What The Hell Is This?
The genesis of my current project was a paper I found from 2009 by Wilson & Levine titled "NFL Player Rating Systems: An Investigation of the Passer Rating and Proposal for a Rusher Rating" (found here). They call it a "rusher rating," however, due to the heavy inclusion of receiving statistics, I prefer to merely call it a running back rating.
I have messed with trying to weight the rushing more heavily, but as this is a very, very side project for me, I haven't gotten around to really delving into it much. In any event, I have managed to spend a fairly significant amount of time putting together a spreadsheet with several RBs from the past, as well as some present, plus every year from 1944 through today.
Additionally, I've attempted to compare across eras by using, essentially, baseball's ERA+ method of comparing a player to their contemporaries, instead of utilizing the absolute number to try to compare across eras. I used Pro Football Reference's rating+ method to determine the Rating+ number, with the exception that I used only qualifying backs to determine the average (this is another part of the project I'm working on - expanding to all RBs each season, and weighting the standard deviation, which I think will give me some fairly significantly different numbers).
No method is perfect, and obviously the best way to get a measure of a player is to actually watch the film. Outfits like Pro Football Focus are attempting to grade based on every play, and obviously this is an improvement. But for those of us without access (or time) to do so, finding better ways to utilize the data at hand is a start to a better idea of who might be better (or worse) than we think based on readily available data.
I've included all players who rank in the career top 50 of any or all of the following categories: yards, carries, TDs, and yards per game, as well as a number of RBs that I simply wanted to see stacked up. Minimums for inclusion in any given season are 10 touches (carries + receptions) per TEAM game. Necessary for inclusion in career numbers is a minimum of 600 carries - a few of the current players do not yet meet this criteria, but undoubtedly will in a year or 2.
I don't know how to post full tables in here, or the workbook itself, so I will probably just screenshot different interesting tidbits and post them. For now, however, my plan is to post weekly ratings (for qualifying players - 10+ touches). With that in mind, I wanted to get the blog up and going. Enjoy.
I have messed with trying to weight the rushing more heavily, but as this is a very, very side project for me, I haven't gotten around to really delving into it much. In any event, I have managed to spend a fairly significant amount of time putting together a spreadsheet with several RBs from the past, as well as some present, plus every year from 1944 through today.
Additionally, I've attempted to compare across eras by using, essentially, baseball's ERA+ method of comparing a player to their contemporaries, instead of utilizing the absolute number to try to compare across eras. I used Pro Football Reference's rating+ method to determine the Rating+ number, with the exception that I used only qualifying backs to determine the average (this is another part of the project I'm working on - expanding to all RBs each season, and weighting the standard deviation, which I think will give me some fairly significantly different numbers).
No method is perfect, and obviously the best way to get a measure of a player is to actually watch the film. Outfits like Pro Football Focus are attempting to grade based on every play, and obviously this is an improvement. But for those of us without access (or time) to do so, finding better ways to utilize the data at hand is a start to a better idea of who might be better (or worse) than we think based on readily available data.
I've included all players who rank in the career top 50 of any or all of the following categories: yards, carries, TDs, and yards per game, as well as a number of RBs that I simply wanted to see stacked up. Minimums for inclusion in any given season are 10 touches (carries + receptions) per TEAM game. Necessary for inclusion in career numbers is a minimum of 600 carries - a few of the current players do not yet meet this criteria, but undoubtedly will in a year or 2.
I don't know how to post full tables in here, or the workbook itself, so I will probably just screenshot different interesting tidbits and post them. For now, however, my plan is to post weekly ratings (for qualifying players - 10+ touches). With that in mind, I wanted to get the blog up and going. Enjoy.
Comments
Post a Comment