Our commander in chief, Jeff Mans, threw out a list of about 300 article ideas (ok, really about 75, but still) for the summer, and I thought this was a great topic to tackle when I saw it. Today you get a peek inside my process as a researcher, and something I do for fun (I’m a very, very boring man). I’ve looked into this stuff quite a few times in the past and felt this information would be fun to run through again for educational purposes.
An age-old question about NFL RBs is, of course, how to deal with them and their substantial injury rates. RBs are a fleeting presence in the NFL, especially compared to its fantasy football brothers and sisters (QB, WR and even TE). So, there’s only so many miles on the tires…right? A logical conclusion to come to as an evaluator would be that RBs only have some many carries to contribute before things come to an end and breakdown. In fact, that’s an assumption by many, but does the data back that up? Does the amount of touches a RB has in college shift their NFL future? Let’s take a look.
FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS
Let’s take a look at what the highest volume NFL RB’s had for college workloads. Below Is the top 10 leaders in touches for NFL RBs since 2000. Listed are their NFL workloads, along with their college touches.
Just based on raw college touches, I don’t see much of anything, do you? Of course, there’s an incredible amount of context that goes along with these numbers, but the raw totals tell a very random story. Frank Gore, Lamar Miller, LeGarrette Blount and LeSean McCoy only played two seasons, for different reasons (Blount with a first round TKO on a Boise St. player), but obviously they had many less touches compared to the rest of the group. DeMarco Murray, Adrian Peterson, Matt Forte, Chris Johnson and Arian Foster all had significant roles from their Freshman seasons. This group is almost a perfect set of randomness. Based on that, there’s nothing worthwhile taking away from this, and we might as well throw it in the trash for research purposes (though it’s important to look!).
SECOND ORDER OF BUSINESS
Let’s take a look at the college RBs with the highest volume (touches) since 2010. We’re only going to look at division one, of course, and it should be recognized that touches in smaller conferences are worth less (at least in terms of how NFL teams have evaluated RB prospects in the last two decades).
Another dead end. One valuable lesson is that volume alone in college doesn’t make you a good NFL prospect. Also, it certainly doesn’t help us understand if college workload effects NFL careers. This is a good lesson though, let’s not shortchange that. College production evaluation is important for fantasy football, but it’s a little more nuanced than just throwing touch and yardage leaders in a spreadsheet!
THIRD ORDER OF BUSINESS
Ok, so how do we go about processing this? One good way is to look at a bigger sample. Thankfully, last summer I looked into what the college careers of successful NFL RBs looked like. I took every RB who’s had a season with 1,000 or more yards from scrimmage since 2000, put them in a spreadsheet, and figured out the results. Here’s what they look like.
So, much like the smaller samples we’ve looked at, there’s a fairly even distribution of how many touches college RBs had in college, even the successful ones. When I looked at this last summer, I had a slightly different intention, as the goal was trying to figure out what a successful college career looked like rather than just determining if touches were good or bad. My conclusion, based on this information, was that high-volume touches in college was not only NOT a negative, but potentially a positive indicator of future success. There clearly isn’t a skeleton key in determining what the optimal usage is for a potential NFL prospect, but what’s clear is that almost all RB prospects who go on to find success in the NFL were integral parts of their college offenses, at least for a short period of time. 79.8% of successful RBs had at least 400 touches in their college career, this stands out.
Conclusion
I’d once again echo the conclusion from last offseason. The heavier the workload for a college RB, the better. The more usage the better the prospect is, in a general sense. Prospects who are seeing fully feature workloads compared to part-time roles are more likely to find success in the NFL, and considering that, we should be OPTIMISTIC when a RB prospect is coming into the NFL with a big resume. RB careers do not last long regardless of how much of a college world they received, and there’s nothing in the data to suggest that college workloads are hindering careers in any way, shape or form.
Now that that’s settled, some food for thought….
Not all college production is created equal. While it’s generally understood that power five conference teams are more competitive than smaller conference teams, it’s probably not fully understood just how stark that difference is. In the data I looked at last summer, I split up the results of successful NFL RBs (reminder — “successful” is defined as an NFL RB with a season of 1,000 or more yards from scrimmage) three categories, just to see how big the difference is.
So, roughly 78% (77.6%) of successful NFL RBs come from Power five schools, and 74% (74.3%) percent of the total seasons have come from those conferences. A RB producing from a smaller school simply doesn’t mean as much, and they (generally speaking) have a much tougher road to find success in the NFL.
