02-04-2020, 09:22 AM
(02-03-2020, 11:16 PM)804 fan Wrote: None of those guys are on the level of Mixon, i bet they would prefer Mixon over those guys. Williams was getting trashed for the Chiefs lack of a real running game before the Super bowl and all through the season. With all do respect thats like saying you have Barry Sanders or Saquan Barkley but not willing to pay them because you hope you can find another lesser running back for cheap when the gap in talent is immense. Just picture a real running back with the lines of the teams with a lesser back that still get a few yards by default. Ijs
I completely understands why you think it because it is kind of old school conventional football wisdom. Analytics basically show us as a whole that running is not efficient in general. When you look around the league it is more about scheme over back in many cases sprinkled in with really good O line play that determines who the best backs in the league are. Everyone keeps saying Todd Gurley isn't the same because he is hurt, the real issue there is that other teams have figured out how to stop McVay's outside zone scheme, combined with a degrading O line, and all the sudden Gurley's YPC dropped an entire yard.
Sure, a great back can make some great plays but again analytics wise they don't amount for a whole lot of wins. When you start weighing their value in terms of dollars and cents against other more important positions it just doesn't make a lot of sense to pay a back elite level money. Let's look at guys like Latavious Murray, Gus Edwards, Duke Johnson, all these guys had 100+ carried and averaged well ahead of Joe Mixon in yards per carry. Now do we think any of these guys are better backs that Joe Mixon? No, of course not. They did all however outproduce him efficiency wise. In the end how "good" someone in does not matter it's about production. Recent history shows us good teams can use lesser backs they don't need to pay big money to and get production equal or greater than some of the "good" backs in the league.
Side note, Rushing tends to be viewed as a volume statistic and it really shouldn't be. People talk about 1k yard rushers like it's a big deal but if you got there on 300 carries the team would have been better of throwing every play because of how inefficient it is. Don't let things like rushing totals cloud your judgement on if a back (or more importantly scheme) is good or not look to efficiency numbers.
