RB Performance in Wins and Losses.

[mrcompletely11]

37 minutes ago, kungfoodude said:

@AU-panther @TheCasillas

 

It's a sea of green in the averages, outside of CMC and Saquon. I also wonder how badly CMC's numbers have been shifted because of our attempts last season to boost his stats in garbage games rather than to try and win. 

I am gonna break down CMC's year by year splits and see if maybe last year permanently skewed all his data.

That is my main beef with how this has been handled 

[kungfoodude]

33 minutes ago, mrcompletely11 said:

That is my main beef with how this has been handled 

That turned out to not be the case at all. In fact his data mirrored some of the backs on winning teams in 2019. Very odd and not what I expected.

It is on a separate sheet in the same link if you care to check.

I actually think it is 2018 and 2020 that is making his numbers look the way they are. It doesn't help that he has only appeared in 3 games, all losses this season.

[Davidson Deac II]

1 hour ago, AU-panther said:

Are teams winning because the running more or are they running more because they are winning?

Teams that win a lot tend to be ahead in a lot of games (duh).  Teams tend to run more when ahead.

Teams that lose a lot tend be behind in a lot of games.  Teams tend to pass more when behind.

What if you looked at how well a team runs on a per carry basis?  Do the numbers change if you look at YPC?

 

 

That is true, but I would imagine that when teams are behind and they do run the ball, they get a higher ypc because the defense is geared to stop the pass.  You might see a decent running back only get 15 carries, but average 6-7 ypc.  Things like this are why stats can sometimes mislead.  

[kungfoodude]

3 minutes ago, Davidson Deac II said:

That is true, but I would imagine that when teams are behind and they do run the ball, they get a higher ypc because the defense is geared to stop the pass.  You might see a decent running back only get 15 carries, but average 6-7 ypc.  Things like this are why stats can sometimes mislead.  

We'd have to do a really deep dive to bear that out. Some of that is situational(all losses are not blowout losses, so getting pass happy may not happen), some of it is based on the offense they run, some of it is based on the defense they are facing, etc. 

The thing I expected was that most running backs would clearly perform better in wins rather than losses. Yet a few of these backs seem to defy that. CMC and Barkley being the main two. Maybe we are just the shittiest two teams of that lot?

[Davidson Deac II]

19 minutes ago, kungfoodude said:

We'd have to do a really deep dive to bear that out. Some of that is situational(all losses are not blowout losses, so getting pass happy may not happen), some of it is based on the offense they run, some of it is based on the defense they are facing, etc. 

The thing I expected was that most running backs would clearly perform better in wins rather than losses. Yet a few of these backs seem to defy that. CMC and Barkley being the main two. Maybe we are just the shittiest two teams of that lot?

This is a big part of it.  Last year, CMC performed better in losses in part because we had a historically bad defense.  So he had a lot of losses to perform well in.  Reality is that his play probably kept us in games that we should have lost by two scores or more.  The Seattle game was a prime example of that.   In other games, CMC was probably such a focus of the defense, that it allowed other players like DJ Moore to flourish.  The first Saints game was an example of this.  

[kungfoodude]

3 minutes ago, Davidson Deac II said:

This is a big part of it.  Last year, CMC performed better in losses in part because we had a historically bad defense.  So he had a lot of losses to perform well in.  Reality is that his play probably kept us in games that we should have lost by two scores or more.  The Seattle game was a prime example of that.   In other games, CMC was probably such a focus of the defense, that it allowed other players like DJ Moore to flourish.  The first Saints game was an example of this.  

But that is the weird part, he actually performed much better in wins than losses LAST year. Check the spreadsheet CMC tab. But if you look at 2018(7-9) that was the year he really performed his best in losses. 

To me that is the real head scratcher. Maybe I need to look at some game logs and see why that makes sense.

[Davidson Deac II]

23 minutes ago, kungfoodude said:

But that is the weird part, he actually performed much better in wins than losses LAST year. Check the spreadsheet CMC tab. But if you look at 2018(7-9) that was the year he really performed his best in losses. 

To me that is the real head scratcher. Maybe I need to look at some game logs and see why that makes sense.

My point was that we only had 3 or 4 wins (can't remember which it was) so its a very small sample size.  Take the Tampa game for example.  CMC had very little to do because Jameis threw five picks and had one fumble lost.   Not much chance for a rb to do anything when you only have to go 20 yards to score after famous Jameis fumbles or throws a pick.   He did have a lot of carries, but most of them were in the fourth qtr when we were just holding on and watching Jameis give it back to us.    

[kungfoodude]

13 minutes ago, Davidson Deac II said:

My point was that we only had 3 or 4 wins (can't remember which it was) so its a very small sample size.  Take the Tampa game for example.  CMC had very little to do because Jameis threw five picks and had one fumble lost.   Not much chance for a rb to do anything when you only have to go 20 yards to score after famous Jameis fumbles or throws a pick.   He did have a lot of carries, but most of them were in the fourth qtr when we were just holding on and watching Jameis give it back to us.    

You could say it's a small sample size(5 games) but that would also discount the loss data from 2017 in which we only lost 5 games. I only looked a little deeper on CMC because I thought the 2019 data might be skewing the results but I don't think that is the case, his averages sort of bear out the fact that for whatever reason he produces more in losses than in wins. And Saquon Barkley does as well. 

That is a very odd thing and it makes me want to expand the sample size to some of the other NFL starting RB's to maybe see if a pattern emerges. 

[cookinbrak]

If CMC and Kamara were drafted in the same year, how does Kamara have 20 more games than CMC? I don't remember him missing that many games. Even including playoff games, the numbers are off.

[kungfoodude]

33 minutes ago, cookinbrak said:

If CMC and Kamara were drafted in the same year, how does Kamara have 20 more games than CMC? I don't remember him missing that many games. Even including playoff games, the numbers are off.

Copy/Paste error. Corrected and thanks for letting me know.

[BrianS]

Without a really deep look at WHEN those runs took place, on the surface it seems to bear out the old saying "If you want to win, you gotta run the ball and stop the run."

[DaveThePanther2008]

You can run all the stats you want and make certain types of conclusions.  The fact remains that no matter how good your offense is if you can't defend you're not going very far in this league.

CMC had a special year last year but we couldn't stop a HS team from beating us.  This year though not much better on the final outcome we have some bright spots.  

Rerun your stats when we get a defense and I am sure you'll see much more green.