We've talked a lot this offseason about the effects of removing Demarco Murray from the lineup and what it's likely going to do to change the sorts of defenses we'll have expected to run against, and the sort of production we're likely to have as a result. I was doing a little bit of research a few days ago on some other RBs who might be available for us later in the offseason here, and came across this article which I thought was pretty interesting. The basic gist of it is that, while a relatively high YPC over a long period of time is a very good barometer of the best backs in league history, statistically, that's maybe a bit misleading because the very highest YPC runs are so very few and far between. As a result, it's a very small number of running plays spread over the course of a long season that separates a productive runner for one who is average or below average.
A case in point from the article, using Demarco Murray as the example:
7 out of 393 plays. That's not very many. That's the number of plays we'd need over league average performance from our RBs to effectively match the sort of production we got from Murray last season. Whether that's coming from the guys on our roster, or instead we're getting it from the passing game where last season we might have run it. The vast majority of the runs we got from him in that fantastic season last season were not outliers, and the pattern more likely correlated with what we might see from other runners.
Now, this doesn't address the dirty runs argument that we've seen so much of. But then those dirty carries are rolled up in the other 386 carries that also happen to be fairly dependent on our ability to execute our blocking scheme effectively. In fact, it might even be the case that we see a higher percentage of these outlier YPC runs from the other backs, both McFadden and Randle have show the ability to that that more often than Demarco did.
What do you guys think? I was surprised how few of an exceptional RBs carries were actually unusual by statistical standards, and how much that affected the estimation of RB performance, overall. This also goes a ways towards explaining why rushing effectiveness might not be all that significant a factor in winning football games. You can easily see the net effect of Murray's 7 outlier runs from last season getting swamped in what would essentially be less than .5 incremental big passing plays/week. With QBs like Romo and Rodgers going up against QBs like RGIII and Foles, that half a big play isn't really that much to make up at all.
