McCoy contract good/bad? Will he last?

[Lurker]

that style of running can be effective in the short term but is the exact type of running that causes murray and Mathews to be hurt a lot and shortens RB careers.

That was my thinking as well. The disregard for RB longevity is another way the position has been devalued (use 'em up, get a new one.)

 

I'm sure Shady resented that about Kelly as well...

[Dibs]

Here's the post I mentioned- there are a few others that are more updated through the years as fantasy exploded, but this was one of the earlier ones so a lot of people saw it-

 

http://www.footballdocs.com/running_back_carries.html

 

Before I lambaste the linked article(and it is deserved of solid derision), I will try to put a few aspects that the article chose to use to back up their examples for their premise into perspective.

 

Players in general will often have a productive season followed by a non-productive season(for whatever reason). Many of these players will only have a 1-3 year stretch of productivity. To target the instances where this happens to players coming off a heavy workload year is simplistic to say the least. To further take a player's outlier best season, which logic would dictate would be followed by a lesser season, and try to create an argument against heavy workload seasons because of said drop off is similarly simplistic.

 

To highlight this, I thought to grab a random season from around a decade ago. Looking at 2004 we see 18 RBs who achieved 1000+ yards that year. When we look at their career stats we find 31 instances where a productive season was followed by a non-productive season. To only highlight the instances where this occurred in 370+ seasons without comparing it to the base averages provides meaningless information.

 

 

The problem with the article linked is that it doesn't postulate a hypothesis and then list stats in order to prove/disprove said hypothesis. Instead it starts with the premise that the hypothesis is correct, and then tries to force and manipulate every situation it can in order to have it seem to support said premise. Most comments in the article are minimally misleading and smack with heavy bias, important information is (conveniently?) left out, and in one case there was even stat manipulation(disgusting).

 

 

As I tend to be very long winded in these sort of posts I will keep my lambasting to a selected highlights version instead of making comment on every single example in the article(nearly every entry shows some sort of bias). I'll list them all later if you want though.

 

Note: article is up to date as no RB has recently rushed for 370+ attempts in the last few season except for Murray last season.

 

 

Of the 29 seasons listed, by my count, one could only count 6 to be fitting the situation, and even some of them are somewhat questionable. Here are a select few of the articles examples put into better perspective to highlight the immense bias in the article.

 

Dickerson's(1986) 404: Was followed by a multi-team season. He started only 10 games due to this. His performance was actually very similar with 107.3 ypg at 4.6 ypc.

Author comment: "Even E.D. couldn't handle 400+" Yes....he did.

 

Ricky Williams(2003) 392: Williams missed all of 2004 with suspension/retirement, 2005 was a backup, 2006 missed season again due to suspension.

Author comment: "Downslope started in 2002" If downslope means having a 392 carry year following one's best year and then being booted from league due to pot...sure.

 

Jerome Bettis(1997) 375: If one takes his 1997 outlier season out, his career was very consistent both before and after outlier season.

 

Curtis Martin(2004) 371: Martin indeed had his first sub-par year following his 2004 season. The fact that he was 32 years old having had 10 straight 1000+ seasons including a 367, 368 and 369 carry season obviously had nothing to do with the dropoff.

 

 

Even the commentary for those that didn't fit the article premise was massively distorted. It seems that where the situation couldn't be manipulated by the author, that RB had some special "immunity" to the condition.

 

Emmitt Smith being out 2 games for the first time in his career? Apart from missing a few games in a season is extremely common, Smith missed those two games due to holdout. Similar comment was made for Dickerson re: missing 2 games where he instead had held out due to contract issues.

 

John Riggins' career ended 2 years later. This is true....but he was 36 and had followed up his 375 carry season with an equal performance at the age of 35!

 

James Wilder apparently had a huge dropoff starting in 1986....which might mean something if he didn't have a huge upswing only 2 years earlier in 1984. He was a classic example of a RB having 1-3 good years in the league. His is only noticed due to his one heavy rush attempt year.

 

 

Saving the worst till last:

Rashard Mendenhall. According to the article he went from 385* carries, 1273 yards, down to 228 carries, 928 yards. Notes being "Workload caught up to him. Tore ACL in week 17."

 

In order to squeeze another example into the mix that backs the author's premise he decided that for Mendenhall(and only for Mendenhall) he would add playoff carries. Mendenhall's real number was 324 carries....and was another example of the 1-3 good year back.

 

This sort of data manipulation really puts this article into perspective. If we were to take the lead here and add playoff rushes to regular season rushes(as I did earlier), one would find a lot more RBs with 370+ seasons....and the vast majority of them would show to not support the theory. Selecting one of the rare situations that actually supports the theory(Mendenhall) when adding playoff carries into the mix is unethical behaviour for a journalist IMO.

 

 

Lastly, why chose 370 carries as the benchmark rather than 375(or a different number)? Perhaps because at 370 carries we have two legit examples that seem to fit the theory(Okoye and Alexander)....and another that can appear to fit(Martin). Interestingly there are 7 RBs who had either 369 or 368 attempts in a season. 5 out of those 7 seasons actually showed an improvement the following year while 2 showed minimal dropoff. I personally don't think that rushing for 1 or 2 more times in a season is going to make all the difference.

Edited June 3, 2015 by Dibs