Yards per carry is the definitive measure of a running back's performance. Perhaps it should be. It is easy to calculate and it gives a good picture how well they are moving the ball. But as Football Outsiders points out it does not capture consistency of performance. They went so far as to introduce running back success rate as another way to gauge performance.
Football Outsiders has done a lot of great stuff and I am by no means criticizing what they have done. However, there is a lot we can learn from doing simple statistical analysis on the set of runs each back has had in 2015 in-conference(*) through week 12.
DERRICK HENRY | Leonard Fournette | Ezekiel Elliott | |
---|---|---|---|
CARRIES | 196 | 136 | 143 |
YARDS | 1155 | 848 | 969 |
VARIANCE | 92.32 | 124.30 | 117.21 |
STD DEV | 9.61 | 11.15 | 10.83 |
MINIMUM | -4 | -5 | -5 |
LONG | 74 | 87 | 75 |
MEAN | 5.89 | 6.24 | 6.78 |
MODE | 1 | 1 | 2 |
median | 4 | 4 | 4 |
range | 78 | 92 | 80 |
q1 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
q2 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
q3 | 7 | 7 | 8 |
(*) In conference was used because that is what I had easy access to