 |
21.4 |
|
Thurman Thomas |
20.2 |
19.4 |
22.5 |
21.3 |
15.9 |
20.7 |
|
LeSean McCoy |
22.0 |
17.1 |
20.8 |
12.8 |
15.1 |
20.2 |
|
Ahman Green |
20.3 |
20.4 |
19.6 |
24.7 |
15.8 |
20.1 |
|
Terrell Davis |
17.5 |
19.4 |
22.4 |
24.1 |
9.7 |
19.8 |
|
Adrian Peterson |
16.8 |
20.8 |
18.5 |
17.2 |
21.8 |
18.7 |
|
Maurice Jones-Drew |
17.8 |
20.3 |
17.2 |
19.2 |
12.7 |
18.5 |
|
Barry Sanders |
21.9 |
15.4 |
16.9 |
19.3 |
19.4 |
18.1 |
|
Marshall Faulk |
15.3 |
15.5 |
23.0 |
25.1 |
32.6 |
18.1 |
|
Jamaal Charles |
15.3 |
17.9 |
10.1 |
15.3 |
25.5 |
16.3 |
|
Brian Westbrook |
2.8 |
13.2 |
21.4 |
18.9 |
22.3 |
12.0 |
|
Eddie George |
14.1 |
12.1 |
14.6 |
18.8 |
21.4 |
13.6 |
|
Tiki Barber |
7.0 |
10.3 |
18.5 |
17.2 |
20.8 |
11.9 |
|
Edgerrin James |
21.3 |
15.2 |
20.9 |
19.3 |
20.8 |
18.6 |
|
Shaun Alexander |
3.3 |
19.1 |
20.7 |
19.4 |
20.6 |
14.4 |
|
Ricky Watters |
17.9 |
17.3 |
18.2 |
19.0 |
19.7 |
17.8 |
|
Curtis Martin |
18.5 |
16.7 |
17.5 |
15.5 |
19.2 |
17.6 |
|
Garrison Hearst |
3.8 |
10.8 |
7.2 |
13.7 |
19.0 |
7.9 |
|
Frank Gore |
20.8 |
16.2 |
16.6 |
20.2 |
18.8 |
17.9 |
|
Chris Warren |
0.3 |
9.3 |
12.4 |
18.4 |
18.1 |
7.1 |
|
Fred Taylor |
12.8 |
21.8 |
7.5 |
16.8 |
17.8 |
17.1 |
|
Marshawn Lynch |
7.9 |
9.1 |
16.5 |
17.1 |
17.3 |
11.3 |
|
Charlie Garner |
7.4 |
4.3 |
7.5 |
9.2 |
16.8 |
6.4 |
|
Corey Dillon |
14.1 |
12.6 |
14.4 |
13.7 |
16.6 |
13.7 |
|
Deuce McAllister |
3.6 |
21.1 |
20.8 |
15.6 |
16.0 |
15.0 |
|
Duce Staley |
15.2 |
14.6 |
17.1 |
16.2 |
16.0 |
15.2 |
|
Clinton Portis |
16.1 |
17.1 |
16.0 |
17.7 |
15.8 |
16.5 |
