![]() ![]() Potential adjustments are riddled with complexity, and we need to be careful about anesthetizing everything to the point where all we end up doing is multiplying yards per carry by some cooked-up carries per game number. To invoke Bill Parcells, running backs ultimately are what their real-life yards per carry and carries per game say they are. Would Peterson have rushed more then? Would Simpson have rushed more now? In the end, they’re two great seasons predicated on efficient running and a lot of carries. In 2012, Peterson ran for 6.0 yards per carry on 21.8 carries per game, good for 86% of his team’s attempts. In 1973, Simpson ran for 6.0 yards per carry on 23.7 carries per game, which represented only 55% of his team’s rushing attempts. Simpson played now he would do X, or if Adrian Peterson played in the 1970s he would do Y. So it’s extremely difficult to say that if O.J. The very best backs see really high carry volume across most eras, regardless of what the the rest of the league or other top-level backs were doing. įor these reasons, if we really want to control for individual lead backs' rushing attempts across eras, we should do it based on the number of carries top-tier rushers were getting in each era - not the number of carries all running backs were getting. Meanwhile, lead backs in the late 1990s and early 2000s - who carried the ball more than anyone in history - would unfairly benefit simply because they played in an era of low league-wide attempts. ![]() Teams ran a lot in those decades, but lead backs did not. If we adjusted a back’s attempts according to league-wide rushing attempts (the blue line above) - revising carries downward for backs who played in high-rush eras and upward for backs who played in low-rush eras - it would be unfair to running backs in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and 1970s. And while top backs today receive fewer carries than they did a decade ago, they’re still handed the ball about as much as they were in the 1970s and 1980s. Teams ran far more in the 1970s than the 2000s, but the typical lead back in the 2000s actually carried the ball more than his 1970s counterpart. ![]() Teams rushed a ton in the NFL’s early decades, but those carries were very spread out. ![]()
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