Saquon Barkley - Dynasty Discussion Thread

[bjd5211]

I think Barkley & Kamara have the same issue ... high ankle sprain. No skill position player is ever the same player until the next year.

Ya I have zero concerns about Barkley going forward, and think he's actually getting healthy now and will have a string finish to the year. Still the clear #1 overall player in 1QB formats in my eyes.

[YouMightDieTryin]

Anyone ever look at Barkley's college stats; specifically in his final year (above).

Take out his longest carry of each game.

Those 12 carries total 474 yards.
That leaves 186 carries for 660 yards.
3.5 yards a carry.

Rookie year in the NFL with the same criteria:
Longest carry in each game: 16 carries for 524 yards.
Remaining: 245 carries for 783 yards.
3.19 yards a carry.

I'm not sure what I'm trying to get at by this, but thought it was interesting. I still love the guy and enjoy having him on my team, but are we overlooking the stats?

[burntfire]

So... below average on the regular but can bust open a run for yardage? Even at 3.19 that is respectable behind that O-line.

[wingnutty]

I would expect every rb is buoyed by some long runs. At least I would hope so!

[MrUbuto]

It certainly is an interesting insight, but I would imagine you can do that with any speedster RB

I bet Chris Johnson was even more dramatic here

[PR0v3]

I don't get it. Idk about you, but I prefer my RBs to have long runs, not short runs. Why would we take away the plays in which Barkley does what he is supposed to do, and evaluate him based on everything else? There is no indication Barkley is losing his ability to break long runs, so I'm not sure why we'd discount that ability. Maybe you think all those runs were a fluke?

[nathanq42]

Thats why ypc doesnt matter. I had the exact same argument for Cook last year, and yet he is killing it this year... So who the heck knows, if the look good and produce just roll with it I guess? I dont have the time or care to perform this exercise across the league, especially considering if the longest run is 3 yards less than the longest it'll still be skewed. Maybe find stats on "explosive plays" then subtract it from the total find the ypc on that as the baseline ypc and compare to the total ypc then infer what you must to must about how dependent a RB is on explosive plays?

[bjd5211]

This was always known about him, but he can score more points on one carry than a lot of RBs will in an entire game. Plus his rushing inly makes up like 60% of his value, he's just as special and dynamic as a receiver as he is as a rusher.

Edit: But it's not like that's the only way he can succeed. He just had his best game of the year, but his longest run was only 12 yards, and his longest reception was only 11 yards. He's not a between the tackles workhorse on the level of Zeke, but he can still play well in that role while doing things no one else can do. Clear #1 RB in the league in my opinion.

[PR0v3]

Thats why ypc doesnt matter. I had the exact same argument for Cook last year, and yet he is killing it this year... So who the heck knows, if the look good and produce just roll with it I guess? I dont have the time or care to perform this exercise across the league, especially considering if the longest run is 3 yards less than the longest it'll still be skewed. Maybe find stats on "explosive plays" then subtract it from the total find the ypc on that as the baseline ypc and compare to the total ypc then infer what you must to must about how dependent a RB is on explosive plays?

Or we can just recognize that making a long run is the entire purpose of running the ball, and instead of discounting a player for doing so, recognize that they are achieving the purpose of the game more often than others and are likely a better player because of it. If Frank Gore could boost his ypc by making long runs, I'm pretty sure he'd be doing it. I struggle to see the value in evaluating players based on what they'd be if they weren't what they are. Saquon has long runs, that's why he is Saquon. They aren't fluke plays.

[nathanq42]

Thats why ypc doesnt matter. I had the exact same argument for Cook last year, and yet he is killing it this year... So who the heck knows, if the look good and produce just roll with it I guess? I dont have the time or care to perform this exercise across the league, especially considering if the longest run is 3 yards less than the longest it'll still be skewed. Maybe find stats on "explosive plays" then subtract it from the total find the ypc on that as the baseline ypc and compare to the total ypc then infer what you must to must about how dependent a RB is on explosive plays?

Or we can just recognize that making a long run is the entire purpose of running the ball, and instead of discounting a player for doing so, recognize that they are achieving the purpose of the game more often than others and are likely a better player because of it. If Frank Gore could boost his ypc by making long runs, I'm pretty sure he'd be doing it. I struggle to see the value in evaluating players based on what they'd be if they weren't what they are. Saquon has long runs, that's why he is Saquon. They aren't fluke plays.

Totally feel you, my thinking (not that I dont think Saquon is elite elite elite) is that if a RB is propped up on explosive plays, I'd reckon those would be the first to go once injuries and age take their toll? Obviously we are a long ways away from it for Saquon, just a hypothesis. But I think if you look at frank Gore, off the top of my head he was never a burner whose production was predicated on explosive plays, he made his money by getting the ugly yards consistently. Homie is playing at a solid level at 35... I dont think we could see that from someone who lives off of big plays, but that would take a lot more work than I care to put into it to figure it out. But Since I've been disproven by Cook, I'll just roll with whoever does well and has a solid average.

I think sample size is a key factor here. Saqoun doing that over a season is different from some schmuck doing it in one game know?

[Dynasty DeLorean]

Offensive line was garbage. There’s no story here.

[Phaded]

This isn't news about Saquon and was personally one of the biggest reasons I didn't go crowning him the way that everyone else did. It's why I traded away my 1.01 share when I had the opportunity to draft Saquon.

He's always been that guy who's capable of breaking that massive run but he's not going to be that consistently good (more like occasionally great) running back. He doesn't give up on a run, almost to his detriment and often tries to do too much. Sometimes the best thing is to burst through, put your shoulder down, and get those five yards.

Even his rookie year was massively inflated by like six runs or something that accounted for almost 25% of his total rushing yards.

For fantasy purposes though - that 50 yard touchdown is just as valuable as that running back who gets 50 yards and a touchdown off 10-11 attempts.

Also, gonna leave this here as food for thought.

[honcho55]

YPC is plenty important. It just not useful if you take out the biggest run of each game. Ive never understood this way of looking at stats. Did you not want 2006 LT? His YPC if you take out each games big run: 3.8. How about 2008 AP? 3.65. Or maybe guys even less known for the big run that were still effective, Shaun Alexander circa 2005: 3.9 ypc. Or a true banger, Jerome Bettis in his highest rushing total year, 1997: 3.8 ypc. I cant be bothered to do the math on too many more haha

Theres of course exceptions to this even, for instance Barry Snders and Jamal Lewis' 2k years, they still average 4.5 if you take out for every games long run.

At the end of the day, theres more than one way to have a succesfull fantasy game/season/career. Over the course of a season, if you can make 3 yards out of nothing, back to the line of scrimmage out of less than nothing, consistently, that adds up. If anything though, Id make the case that big play is even *more* important, when it comes to determining truly elite options.

Sidenote: I think I read somewhere that guys like Sanders and Peterson led the league in runs for loss of yards, while posting huge fantasy seasons.

[Phaded]

I think in the context of fantasy though, we place far too much emphasis on something like YPC.

If Saquon gets 25 touches and averages 4YPC, versus random change of pace back who averages 7YPC off of 12 touches, that 100 yards is getting you more fantasy points than the 84 yards.

Now if you have two players with a similar YPC and touch count, but Saquon has a higher frequency of breaking a long run than the other guy - it doesn't really matter since they are both going to get you the same amount of points.

On the other side, in the same above situation - Saquon may be more likely to produce a boom week but has the risk of a lower floor, where the other guy may have more stability and a higher floor, but lower possibility of a boom week.

You have to decide what kind of fantasy owner you are - or perhaps you are a blend of boom players and safe floor guys.

[Vcize]

There may or may not be something here, but it would take a lot of work to figure it out.

At the very least we'd need some context here. How does everyone else (or at least the other top RBs) look when you do the same study on them? Are they all the same or is Saquon an outlier here? I always bring this up in regards to some well re-knowned FF mouth on some podcast a few years back noting Melvin Gordon's "great" ypc if you took out all his goaline and short yardage runs, making the argument that Gordon had a poor career YPC because he had a lot of short yardage work. The problem is he provided no context, and when someone finally ran the numbers it turned out that Gordon's YPC was actually LESS impacted by short yardage work than the average RB.

Then beyond that, if it turns out there is a difference, we'd need to look back historically at guys that fit into this similarly to Saquon and see if there were any patterns about their longevity or ability to produce going forward relative to backs whose YPC was far less impacted by removing their long run from each game.

A lot of work, basically.