Welcome to the first installment of my rushing study on DLF. You can find my introduction, explanation, and numerical breakdown of the series here. In this two-parter, we’ll be looking at running backs that the community generally deem to be talented that run behind poor offensive lines. Todd Gurley and Melvin Gordon will serve as the central focuses and lead into a greater conversation about the constraints that a poor blocking unit can place on any back.
Todd Gurley, RB LAR
Gurley has been the poster boy for the good player-bad line confusion. In a destitute offensive situation exacerbated by poor coaching, Gurley drowned in 2016–he finished the season running at an impressively-terrible clip of 3.2 yards per carry. Despite a strikingly bad season of production, his dynasty value has hardly taken a hit. The implied reasoning behind that (lack of a) trend is that the heinous production was caused by his surroundings.
However, the data I’ve collected strongly disagrees with this sentiment. Why? Simply, he didn’t create at all:
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Stephen Gill
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Ari Daum
August 16, 2017 at 6:56 am
We would love to see this data for 2nd tier backs like Montgomery, Powell, etc!
Stephen Gill
August 16, 2017 at 2:16 pm
Good to know! I’m hoping I can get around to those relevant guys too.
Ben Johnides
August 16, 2017 at 10:35 pm
Stephen, well-written article. I really enjoyed the data driven approach to examining Todd Gurley and the Rams OL! Despite Gurley not producing well, I like to think Jeff Fisher is to blame for his woeful production but that’s the low hanging fruit; can’t quite observe, track, and measure that data.
I read through your method description that you linked and kudos for the transparency and well thought out process. Can tell you put a lot of time into this project. A couple of questions that came up after the read, and maybe I missed something: (i) how is the data for a play handled if the OL doesn’t create a hole (ii) is it possible to covary for (a) defensive package and (b) strength of defense (probably not enough power to do this, but seems like most studies on nfl data suffer from low power) (iii) have you considered using an aggregate “back-up RB” as opposed to the specific back-up for each player? I think the comparison can get muddy at multiple points here considering whether the back-up is the actual back-up or change of pace RB and whether the back-up is running against the same defensive unit, say, if the game is already out of hand (I know these games quite well as a long-time Lions fan). Just some thoughts I had.
Great work; looking forward to reading your future articles!
Stephen Gill
August 18, 2017 at 7:06 pm
Thanks for the time reading and well thought-out response!
1- Part 1 (linked in the beginning) shows the formula for each stat, but I’m betting you’re wondering about RB-GY and its family of stats, which were admittedly ambiguously-worded in that write up, so I’ll try to clear that up. RB-GY/Hole Hit (the creativity stat used above) *does* add the GY from non-hit hole plays to its total as things stand, which is suboptimal.
The logical way to go about it would be to *exclude* the GY from non-hit hole plays, but because of how I began recording data originally, I can’t separate those plays from the totals (I started off essentially by tallying totals for games then entering them, whereas I now enter play-by-play stats into my spreadsheet, which means I can now separate the stats). That way, we’d have a truer open-field sort of creativity measure, which is more fitting to how I describe the stat. I’d also have a new stat for the GY for plays where there *wasn’t* a hole hit, which would effectively measure how a player creates with nothing offered.
As things stand now, this new stat and what I’ve basically described RB-GY/Hit to be are lumped into one. There’s some redundancy between the two (check the “What Matters?” flow chart from Part 2), so it’s not a huge problem with them combined, but as I’m moving on, I’ll be able to separate the two more and more. Really glad you brought this up.
2- Regarding strength of defense first, I’ve taken some lengths to study that already, and the results are actually fascinating. I’ve started off by comparing the variance both between each player and between an individual player’s games against Rushing DVOA (my defensive metric of choice), and plan to write about these results in the future. In short, some players are actually more influenced by quality of defense than others! Some of this I’m fairly confident is due to small sample size (just 14 games apiece), but the differences are fairly big which does seem to indicate some difference. The other finding, which I’m pretty sure about, is that OL play is influenced much more by defensive quality than RB play. So yeah, definitely keep an eye out for my writing (and newly-developed stats, I’m sure) in the future about this.
As for defensive package, it’s the chink in the armor. The dirty little secret of my data right now is that the Cowboys OL grades out between average and below-average, which is crazy and must be due to box stacking (especially when the Falcons OL grades *much* higher than everyone else). I began charting both box defenders and blocker/box defender advantage for each rush when I initially converted to play-by-play, but honestly, it added a ton of time. I could see what the early results of the box stats were, but I’m hesitant to do so with such limited sample size. I’m hoping to add that consideration once I get a bunch of time to chart again. Basically, it’s an admitted blind spot.
3- I’m not *quite* sure what this is asking, but I’m guessing that you mean when I look at generating yards and success rate, where the RB-GY are above the “replacement-level back” and success rate is partially determined by a “replacement-level back’s” ability. Both of these stats are based off hypothetical players and thus the standard isn’t higher or lower for any back that I chart, regardless of team. Nothing to this point has involved any team’s specific backup, so if I’m interpreting the question right, I think you might have glossed over one segment of this monstrosity of a series and misunderstood it. If I interpreted it incorrectly, please let me know!
Well that was a long comment! Thanks Ben, let me know if there’s anything else you’re wondering — I can get back to you quicker too if you e-mail or tweet me.
Ben Johnides
August 19, 2017 at 7:11 pm
Thank you for the thorough and thoughtful response! You answered all of my questions, quite well. And you were correct about point 3; I misunderstood what was going on there. Keep up the great work. Gonna dig into part two soon!