484: Running Back Prospects Who Produced Like Studs

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ zacher Resa, j J zacher Reason, What's up everyone?

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Speaker 2: It's JJ Zacheres and the editor in chief at fandel and at number five dot com in this episode four hundred and eighty four of the Late Round podcast. So many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network.

00:00:23
Speaker 1: Thanks for tuning in.

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Speaker 2: I reference my model all the time on this show during the off season, and it probably gets annoying. So every year, to make it less annoying, I do an episode that touches on the running back model, and then I do one that touches on the wide receiver one. I do this for two reasons. One, talking through things is a good way for me to familiarize myself with the current years draft class. But second, I want to be transparent. I'm not gonna send the exact calculations of the models, but I'll explain what goes into them, so you guys generally know what I'm.

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Speaker 1: Working off of.

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Speaker 2: So today I sort of an introduction to the running back class. I'm gonna walk through the things that my model looks at and see which running backs from this year's draft class look like that they're gonna be worthwhile. I'll be referencing an article that published on Number Fire on Monday that was called which draft hopeful running backs produced like studs in college? Because I think it's an interesting way to look at the data side of prospecting. It'll all make sense in a minute, I promise. Before digging in, I want to let you know about Fandel's Single Entry Series, which you can compete in for a chance at over fifty thousand dollars in total prizes. Each week will feature a different kind of single Entry MBA contest. You can enter as many days as you'd like that week, and Fandel will take your four highest point totals for a combined score. Finish the week with the highest combined score to win a spot in the Single Entry Championship on March seventeenth and a shot at the ten thousand dollars grand prize. Other top scores will also be awarded prizes. For more details is at fandle dot com or download the FANDL app today. Eligibility restrictions apply. Okay, So I think the best way to sort of start this conversation is to look at what my running back model does. To put it simply, the model asks the question, which running backs in this current class should we expect to score the most Fantasy points across their first three seasons in the NFL. Now, to answer that question, the model has a score for each running back. To make that score consumable, I've just translated it into a percentile score. So, for example, in the twenty twenty class, Clyde Edwards Laire had about a ninety fourth percentile score, Jonathan Taylor was ninety third percentile, and DeAndre Swift was ninety second percentile. What I found is that generally anything over the eightieth percentile has a pretty good hit rate, and a lot of running backs, eight of them, to be exact, hit that mark last season. It was a pretty good running back class. Now, what goes into the model or what i'll call environmental factors and then production factors. On the environmental side, you're gonna look at things like BMI, which is more important at the running back position, or at least my model seems to think so. But it looks at things like BMI, teammates score draft capital. On the production side, I'm making sure athleticism thresholds are hit. And then there are three main production metrics that the model focuses on. Those three metrics are best season total touchdown share, which measures the percentage of touchdown seen by a player during his best season in that category. The second is best season reception share, or the percentage of team completions made by a running back, and then the third is best season total yards per team play, which is pretty self explanatory. All of those things are weighted appropriately to then help predict how a player is going to perform across the first three seasons of his career from a fantasy perspective, and for the record, specific landing spot is not factored into this. That's something that I look at more subjectively now. With running backs, draft capital matters more than it does a wide receiver, So having super strong takes before a draft it's important.

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Speaker 1: Don't get me wrong.

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Speaker 2: I like to know the type of player that i'm analyzing and working with, and sometimes being ahead from that perspective can land you the next James Robinson, whom my model liked live year.

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Speaker 1: For the record, no big.

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Speaker 2: Deal, but in the end, draft capital is huge. You may like a running back a lot, but if he goes in round six, then you have to be objective and realize that his chance of hitting in fantasy football is not great. If he was like your RB four pre draft and then he goes in round six, you should probably move him down and not have take lock. That draft capital piece is important information. I say that because today's show is not one where I'm necessarily analyzing where these guys are going to get drafted. It's more to get a good look at the running back profiles in this year's class and to call out some players who have read flags and some players who may be flying under the radar. Like I said at the top, I did an article on number five that published on Monday called which draft hopeful running backs produced like studs in college? I write it every single year. It's a fun exercise where I focus more on the production metrics and look at a sample of successful NFL running backs and compare how this year's class looks against them.

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Speaker 1: Now, let me explain.

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Speaker 2: I looked at all running backs since twenty eleven who had multiple top twenty fantasy seasons. After filtering out the older guys and some players who didn't get invited to the combine, I finished with a sample of forty six running backs. So forty six running backs had multiple top twenty seasons since twenty eleven. We're gonna call that our STUD sample. We should expect that group of players to have had good college production because good players in the NFL were also generally good in college. That's one thing that people get wrong a lot when they're trying to critique prospecting through data. It's not that almost all good college players become good NFL players. It's that almost all good NFL players were also good in college. And there's a huge difference there. Within the three main production metrics for running backs, the STUD sample averaged a best season touchdown share of about thirty five percent, they had a reception share over twelve percent, and a yards per team play of one point nine to five. Now that likely doesn't mean anything to you, so don't worry if you don't understand those numbers right now. What I do for this article is I take that STUD sample and I compare it to this year's draft class. Now, usually I just look at the list of players that were invited to the Combine and that's that. That's our sample for this year's draft class. But the combine's not happening this year, so my sample of players from this year's draft class is the twenty four running backs that are ranked over on Dynasty League Football dot Com. Those twenty four backs, that's my twenty twenty one sample. So I mentioned those averages within our STUD sample, but for context, the twenty twenty one class has an average touchdown share that's seven percentage points lower, a reception share that's about two percentage points lower, and then they had a yards per team play rate that's one point seven versus one point nine to five. This is not surprising. This should not be surprising. The STUD sample is filled with really good running backs who have dominated in the NFL the Christian McCaffrey's, Melvin Gordon's, Ezekiel Elliott's of the world. The twenty twenty one draft class is not filled with really good players from top to bottom. In fact, i'd argue that this class isn't all that great when you're looking at it in total, but we've got time to talk about that. I want to walk through the three main production metrics and call out players who have some concerns within those metrics. So we'll look at the best seasons that the twenty twenty one draft class had in total, touchdown share, reception share, and total yards per team play. On the touchdown share side of things, like I said, the average touchdown share among the NFL stud sample was over thirty five percent. That was hit by just five of the twenty four running backs in this year's class, Javonte Williams and Travis Etn. Those are two running backs who failed to hit that mark, and there are two running backs who are being highly touted. They're usually top three running backs in rankings, but both players were over thirty percent within that touchdown share metric, so it's not that concerning. And for the record, this metric is also one that's weighed least in my model. Of the three now on the lower end is Trey Sermon. He's the number five running back according to the DLF rankings that I'm working off of, but his production profile kind of sucks because he didn't just own that backfield at Ohio State and he only really had three great games this year, with one of those being incredibly great against Northwestern. But Sermon had a fifteen and a half percent total touchdown share in his best season that was the second worst among the twenty four running backs in this year's draft. Class that I'm analyzing his reception share in his total yards per team play numbers, those weren't all that great either. I just don't think that I'm going to be as high on him as others are, and it's mostly for sample sized purposes. There's also Kenny Gainwell. We've got another Memphis running back in this year's class, and I've become a sucker for Memphis running backs. If you recall, we've seen Tony Pollard, Darryl Henderson, and Antonio Gibson come out of Memphis over the last two years, and Gainwell's profile is really really interesting. I'm calling him out here because his touchdown share was twenty four point six percent during his collegiate season, but his best and only real collegiate season was a red shirt freshman campaign in twenty nineteen. The good part is among this class, his reception share is second best and his yards per team play that's fourth best. I would be absolutely in love with gain Well if he had a little bit better size. Like I said, BMI goes into my model and gain wills five ft eleven, one hundred ninety five pounds, he'll shoot up my board. Although I do think he's the RB four right now. But he'll shoot up my board if he can gain. Well, get over it, guys, I'm a dad. Let's move on to reception share. One of the things I always talk about on the Late Round podcast is that a high reception share doesn't necessarily tell us a player is going to be a good pass catcher at the NFL level. It certainly helps and tells us that a guy can catch a lot of balls, but it's also a metric that shows intent. When a player's good, his team will find ways to get him the ball. This is an avenue for teams to do that for running backs. If a running back is catching the ball into the backfield, it tells us a little bit about team intent. The average reception share among the stud sample was twelve point three percent. That drops by about two percentage points within this twenty twenty one class. This class actually has some decent pass catchers though, But there's one player I want to talk about in particular who has a red flag in his profile within reception share, and that's Remandre Stevenson. Stevenson actually has the lowest touchdown share of this twenty twenty one class, and his reception share is fifth worst. Now, if you guys haven't checked him out, the man is massive. I've seen him listen at six foot two hundred and forty seven pounds, But even if it's not that high, he's still a very large human being. Regardless. I wanted to talk about him on today's show because he's an example of always needing context when prospecting through data. Stevenson played two seasons at Oklahoma after transferring from a junior college, and then he got suspended at the end of the twenty nineteen season and that went into his twenty time twenty season, so he doesn't really have a big sample size, and it's not that he couldn't find the field, it was that he was suspended. Trey Sermon's situation is different because he was active, Stevenson was not active. When you look at games where Stevenson was active, his touchdown share rises to about twenty two percent and his reception share is almost fifteen percent. That reception shair is impressive for a bigger body back. Now, I do think that you run the risk with Stevenson that he ends up being like a Benny Snell type. I want to see how he tests and more importantly, I want to see what kind of draft capital he gets. I do think that this is just a good example of needing context for this type of exercise. Okay, I'm going to talk about Michael Carter to sort of transition the talk from reception share to total yards per team play. Javonte Williams and Michael Carter shared a backfield in North Carolina to the point where Williams had one hundred and fifty seven attempts this year to Carter's one hundred and fifty six and they both caught twenty five passes.

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Speaker 1: Williams is the one getting love in the.

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Speaker 2: Draft community, and I'll talk about him in a second, but Carter actually had more yards from scrimmage, so he has a better best season total yards per team play rate than Jervonte Williams does.

00:12:08
Speaker 1: A problem for Carter, though.

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Speaker 2: Is his size, and that's a big, big plus for Williams. In particular, Carter's listened under two hundred pounds. Williams is two hundred and twenty pounds. But I don't mind Carter at all. The thing is my model actually has Javonte Williams as the number one back right now pre draft.

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Speaker 1: That's almost definitely gonna change post draft.

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Speaker 2: But because of Williams's size, the fact that he played with Carter, and he has pretty strong marks across production metrics, he's the model's pre draft RB one. I don't necessarily agree with it, but he's most definitely locked into the top three.

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Speaker 1: At the very least.

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Speaker 2: There really weren't many surprises in the total yards per team play category, at least on the red flag side. Now, if you take the averages from the stud sample and the three production metrics, and if he used that to filter for this year's draft class, only one player hit those averages in all three metrics, Naji Harris. Naji Harris is a stud. His best season touchdown share was about thirty eight percent, He had a thirteen point three percent reception share, and his yards per team play was two point one and that was on the best team in the country. To me, he's the RB one. Age isn't that big of a deal for my model at running backs. So before you even question, no, I'm not that concerned that it'll be twenty three years old in a couple of weeks.

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Speaker 1: Harris is really good.

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Speaker 2: If you were to loosen those filters a little bit, though Travis Etn's name pops up. So when looking at things from the lens of stud fantasy running backs in the NFL, the consensus top two running backs really probably should be the top two running backs. But I want to shout out some players who I see with intriguing profiles too, Guys who may not have high draft capital but should be on your radar. What is Jamar Jefferson out of Oregon State. Jefferson's numbers in the production categories or that he has a thirty percent touchdown share, a nine point seven percent reception share, and a yards per team play of one point eight eight. Each of those numbers are just a little bit under what we're seeing from our NFL stud sample, maybe with the exception of reception share, but he has the right size and that yards per team play number his best season yards per team play that's coming from his freshman season. He had over fifteen hundred scrimmage yards as a freshman. I think he's gonna be a super solid pick in rookie drafts this year. This won't be maintained, but right now, only Javonte Williams and Naji Harris look better than Jefferson in my prospect model, Travis Etn is fourth. Again, that's without draft capital, and draft capital matters a ton, but it just goes to show how decent Jefferson looks. I should also probably talk about Chewbe Hubbard. We thought he was going to be part of last year's class, but he went back for the twenty twenty season and his profile didn't really get any better. I'm only intrigued because of all players, he has the best total yards per team play season in this class. But he doesn't have ideal size and I'm not sure he's gonna be a bell cow back at the next level. I don't know if that's in his range of outcomes, even though he carried a big workload in college. Now, draft capital does determine how I'm gonna feel about a lot of these running backs, but that's especially true for Hubbard and then lastly, Kylin Hill. I think Hill is a really, really solid prospect. I'm mostly in love with his pass catching potential. He made some great plays in the receiving game that I saw when he was at Mississippi State, and his best season reception share was north of thirteen percent. That's a top five number in this class, but the difference between him and the four guys ahead of him in that metric is size. The players ahead of him are a whole lot smaller, including Travis Etn And for the record, he opted out for most of the twenty twenty season, so those numbers are from his junior season.

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Speaker 1: So Hill is someone to watch.

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Speaker 2: I'm very into him, and Jamar Jefferson is more secondary running backs in this class who could end up hitting now. Obviously, there are a lot of other running backs in this class who didn't touch on today, but I wanted to use this time as sort of a primer for the position. If any of you have questions about specific players, I can talk about those players on upcoming mailbacks shows, and next week I'll be doing this exact same exercise but for wide receivers. So I hope you enjoyed this one, and I hope that you tune in next week. But that's gonna do it for today's show. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've got subscribe to the Late Round podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and no forget to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB.

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Speaker 1: Thanks everyone. I'll talk to you later in the week with the Mailbag Show.