The RB Odometer: High Career-Carry Red Flags

The biggest milestone that we seem to have set for running backs is for when they turn 30 years old.

It’s not even a good milestone either, despite what the majority of the population will tell you. Our brains have been wired to signal alarm sounds in our minds and produce tunnel vision whenever a three—decade—old RB is even mentioned.




It’s always struck me as odd.

There HAD to be a better way to accomplish the same goal, with the goal being a common point in time when it is a good idea to expect a RB’s numbers to decline.

I’ve seen plenty of 27, 28, and 29—year—old backs regress and never again return to form. Why is a 30—year old so much different?

Because I wanted to do it correctly, and because the potential result may actually be useful, I thought for a while on how I could do this. Should I select a random middle grouping of RBs? Filter out most of them with a minimum requirement?

At first, I didn’t even consider using the top 10 in career carries, since I thought it would be a travesty to put such an upper—echelon of talent in with any lesser human beings.

Then I realized that they were indeed, still human, and that meant that their bodies were just as susceptible to damage as the others were.

So until we find out that John Riggins was made of metal, which is a definite possibility, I’ve included them.

To give a brief, step—by—step account of how this went down, I started off with a massively gigantic list of the top-200 RBs for total career carries.

A few seconds later, I realized how stupid it would be if I included most of them in the sample, so I whittled it down a bit.

I was eventually left with a list of nearly 100 and a minimum entry requirement of 1,200 carries.

I then took out all active players, those who were smart enough to retire before their rushing average dipped into horrific territory, (See: Barry Sanders, Corey Dillon, Tiki Barber) and anyone who played the majority of their career before 1978 (schedule jump year).

I then added everything together for the remaining list, but got a rushing amount average that seemed a tad skewed. How would I ever solve such a roadblock of a problem?

The answer was simple: With a little help from our friend, the tier system.

Not the tier system as we usually know it, since I only broke the total group into two tiers, but still.

The top group consisted of RBs that had at least 1,800 carries. The bottom group was those who had at least 1,200 to 1,799 carries.

Next, I went through the list, player by player, and marked the year in which they had their final solid season. I didn’t have any specific mathematical criteria, just looking through their career stats and picking the year that would turn out to be the year BEFORE their decline began.

Next, I calculated the amount of carries the given players had at that point. If you haven’t noticed by now, this whole system would be applied to RBs BEFORE the season starts. It’s a yearly way of tagging red flags. You could do it mid—season, but by then it wouldn’t be of much use.

Now, before I give the estimates and incur the wrath from those who have RBs with approaching limits on their fantasy rosters, let me just spell out how this could potentially be used.

The bottom half amount could be applied to everyone approaching the number of carries, with the realization that many have surpassed the limit and went on to have longer and even more consistent careers.

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