It’s time we head deeper down the rabbit hole Alice. Â The NFL Combine!
I started this series with full expectation that I’d primarily be focusing on refreshing my work from previous years on the NFL Draft toward determining if draft position could be a major determinant in ultimate fantasy success. Â As would be expected, previous studies have shown a direct correlation between round selection and fantasy success. Â Nice to know, but nothing unexpected. Â Next, I went deeper by cross-referencing a decade of fantasy drafts, overlaying them with NFL drafts to ascertain the likelihood that any given fantasy selection would turn into a productive fantasy player, by position and round. Â Things started getting much more interesting with the numbers showing just why it can be so difficult to build a championship team primarily via the draft.
Since beginning this year’s series, I found myself wanting to go deeper. Â So rather than looking at only NFL Draft selections related to fantasy rookie draft selections, I decided to pull in a decade of top-ten performances in fantasy by position and cross reference not only drafted round, but other important traits and characteristics including height, weight, and combine metrics. Â The hope here is that through an exercise of exposing the details of top performers, we’ll be able to make more savvy selections in our drafts.
In Part 2Â of this series, I looked at running backs and found that size does matter, although perhaps not quite as much as expected. Â Now, I’m going to fold in combine metrics for the top-ten (fantasy) running backs over the past decade.
Before I get started …
The NFL Combine puts players through a gauntlet of drills, interviews and assessments. Â To believe that each drill carries the same amount of significance is a mistake. Prior to laying out this article, I decided to go down yet another rabbit hole toward determining which drills and corresponding results were the greatest determinant of success at the next level. Â Both from analysis of the players and their related Combine performances over the past decade when coupled with specific external resources from others having done similar work, I feel confident in the drills I chose.
One particular recent article that I found very well done, not to mention very applicable when reviewing the results closely, was written by Tony Villiotti which can be found here. Â I highly suggest that you check out Mr. Villiotti’s work as it did play a big role in ultimately settling on specific drills, those being:
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- 40 Yard Dash
- 20 Yard Split (First 20 yards of the 40 yard dash)
- 3-Cone Drill
- Broad Jump
I was most surprised by the inclusion of the broad jump but further research left me sold such that I’m including it. Â Surprisingly enough, or not-so if you have your ear to the ground, the 40-yard dash continues to be somewhat overrated in foretelling a player’s success at the next level, especially for larger running backs. Â But alas, a Combine article leaving out the 40-yard dash scores would not be received well. Â Overall, the running back position is the most difficult in my estimation to nail down a limited set of combine drills to focus on. but I feel good about my process and the results.
Whether you wish to get into the details or simply prefer to look at this past decade of performance relative to the results the players achieved, there should be something here for everyone. Â I’ll weigh in with my thoughts following the list.
Let’s take a look at the past decade of top-ten running backs and their respective information and scores:
Inside the Numbers
Firstly, it’s disappointing that we’re missing as many data points as we are. Â This is primarily due to these backs not running at the Combine, not performing specific drills at their respective on-campus pro-days or being undrafted without any reporting from their pro-days. Â But we do have enough to draw conclusions in my estimation.
Looking at the players that finished at the top of the rankings for the decade and relating that to everyone’s favorite 40-yard dash, perhaps we can find a speed correlation.  Interestingly enough, the past decade has found a different back at the top  of the list each year in PPR formats.
2007: Â 4.57 – Brian Westbrook
2008: 4.44 – Matt Forte
2009: Â 4.24 – Chris Johnson
2010: Â 4.69 – Arian Foster
2011: Â 4.42 – Ray Rice
2012: Â 4.40 – Adrian Peterson
2013: Â 4.38 – Jamal Charles
2014: Â 4.56 – Le’Veon Bell
2015: Â 4.50 – Devonta Freeman
2016: Â 4.40 – David Johnson
Initially, it appears as though we do have a relatively even distribution for Chris Johnson’s blazing 4.24 to Arian Foster’s slothful 4.69.
Expanding on the times and looking at all 100 forty slots for this decade, we find the following ranges:
Overall Average = 4.46
For the next two points of reference, I’m going to average the scores for the top ranked back each year and the same for the last ranked back for each year for our decade of data.
Top Ranked Average = Â 4.46
Lowest Ranked Back Average = 4.49
Close inspection will reveal only 99 40-times are tallied. Â This is due to the absence of Danny Woodhead’s time. In fact, Woodhead had no official times listed in this study. Note that the “Overall” average and the “Top Ranked” average are the same, but we do see a small drop to the lowest ranked (within the top-ten) back from each year.
I’ll let you draw your own conclusion here in that you can clearly see the average 40-time at work with 44% falling in the 4.40-4.49 range and 65% falling below 4.50 overall. Â The existence of Arian Foster, Le’Veon Bell, Steven Jackson, Frank Gore and LeSean McCoy at 5.50 or greater does prove that you cannot automatically write off times slower than 4.50.
Let’s turn our attention to the 20 yard split, 3-cone drill and broad jump.
With these drills, data begins getting more sparse but perhaps we can still glean useful information.
Top Ranked Back 20 Average = 2.59
Lowest Ranked Back 20 Average = 2.62
A difference, but small.
Now let’s do the same with the 3-cone drill:
Top Ranked Back 3-Cone Average = 6.94
Lowest Ranked Back 3-Cone Average = 7.05
Another difference and we are starting to see a trend, albeit small, between top performers and lower backs, even if within the top 10.
Broad Jump:
Top Ranked Back Broad Jump Average = 121.4
Lowest Ranked Back Broad Jump Average = 119.4
The trend continues and we can bring all of our averages together.  In doing so, we now create an average line that may give us a mark for comparing backs following the combine (and/or pro-days):
Summary
Truth be told, I wasn’t sure that I would find any trends within the running back position, especially those outside of the 40-yard dash. Â I was surprised when researching drills that showed the most correlation with performance at the NFL level to find the broad jump highly correlated, but it does make sense when considering lower body explosion. Â While not purely scientific, and arguably without enough data points or in-depth analysis to make any concrete declaration, I’ve seen enough in the scores to feel pretty good about using the averages across the four primary drills as another measure of consideration when combined with collegiate production and drafted situation.
I strongly suggest you look at the decade of data more individually as well toward singling out the great performers from this period as you will find some inverse correlations that must be taken into consideration. Â For example, the broad jump and 3-cone drills do seem to be inversely correlated to some degree. Â Specifically, those with the higher broad jump numbers do seem to suffer from below average 3-cone scores. Â The theory here would be that greater lower body explosion in the form of bigger quads and hamstrings may also reduce hip flexibility and, therefore, agility. Â A notable exception to this is the recent arrival of David Johnson. Â When looking at his scores, it seems to tell a story of a player that went unnoticed by the masses in that his broad jump score of 127, when coupled with his 6.82 3-cone score and his 4.40 forty, seemed to foretell the next coming of Adrian Peterson – or better.
Just don’t mention that to those that drafted Darren McFadden, including yours truly.
Next, we survey the wide receivers and find the most correlated Combine drills for the position.
Follow me on Twitter: Â @DLF_Jeff
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well done jeff
for run DMC who knows how well he may have done were he not on the dumpster fire raiders teams through his prime and didn’t get dinged up pouring his morning juice with alarming regularity . The other take away is how little year to year consistency of guys on the list by my count in no year did more than 5 guys from previous year make the list following year.
Great article Jeff! You guys continue to churn them out.
I have tried to also use the 10 yd split time as a measure of initial burst (though I accept that the broad jump is a reasonable surrogate). The problem with the 10 yd time is what you gain in the relevance of that stat, you lose in the accuracy of its measurement.
Keep up the great work!
Do you have any plans to do a part of this series focused on TE’s?
Maybe but tight ends, from my previous pieces in previous years are so hard to highlight. It used to be that you only wanted to target first round selected TEs as they had a nearly 100% hit rate … that has changed a bit. But for the most part, not many tight ends do well out of the draft and it takes a long time for most to really pay dividends.
It’s all going to depend on how much time I have and I’m running short with the Combine just around the corner.
Instead of just doing a distribution of RBs evenly among all heights and weights you should break it down among successful running backs between 6’0 and above had these average combine results in the 40, broad, and whatever other measurement. By doing this you are comparing the success of the biggest backs with the smallest ones which clearly isn’t conclusive. If you look at David Johnson’s numbers compared to his size/weight range and they show out pretty well
I don’t think we can be critical of this excellent work by Jeff, but I do think Alex makes a good suggestion for a future refinement of this research. The takeaway from the reference article that you cite, is that if you are a small back you have to be both quick AND fast to be successful and the other strength and agility drills are less relevant. Whereas for the bigger backs, the initial quickness (20), strength (BP), burst (BJ) and agility (3C) seem to become (potentially) important differentiating parameters
No yeah it’s good work!! My idea to split WRs/RBs into their individual height splits came from his article looking at whether height mattered when looking for at elite WRs. I split WRs based off their heights (6’0″ and below, 6’1″, and 6’2″ and above), omitted the extreme outliers, and got very conclusive data that matches well with our ideas of elite small/large receivers.
Having to do with combine times of course
See my above comment too ….
I thought about breaking out large and small backs because the applicable Combine drills DO make a difference … in a big way. But most bigger backs have longer careers and I didn’t want to spend too much time by splitting it up … but I do agree with you. You can still draw some of your own conclusions from this with smaller backs and I might go deeper next time … and will likely still add the other notable Combine drills for smaller backs to my ongoing matrices …… it just takes a lot of time to compile the stats and I’m running out of time. 🙂 Thanks for the comment!