2019 Running Back Report

[OhCruelestRanter]

I tried to explain the overfitting problems with the “formula.” I hope nobody actually paid any money for more of this.

Very excited for next year’s Tier 1E: Alabama RBs who tank their pro day but still go in the first round, and Tier 2J: Saquon Barkley backups drafted behind Jordan Howard.

[stoneghost28]

I did a poor job of explaining my point there and also forgot how heavily McCaffrey's draft slotting impacted his rookie ADP that summer.

My memory, and it proved half accurate when I checked DLF ADP, was that Matt Kelley and a few other analytics people were all over McCaffrey while others were skeptical. Turns out, I was half right. McCaffrey and some other rotoviz people, don't remember which guys, had McCaffrey as the #1 RB in the class pre and post combine in January of '17 and beyond and the #2 overall target in that draft. Turns out, the consensus disagreed, which is what I accurately remembered, consensus was on McCaffrey as the 1.05 to 1.06, and the 3rd to 5th RB off the board, going as early as 1.05 and as late as 1.09 in expert mocks.

It was the draft that changed everything, and elevated McCaffrey to an adp of 1.03, going generally 1.02 to 1.04 post draft, so I was kinda wrong on that.

Yes, people were high on Mixon as well, and my point wasn't that peopled't weren't and that rotoviz was, my point was that rotoviz, and in particular Kelley, got that completely and totally right. Most others were fixated on Fournette as the 1.01 or #1 RB at 1.02, while analytics people correctly elevated McCaffrey and Mixon ahead of Fournette. The good news with 2017 was even if you were off (as analytics people sometimes were on Cook in that draft) you were still hitting with McCaffrey and Mixon, or if you were a tape guy, you were still getting good talent w/Fournette and Cook even if you had to cope with consistently annoying injuries). But where the difference really, really played out was in the '18 class, where Ronald Jones, and Michel were the consistent Tape overrates, guys that would sink your draft, while Barkley was a chalk play, and Chubb was the value play and Penny the analytics miss.

As for Kelley this year, well theres a reason I'm eschewing evaluating anyone's 2019 for the most part as it's still to early to call a player a bust, especially a WR a bust (and this was a WR rookie draft if ever there was one), but he wasn't actually pretty bad here.

He had Sanders as the #1, and Sanders was neck and neck w/Jacobs by the end of the year, which makes him the better pick (Jacobs cost you the 1.01, Sanders cost you the 1.03-1.06 depending upon the draft, making Sanders the clear better value).

He had the the top WR's as Harry and Brown, and he absolutely nailed Brown.

He did overrate Campbell, and I didn't take Campbell period in any rookie drafts (wasn't buying), I picked him up off waivers in a league where some goof ball cut him, but that was my only share, and w/regards to Campbell, he was injured for most of the season, not sure how you evaluate that, or Harry for that matter, although neither paid off.

Isabella is a miss for now, I have Isabella in a number of places and am still a believer. It's one year, lets see how this plays out. I was evaluating 2017 and 2018 drafts because we have 2 and 3 years worth of information, for '19, for many of the players we don't even have a full or half season to evaluate.

Regardless, if you want to just lay down hits and misses so far:

Analytics Hits:
AJ Brown
Miles Sanders
Deebo Samuel
Noah Fant
Kyler Murray
Diontae Johnson

Quality Neg's:
David Montgomery
Arcega-Whiteside
Hakeem Butler
Mecole Hardman
Darwin Thompson
Damien Harris
Riley Ridley
really there are a gazillion


Big Misses:
N. Harry
Hockenson
Campbell
Isabella
D. Henderson
Devin Singleterry

We'll see how things go, but inherently, the examples you provide aren't actually accurate, or in some cases, entirely accurate:

Josh Jacobs:
He viewed Sanders are better than Jacobs period, but both he and rotoviz were ranking Jacobs as the #1 or #2 RB post draft based on draft capital and situation. They weren't stupid, they knew Jacobs was drafted to be the bell cow and like everyone else were surprised at his lack of usage in the passing game. Jacob's is a great example of what those guys call take lock. Even if you hate Jacobs as the #1 overall, if he goes in round 1, and is handed the bell cow RB job, you'd be an idiot not to change your view as him, and elevate him. I didn't like Jacobs a lot, and I didn't have to worry about it because I didn't have the 1.01 anywhere last year, most of my firsts were either in the 1.03-1.06 zone (perfect for my interests) or in the tail end of round 1, so I just kept clicking on AJ Brown in draft after draft unless Harry or Sanders was still available which is why I landed Brown on 9 teams, Harry on 5 and Sanders on 4. Jacobs on 0.

Daniel Jones:
Are you viewing Jones as good? Because I have a share I'd love to trade in an RSO league and can't get ANYONE to bite. The Danny "Dimes" hype died after two weeks. He did not miss on Jones, not so far anyway, his rookie year was garbage.

Terry McLaurin:
As I mentioned earlier (and I'm a redskins fan), there was literally zero justification to draft McLaurin based upon what he did in college. Zero. The only possible justification was in using the analytics take on his athleticism which was/is superlative. But beyond blowing people away at the combine, and at the senior bowl, he did jack and squat at Ohio State. As Rich Hribar said at the time, "He's a great gunner". Zero production, no breakout, no performances to point too. All you had to go on with him was:
#1 A Captain/leader/character guy
#2 A talent stuffed roster with guys like Michael Thomas, Curtis Samuel, Noah Brown, Parris Campbell, Zeke Elliot, Mike Weber and JK Dobbins playing at Ohio State during his time there.

#3 Crazy athleticism based on the combine.

And the draft capital of a notoriously incompetent team (mine) drafting him ahead of seemingly much more talented WR's.

If you picked McLaurin, congrats, you nailed an outlier, the first rookie redskin to produce #'s of this caliber since Art Monk and Charlie Brown, nearly forty years ago. But if you were taking McLaurin early, you were using bad process, and in the fullness of time, that's gonna hurt you more than help you.

Devin Singleterry:
Yeah, they missed on him. In fairness, most did. His ADP was 2.10/22nd overall after the draft, pretty much everyone was missing on him at that point, if you thought this was going to happen, you would've used top 6-8 draft capital on him, but nobody was doing that at the time.

I view draft capital as of a piece w/athletic profile, and production profile. That's what I go on. I look at a little bit of tape too, but that's the least of what I'm looking at, because at this point, I firmly believe the tape game is largely b.s. Year after year, decade after decade, little changes whatsoever w/regards to tape scouting, the same hit and miss rates apply, the same, "quantity is the only differentiation factor in success rate" tends to apply, so I'm looking to find tools others use to get an edge, and I believe I've found it. It aint close to 100% accurate, no doubt, but I definitely think they're tools have made them remove biases that come w/watching the tape religiously, and improve hit rates to give me an edge in rookie drafts. When I mention edge, that's all I mean.

[stoneghost28]

Also you mention McLaurin and doubt how anybody could know that he was good.

Plenty of people were high on McLaurin and it was clear that the NFL was high on him before the draft. He was one of the best players at the senior bowl and if you watched film of him you could see all the traits that he’s demonstrating now. I remember Kiper mocked him in the 1st round at one point and there was plenty of draft buzz around him - just not within the dynasty player profiler echo chamber.

My point is: WHY?

Zero production.
Zero breakout.
Zero anything.

As I mentioned in my previous post, if you were high on McLaurin you were high on him for reasons that had literally ZERO to do with what he actually did in college, and if you used the techniques that made you high on McLaurin to consistently render judgements on all projects you would draft busts at a higher rate than anyone in any league ever. He had zero to point to other than:
Character
Hard Work
Leadership
Nice Senior Bowl
Athletic (Combine)

He was playing behind guys like Noah Brown and Parris Campbell, you know, the guy you mentioned that Kelley busted on. McLaurin was a superstar, an obvious rookie value pick in dynasty, why did Parris and Noah totally own him in the fight for a roster spot? My guess is that Meyer just put guys like Samuel, Campbell, Brown, Michael Thomas etc in particular roles and didn't really exercise a lot of flexibility beyond that and his success reinforced those kinds of tendencies because it's hard to imagine he would've refused to use McLaurin in the passing game if he knew McLaurin's 2019 rookie season production w/the dumpster fire redskins was basically his floor in potential. So again, people were high on him. My idiot redskins were high on him, but why? Bad process, that's why, and I don't trust bad process. You will hit on outliers with it from time to time, but if bad process is your game, over the fulness of time, you will fail. I'd rather fail with good process, then succeed w/bad process, because over years of dynasty, I will make far more mistakes drafting McLaurin's, then I will have successes. McLaurin's draft profile was garbage. He was the definition of a massive outlier. Rely on that as your premise and you will fail. You can see how my redskins are mired in bad process by them having traded an elite slot corner, and a day 2 draft pick, and gifted a massive contract to Alex Smith after his mega-outlier 2017 season. It was blatantly obvious at the time it was the height of idiocy. Didn't matter that he got hurt, or that the team had a winning record when he got hurt, if you make decisions that stupid? You will end up failing.

I want good process.

McLaurin was a bad process pick that hit. You can hit on those from time to time. You will. But it's nothing to build any approach to dynasty or the real life NFL around.

And it's also worth noting that rotoviz AND Matt Kelley both changed their tune on McLaurin the second he began to show how talented he was in training camp/preseason, by September they were all over him in daily fantasy, avoiding take lock. Im still struggling w/that, trying to delineate the difference between avoiding take lock, and at the same time, engaging in good process w/guys like McLaurin that proved to be outliers. Knowing when to drop away from my initial evaluation, and buy on the talent or situation, when the #'s and production are staring me in the face week after week (I think Hardman's going to be doing that for me as the Chiefs jettison Watkins-a great fantasy might have been. How good would the chiefs had been if they'd followed Kelley's advice and signed Allen Robinson instead of Watkins in '18?).

[stoneghost28]

My opinion is that you aren't going to build an analytics model that is more useful than the eye test; otherwise, NFL teams would be doing the same thing.

I keep seeing this being said but that’s assuming draft capital is not being used.

And I also keep seeing Michael Thomas brought up, the only “bad” thing about MT was his breakout age. Nearly every other metric of his was above average or better. His 40 time wasn’t great but it didn’t need to be with his height and weight (70th percentile speed score).

Breakout age is considered a big deal though in analytics for WRs. So much so that Rotoviz completely ruled him out and called Michael Thomas from Southern Miss "The Better Michael Thomas." Views like that don't happen if you watch tape.

It's why you need a balance of both. If you're letting something like that skew your view of a player, the tape tells all. Too many of these websites throw a bunch of numbers at you and bound players to a formula. Football just doesn't work that way.

I did a lazy man's approach to breakout age last year to argue with fellow redskins fans in fan forums about why certain prospects didn't make a lot of sense and it was remarkably reliable just going through NFL top 50ish WR's going back a few years.

If you went back and looked at all the relevant, productive WR's in the NFL, guys that you'd either draft in start ups, or seriously consider drafting, top 12, 24, 36, 48 types, there were only a minuscule handful that had bad breakout age's or none at all. Out of the 50 or so I looked at, I found I think 5 or 6 that had what would be regarded as bad or non-existent breakout age #'s. I know this is anecdotal, and I'm totally lacking in the math skills to break it down or give you a spreadsheet, but if you look up the breakout ages of the top 40 or 50 WR's going into '19 or '18 or '17 start up drafts, the extreme exceptions, the true outliers, are the the sub 50th percentile guys, they are MASSIVELY rare, they account for typically about 8-12% of any given top 50 going back across the pass three or four years. I didn't go deeper than that because I figured there was a good reason rotoviz and player profiler were heavily weighting that metric. It does matter, like a lot.

Again it's not 100% accurate, see McLaurin. There will always be outliers. I think there were like 6 or 7 out of the top 50 or so, but honestly, if you find a metric that successful NFL Wr's have in spades like 85-90+% of the time, you've found something that's highly correlated to the potential for future success. And it's not that, if you have it, you're successful, it's that if your looking at any given WR that does find success, a huge percentage of them will have that box checked in their profile.

[Dynasty DeLorean]

I keep seeing this being said but that’s assuming draft capital is not being used.

And I also keep seeing Michael Thomas brought up, the only “bad” thing about MT was his breakout age. Nearly every other metric of his was above average or better. His 40 time wasn’t great but it didn’t need to be with his height and weight (70th percentile speed score).

Breakout age is considered a big deal though in analytics for WRs. So much so that Rotoviz completely ruled him out and called Michael Thomas from Southern Miss "The Better Michael Thomas." Views like that don't happen if you watch tape.

It's why you need a balance of both. If you're letting something like that skew your view of a player, the tape tells all. Too many of these websites throw a bunch of numbers at you and bound players to a formula. Football just doesn't work that way.

I did a lazy man's approach to breakout age last year to argue with fellow redskins fans in fan forums about why certain prospects didn't make a lot of sense and it was remarkably reliable just going through NFL top 50ish WR's going back a few years.

If you went back and looked at all the relevant, productive WR's in the NFL, guys that you'd either draft in start ups, or seriously consider drafting, top 12, 24, 36, 48 types, there were only a minuscule handful that had bad breakout age's or none at all. Out of the 50 or so I looked at, I found I think 5 or 6 that had what would be regarded as bad or non-existent breakout age #'s. I know this is anecdotal, and I'm totally lacking in the math skills to break it down or give you a spreadsheet, but if you look up the breakout ages of the top 40 or 50 WR's going into '19 or '18 or '17 start up drafts, the extreme exceptions, the true outliers, are the the sub 50th percentile guys, they are MASSIVELY rare, they account for typically about 8-12% of any given top 50 going back across the pass three or four years. I didn't go deeper than that because I figured there was a good reason rotoviz and player profiler were heavily weighting that metric. It does matter, like a lot.

Again it's not 100% accurate, see McLaurin. There will always be outliers. I think there were like 6 or 7 out of the top 50 or so, but honestly, if you find a metric that successful NFL Wr's have in spades like 85-90+% of the time, you've found something that's highly correlated to the potential for future success. And it's not that, if you have it, you're successful, it's that if your looking at any given WR that does find success, a huge percentage of them will have that box checked in their profile.

I've been kind of wondering what the difference is between the percentage of all incoming rookies with late breakout ages and the players that go on to be successful with late breakout ages. What i'm trying to say is, yes, only a handful of succesful players have late breakout ages, but, what is the percentage of players entering the nfl with a late breakout age. Is there only a handful of late-breakout age franchise players because late breakout is really bad or is it because there are simply just fewer players entering the nfl with a late breakout age. I don't really know the answer and i'm too lazy to look it up.

[Cameron Giles]

I keep seeing this being said but that’s assuming draft capital is not being used.

And I also keep seeing Michael Thomas brought up, the only “bad” thing about MT was his breakout age. Nearly every other metric of his was above average or better. His 40 time wasn’t great but it didn’t need to be with his height and weight (70th percentile speed score).

Breakout age is considered a big deal though in analytics for WRs. So much so that Rotoviz completely ruled him out and called Michael Thomas from Southern Miss "The Better Michael Thomas." Views like that don't happen if you watch tape.

It's why you need a balance of both. If you're letting something like that skew your view of a player, the tape tells all. Too many of these websites throw a bunch of numbers at you and bound players to a formula. Football just doesn't work that way.

I did a lazy man's approach to breakout age last year to argue with fellow redskins fans in fan forums about why certain prospects didn't make a lot of sense and it was remarkably reliable just going through NFL top 50ish WR's going back a few years.

If you went back and looked at all the relevant, productive WR's in the NFL, guys that you'd either draft in start ups, or seriously consider drafting, top 12, 24, 36, 48 types, there were only a minuscule handful that had bad breakout age's or none at all. Out of the 50 or so I looked at, I found I think 5 or 6 that had what would be regarded as bad or non-existent breakout age #'s. I know this is anecdotal, and I'm totally lacking in the math skills to break it down or give you a spreadsheet, but if you look up the breakout ages of the top 40 or 50 WR's going into '19 or '18 or '17 start up drafts, the extreme exceptions, the true outliers, are the the sub 50th percentile guys, they are MASSIVELY rare, they account for typically about 8-12% of any given top 50 going back across the pass three or four years. I didn't go deeper than that because I figured there was a good reason rotoviz and player profiler were heavily weighting that metric. It does matter, like a lot.

Again it's not 100% accurate, see McLaurin. There will always be outliers. I think there were like 6 or 7 out of the top 50 or so, but honestly, if you find a metric that successful NFL Wr's have in spades like 85-90+% of the time, you've found something that's highly correlated to the potential for future success. And it's not that, if you have it, you're successful, it's that if your looking at any given WR that does find success, a huge percentage of them will have that box checked in their profile.

I'm aware of why breakout age is one of the more coveted metrics among WRs. I definitely look at it, but for me it's just a part of my process. I have to watch tape on those players for balance and context, along with a healthy amount of advanced metrics.

Example: Leonte Carroo has a 76th percentile breakout age and his tape in college is unimpressive. Sometimes the numbers don't match the player.

[Chwf3rd]

Also you mention McLaurin and doubt how anybody could know that he was good.

Plenty of people were high on McLaurin and it was clear that the NFL was high on him before the draft. He was one of the best players at the senior bowl and if you watched film of him you could see all the traits that he’s demonstrating now. I remember Kiper mocked him in the 1st round at one point and there was plenty of draft buzz around him - just not within the dynasty player profiler echo chamber.

My point is: WHY?

Zero production.
Zero breakout.
Zero anything.

As I mentioned in my previous post, if you were high on McLaurin you were high on him for reasons that had literally ZERO to do with what he actually did in college, and if you used the techniques that made you high on McLaurin to consistently render judgements on all projects you would draft busts at a higher rate than anyone in any league ever. He had zero to point to other than:
Character
Hard Work
Leadership
Nice Senior Bowl
Athletic (Combine)

He was playing behind guys like Noah Brown and Parris Campbell, you know, the guy you mentioned that Kelley busted on. McLaurin was a superstar, an obvious rookie value pick in dynasty, why did Parris and Noah totally own him in the fight for a roster spot? My guess is that Meyer just put guys like Samuel, Campbell, Brown, Michael Thomas etc in particular roles and didn't really exercise a lot of flexibility beyond that and his success reinforced those kinds of tendencies because it's hard to imagine he would've refused to use McLaurin in the passing game if he knew McLaurin's 2019 rookie season production w/the dumpster fire redskins was basically his floor in potential. So again, people were high on him. My idiot redskins were high on him, but why? Bad process, that's why, and I don't trust bad process. You will hit on outliers with it from time to time, but if bad process is your game, over the fulness of time, you will fail. I'd rather fail with good process, then succeed w/bad process, because over years of dynasty, I will make far more mistakes drafting McLaurin's, then I will have successes. McLaurin's draft profile was garbage. He was the definition of a massive outlier. Rely on that as your premise and you will fail. You can see how my redskins are mired in bad process by them having traded an elite slot corner, and a day 2 draft pick, and gifted a massive contract to Alex Smith after his mega-outlier 2017 season. It was blatantly obvious at the time it was the height of idiocy. Didn't matter that he got hurt, or that the team had a winning record when he got hurt, if you make decisions that stupid? You will end up failing.

I want good process.

McLaurin was a bad process pick that hit. You can hit on those from time to time. You will. But it's nothing to build any approach to dynasty or the real life NFL around.

And it's also worth noting that rotoviz AND Matt Kelley both changed their tune on McLaurin the second he began to show how talented he was in training camp/preseason, by September they were all over him in daily fantasy, avoiding take lock. Im still struggling w/that, trying to delineate the difference between avoiding take lock, and at the same time, engaging in good process w/guys like McLaurin that proved to be outliers. Knowing when to drop away from my initial evaluation, and buy on the talent or situation, when the #'s and production are staring me in the face week after week (I think Hardman's going to be doing that for me as the Chiefs jettison Watkins-a great fantasy might have been. How good would the chiefs had been if they'd followed Kelley's advice and signed Allen Robinson instead of Watkins in '18?).

I answered why. If you watched him play then you could see the same skills that he’s showing now in Washington. It wasn’t a secret either, as I said before plenty of NFL draft analysts we’re very high on him.

Nobody is saying to not use production numbers but it’s all part of a bigger picture. McLaurin should absolutely have been downgraded for his lack of production and age but by only looking at that you’re missing a large piece of the evaluation

[djeternal2]

I answered why. If you watched him play then you could see the same skills that he’s showing now in Washington. It wasn’t a secret either, as I said before plenty of NFL draft analysts we’re very high on him.

Nobody is saying to not use production numbers but it’s all part of a bigger picture. McLaurin should absolutely have been downgraded for his lack of production and age but by only looking at that you’re missing a large piece of the evaluation

You've said this multiple times with 0 evidence proving it. I tried looking back at 2019 mocks and only found a couple that went past the second round to actually find where McLaurin was listed. Walter FB had him in the 4th round as the 105th player & Chad Rueter had him going in the 3rd rnd 93rd overall. That doesn't scream real high to me. The Rueter one had him going after Riley Ridley (90th overall) as one guy that stuck out while scrolling for McLaurin's name. Can you provide some proof that there were draft analysts that were high on him? And by high I would classify that as a top 50 pick in the NFL draft.

[bjd5211]

When did Terry McLaurin get moved to Running Back?

[Chwf3rd]

I answered why. If you watched him play then you could see the same skills that he’s showing now in Washington. It wasn’t a secret either, as I said before plenty of NFL draft analysts we’re very high on him.

Nobody is saying to not use production numbers but it’s all part of a bigger picture. McLaurin should absolutely have been downgraded for his lack of production and age but by only looking at that you’re missing a large piece of the evaluation

You've said this multiple times with 0 evidence proving it. I tried looking back at 2019 mocks and only found a couple that went past the second round to actually find where McLaurin was listed. Walter FB had him in the 4th round as the 105th player & Chad Rueter had him going in the 3rd rnd 93rd overall. That doesn't scream real high to me. The Rueter one had him going after Riley Ridley (90th overall) as one guy that stuck out while scrolling for McLaurin's name. Can you provide some proof that there were draft analysts that were high on him? And by high I would classify that as a top 50 pick in the NFL draft.

Lots of people had him ranked right where he got drafted - early 3rd, 76th overall.

Daniel Jeremiah - 79th overall
Lance Zierlein - Round 3 grade
Matt Miller - WR9 and 77th overall
Kiper - I cant access his stuff because it’s paywalled but I absolutely know he mocked him in the 1st at one point.

Of course he exceeded expectations for an early 3rd round pick but if you just looked at his production you would’ve thought he should’ve been a late day 3 guy. By watching him actually play football you weren’t blindsided by him looking great this year.