My recent post, an analysis seeking to make the statistical case that Saquon Barkley is a back who relies more on the big-play for production than consistent domination on the ground, was met with boisterous incredulity. Y'all don't have as much background on me as the forum I spend most of my time on, so you likely didn't know that the analysis I posted was merely the most recent in what is now a three-part series breaking down Barkley's production intricately.
It was when first performing this study of his college statistics I formed the opinion that he's not as dominant on a down-to-down basis as teams generally look for in a "franchise" back. Clearly, he's immensely talented. In watching hours of film on the young man, my diagnosis for this condition is that Saquon Barkley is simply a halfback whose style is ALL about using his crazy athleticism to hit the home-run every time he touches the ball --even if it's not necessarily the best, most productive thing for his offense.
The similarities between he & Barry Sanders on that front are startling.
Nonetheless, I thought I would post that older analysis here (which was done before Barkley was even drafted, on January 30th, 2018) so that you, too, can have an opportunity to see that the kind of production he had --and didn't have-- for the Giants is exactly who he was in college and that his rookie season in the pros played out much like his Penn State film hinted that it would.
Make of it what you will. The analysis starts after the line-break, with
emphasis to highlight the parts that dovetail with my analysis of his lone NFL season:
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Alright, y'all, here goes...
Positives: Barkley is, obviously, a tremendous athlete. His weight-room performances are legendary at Penn State and his physical ability certainly passes the eye-test on the field. He's big. He's strong. He's fast. He's quick. I suspect he's going to be the bell of the ball at the NFL Combine and will wow a lot of onlookers with his sheer physicality. He has good vision as a runner. He's got a fantastic jump-cut. Solid hands. A decent understanding of route-running. Great spin move. A ton of elusiveness. In fact, he's one of the most elusive big-men @ running back I've seen, reminiscent of Le'Veon Bell's ability to make people miss in tight spaces. Barkley has big-time "big play" ability. He's got plus-speed and can take it the distance if the defense is out of position. Has a propensity to make something out of nothing and frustrates defenders with his jitterbug style.
Negatives: Undisciplined. Barkley rarely follows the design of the play and is always looking for the home-run, the exaggerated cutback, relying on his athleticism to outdo defenders --
something I believe will inhibit him as a down-to-down player against better competition in the pros. He's got some of the worst traits of Barry Sanders on that front, willing to risk putting his team in a bad spot to seek glory on every play. Like Barry, he's also got the athleticism to pull it off on a more frequent basis than most. But as his stats will show (which I'll go into below),
on a carry-by-carry basis this makes him a bit of an anomaly. At the NFL-level, unless someone can coach him out of tendencies that I imagine have become quite ingrained by now, I think he's liable to run into trouble --no pun intended-- when facing pro-caliber defenses who play with more technique & discipline than he does.
Overview: Barkley appears to be a guy with all the talent in the world, but I'm not sure his head is on right. I don't mean that he's a problem player or an unintelligent human being. But I don't think he's football-smart. It wouldn't surprise me if he scores low on the Wonderlic, whereas, by comparison, Zeke tallied the highest score for a running back in NFL history.
Saquon has been able to get by on athleticism alone in college, demonstrating little in the way of fundamentals and finding success as a whirling-dervish on the field. If something it bottled up, I'm not sure I recall a play in which he followed the design, lowered his head, and just got the positive yards. He
always looks to get outside, escape, turn it east-&-west, and craves the highlight-reel run on every carry; and certainly, he's capable of it and his mix-tape is full of impressive displays of such prowess. But that's not something he'll be able to get away with in the NFL on a
consistent basis (it wasn't even consistent in college), and while he'll probably
be a nice big-play threat in this league, I currently doubt that he's the kind of back you can
strap a feed-bag to and wear a pro-level defense out with for 4 quarters. It's just not his style; and his style is good enough to be eye-popping in college, but with a top-5 pick in the draft you want a guaranteed bell-cow.
Don't get me wrong,
this guy is capable of the extraordinary at times. I liken him to Barry Sanders in that way. But like Barry,
his consistency leaves something to be desired. In the pros, Barry would often have something like 14 carries for 37 yards in the late-3rd or early-4th quarters, and then break a long one (or two) to finish with 18 carries for 124 yards & a TD --which
seemed like a really good game, rather than being merely 1 or 2 really good plays. Saquon Barkley, in college, looks to have produced much of his yardage in a similar way. I'm gonna back that statement up with an analysis of his 2017 stats on a game-by-game basis. What they reveal might surprise you. I know they did me.
What I'll do here is break down his performances and then show you what his final production would have been minus his biggest single run from these games. While you can't take those plays away from someone or discount their big-play ability,
what I believe it will do is demonstrate that his down-to-down consistency is not what you'd expect from an "elite" prospect; and furthermore, despite some great highlights, that Barkley really didn't have a dominant junior season and struggled to produce against an overall weak schedule & against numerous unranked teams --
Penn State started the 2017 campaign against lowly, overmatched Akron and the results reflected this in a 52-0 drubbing that represented Barkley's second-best performance of the season:
14 carries,
172 yards,
2 TDs, 12.3 YPC
A great game, yes. But bolstered by an 80-yard scamper that bloated his final stats. Without that one run, ala Barry Sanders, Barkley would have recorded 13 carries for 92 yards, still an impressive 7.0 YPC, and 1 TD. Keep in mind, this was the second-best game Saquon had all season.
WEEK 2, Penn State faces off against unranked Pittsburgh and wins 33-14:
14 carries,
88 yards,
1 TD,
6.3 YPC
A solid performance. If you take away his long run from the game, a 22-yarder, Barkley would have ended with 13 carries for 66 yards, 5.0 YPC, 1 TD --against what analysts called an "iffy" Pittsburgh defense.
WEEK 3, Penn State romps unranked Georgia State 56-0:
10 carries,
47 yards,
0 TDs,
4.7 YPC
A pedestrian performance on the ground which was even worse than it looks. Because without his long of 33, Barkley ends this game with 9 carries for 14 yards, 1.5 YPC. Not the kind of performance you'd expect from a top prospect amid a 56-to-nothing destruction of a drastically inferior opponent.
WEEK 4, a 21-19 nail-biter against unranked Iowa & by FAR Barkley's best game of the season:
28 carries,
211 yards,
1 TD,
7.5 YPC
Minus a 44-yard sideline tightrope that is one of his marquee highlights, Barkley still had 27 carries for 167 yards & a Touch, 6.2 YPC. This was easily the most consistent game of Saquon's 2017 campaign and his greatest performance of the year.
WEEK 5, a 45-14 victory over unranked Indiana:
20 carries,
56 yards,
0 TDs,
2.8 YPC
Following arguably the best game of his college career, Barkley turns in a clunker. Minus his long of 8, his totals would have been 19 carries for 48 yards, 2.5 YPC. There was no saving this one with a big play. He just flat-out didn't produce.
WEEK 6, facing their first ranked team of the season, #17 Northwestern, Penn State wins 31-7:
16 carries,
75 yards,
2 TDs,
4.7 YPC
What appears to be a solid game looks very different when you take away Barkley's 53-yard TD on the ground, leaving him with 15 carries for 22 yards, 1 TD & 1.4 YPC. The first ranked team they faced, aside from one big play, bottled up "all-world" Barkley all day long despite getting rolled in a big-time loss.
WEEK 7, a 42-13 whipping of unranked Michigan:
15 carries,
108 yards,
2 TDs,
7.2 YPC
But without a 69-yard touchdown, Saquon only records 14 carries for 39 yards, 1 TD & a 2.8 YPC average.
WEEK 8, versus 5th-ranked Ohio State, a 39-38 barn-burning loss:
21 carries,
44 yards,
1 TD,
2.1 YPC
An unimpressive performance is revealed as an abominable one when you remove his 36-yard TD scamper, leaving him with 20 carries for 8 yards, no TDs, and an abysmal 0.4 YPC.
WEEK 9, a 27-24 loss against 15th-ranked Michigan State:
14 carries,
63 yards,
0 TDs,
4.5 YPC
His struggles against another ranked team, and Penn State's second & final loss of the season is revealed as even more pedestrian than those final stats convey when you take away his long of 36, leaving him with 27 yards on 13 carries, 2.1 YPC.
WEEK 10, Penn State bounces back with a 35-6 beating of unranked Rutgers:
14 carries,
35 yards,
2 TDs,
2.5 YPC
Rutgers hardly has a powerhouse defense & were clearly overmatched in this contest, yet without his long of 11 Barkley produced only 13 carries for 24 yards & 1.8 YPC against them.
WEEK 11, a 56-44 win versus unranked Nebraska:
17 carries,
158 yards,
3 TDs,
9.3 YPC
One of Saquon's five 100+ yard performances of the season (including his bowl game) becomes a 16 carry, 93 yard, 2 TD, 5.8 YPC outing without his long of 65 on the day. I rank this as his 3rd-best game of the year.
WEEK 12, a 66-3 shellacking of unranked Maryland:
16 carries,
77 yards,
2 TDs,
4.8 YPC
Subtracting his long of 17, Saquon ends this day with 15 carries for 60 yards & 4.0 YPC.
WEEK 13, the Fiesta Bowl, which Penn State wins 35-28:
18 carries,
137 yards,
2 TDs,
7.6 YPC
What looks like a great bowl performance is revealed, in fact, as
one great play in the bowl game when you subtract his 92-yard touchdown run, leaving him with 17 carries for 45 yards, 1 TD, and a 2.6 YPC average on every other handoff in the biggest game of their season.
Saquon Barkley ended the year with 217 carries -- 1,271 yards -- 18 TDs -- and a 5.9 YPC average on the ground. However, when you subtract just his biggest singular play from each one of those 13 games on the season, his totals become:
204 carries,
705 yards,
12 TDs,
3.4 YPC
Are those the stats of an "elite" running back?
Now, don't get me wrong, I recognize that Barkley has eye-popping physical talent. He is a big-play waiting to happen. But his style of production, which is predominantly predicated on big-plays and is revealed as positively pedestrian across all the others (204 carries vs. 13) leads me to believe that he isn't the every-down, bell-cow running back he's being hyped as.
In fact, his final season in college reminds me a lot of CJ Spiller's, another big-play specialist who recorded 216 carries, 1,212 yards, 12 TDs, and a 5.6 YPC average for Clemson in 2009. The knock on Spiller in the pros, aside from being unable to stay healthy, was that he didn't follow his blocks, couldn't properly read rushing lanes, and relied on his athleticism --to his team's detriment-- to gain yards.
Barkley clearly possesses a size Spiller never had and he is unquestionably a better prospect all-around. But I do find similarities to their games and how each of them produced, or didn't, on the field. Spiller was also a prolific receiver in college, and certainly Saquon's receiving totals are impressive. But even they are revealed as less-than-stellar when you give them the same treatment as his rushing totals and subtract his one biggest play from each game.
As it stands, officially, Barkley recorded:
54 receptions,
632 yards,
3 TDs,
11.7 AVG on the season through the air.
When you take away his singular "big-play" from those 13 games, his totals become
41 receptions,
266 yards,
0 TDs,
6.5 AVG --painting a far different picture.
Now, listen, I know that in reality you can't "take away" those plays & that being such a big-play threat is an integral part of what makes Saquon Barkley great. Just like it was a big part of what made Barry Sanders great. But as a comparison of their college productivity reveals, Barry was much greater than Saquon on all the
other plays as well. Barkley, aside from literally 13 big plays on the year, had what can only be described as a very mediocre season for the Nittany Lions.
Using this same method to evaluate Ezekiel Elliott's two biggest seasons in college, 2014
/2015, reveals the distinction I'm attempting to make. Taking away Zeke's biggest plays from each game in those years, his stats become:
2014:
314 carries,
1,832 yards,
16 TDs,
5.8 YPC
2015:
303 carries,
1,518 yards,
22 TDs,
5.0 YPC
--those are, in my opinion, the statistics of a true bell-cow running back, one worthy of a top-5 pick in the NFL Draft; and that's
without his biggest play from each game! Over the course of those two seasons Elliott was undoubtedly also a "big-play" back, reeling TD runs of 44, 47, 55 (twice), 65 (twice), 66, 75, 80, 81, and 85 yards. But even when you take those big-plays away from him, he still had overwhelming, dominant production on all his other carries, recording an accumulative 3,350 yards, 38 TDs, and averaging over 5 yards-per-carry.
Contrast that with Saquon Barkley's totals without the biggest singular plays from each game of his two most productive seasons:
2016:
258 carries,
961 yards,
12 TDs,
3.7 YPC
2017:
204 carries,
705 yards,
12 TDs,
3.4 YPC
--an accumulative 1,666 yards, 24 TDs, and about 3.5 yards-per-carry.
Now Saquon Barkley obviously has an exciting highlight-reel & is capable of making big-plays.
But it's the down-to-down carries that have captured my attention more in this analysis, as they paint a picture of a player who is more "athlete" than elite running back; and while being a superlative athlete can bring you college success, it takes something extra to dominate in the pros.
Does Barkley have that?
I don't know.
Certainly, stats alone cannot answer this question. But as I study his game, I find more holes for a potential top-5 selection than all the hoopla about his exploits would have one believe. Yes, he can take your breath away. So could Felix Jones. But does he have the great nuance in his ability that allows a halfback to make 5 yards,
when it's only blocked for 2? If he can't just cut back against the grain at the next level as he did in college & beat defenders to the outside all the time,
does he have the grit,
the power,
and the discipline to stick his nose in the hole and carry the pile for the hidden yardage the great ones will get you?
So far, I don't see it.
He's got all the physical talent in the world, so perhaps it's only an issue of coaching and developing as a player. But I can tell you that he hasn't demonstrated
those attributes thus far. He may very well make me eat my words, and frankly, I'm rooting for the guy. As you know, I love a great running back and he CAN do some special things; his lateral agility is even better than Zeke's. But I think the recent success of other top-5 picks @ running back, Elliott & Leonard Fournette, might make some teams sitting at the top of the draft overlook flaws that his playmaking ability might be masking from plain-sight.
As Cowboys fans, you better hope I'm right.
Because I currently expect Barkley to be a New York Giant next year.
Aaah, Zeke vs. Saquon in the same division.
It couldn't get any better, right?
(end analysis)
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As you can see, the breakdown I recently posted of Barkley's rookie season in the NFL is remarkably consistent with how he produced --
or didn't-- in college. Taking away just one big-play from each game reveals positively pedestrian production virtually every other time he touched the ball. His freak athleticism allows him to hit the big-play at a better-than-average rate compared to other backs, but his down-to-down production is clearly lacking when measured against other top running backs; and in particular Ezekiel Elliott.
Thus far, as both my analysis of his college & professional stats prove, Barkley is not a dominant every-down runner and has not yet developed the mentality to plow his head into the hole & drive a pile for dirty-yards, to follow the crease, to stick to the design of the play and get all he can. He's a big-play waiting to happen, but even hitting on those on a greater-than-average basis leaves him putting up subpar production the vast majority of the time.
If it's my dime, I'm taking Zeke. I think history demonstrates that his style & ability is more conducive to winning football games, while Saquon's proclivity might make for the better highlight-reel.
At Penn State and in New York, Barkley has been a big-play BEAST...
.... who comes up small on far too many other carries.
If he can bridge that gap, he'll go down as one of the best of all-time.
As it stands right now, I'll take #21 literally all day long!