Does College Running Back workload relate to NFL Success?

I. Introduction

When considering the future NFL success of a college running back, there is usually a consideration of his workload in college. Sometimes there are thoughts that too much work will lead to injuries in the NFL. Other times it could be that too little work means a back is not ready for a full time NFL workload. Or maybe a large workload shows that the back can handle a large workload in the NFL? I decided to see if I could find any correlation between college workload and NFL success in terms of fantasy points or games missed.

II. Parameters of the Study

I started by looking at all the running backs drafted in the first 3 rounds since 2000. This gives a dataset of 54 running backs. For each running back I found the following values for their last season in college: Rushes, Catches, Touches, Games and Touches per Game.

Next I looked at their NFL careers. For each running back I calculated their fantasy points (pt/10 yards rush or rec, 1 ppr, 6 pts for TDs) in their first year in the league as well as for their career. I also found the number of career games they have played and compared it to a full NFL season of 16 games to find a career missing game percentage.

Finally, I calculated 3 sets of Pearson Correlations to see if any of the 4 college workload factors related to 1^st year fantasy points, career fantasy points or career missing percentage.

NOTES: It likely goes without saying that running backs drafted in the last few years may not show accurate career values yet, but I think it was worth using them to get a sample size of 54 backs. Also, missing games may be because the player is not ready yet or stuck behind a veteran back, not just due to injury. However I saw no way to separate those out and feel like the effect should be similar.

III. Results

In a nutshell, the results showed almost no correlation between the workload of a college running back in their last collegiate season and their success and lack of missed games in the NFL. You can find the spreadsheet here. The first tab shows the Raw Data. The second tab shows the Correlations. The third tab shows the collegiate workloads of 14 top RBs in the 2008 draft.

Here is the Correlation table:

Variables	Pearson Correlation
Rushes to 1st FP/G	0.09649
Catches to 1st FP/G	-0.09311
Touches to 1st FP/G	0.07342
T/G to 1st FP/G	0.11392
Rushes to Car FP/G	0.17081
Catches to Car FP/G	0.15522
Touches to Car FP/G	0.19064
T/G to Car FP/G	0.18586
Rushes to Car Miss Pct	-0.03248
Catches to Car Miss Pct	-0.00551
Touches to Car Miss Pct	-0.03170
T/G to Car Miss Pct	-0.01238

The highest number in the set is .19 for the Touches to Career FP/G. This doesn’t show much of a relation, but it is interesting that all of the Career comparisons have the highest Pearson numbers. They are also all positive, so if we can take anything from the study, it would seem to be that more touches in a college running backs final season should lead to greater NFL success. However that is obviously a weak assertion.

It’s interesting to see such small values next to the Career Missed Games Percentage comparison. As discussed above, there are reasons besides injury for missing games. However I still would have expected high workload RBs to miss more games in the NFL.

Looking at the raw data is very interesting. The three backs who averaged over 30 touches a game are LaDainian Tomlinson, Brian Calhoun and Steven Jackson. Two of those 3 are very good NFL running backs and the 3^rd has been injured in his short career. Of course, right after those three guys are some backs who have been less successful in their NFL careers: Chris Perry, Cedric Benson, William Green and DeShaun Foster. So you can see by looking at the raw data that merely ranking players by touches per game will not lead you to the very best NFL backs.

Looking at the lower end of the spectrum, players like Brian Leonard, Greg Jones, Eric Shelton and Lorenzo Booker are at the bottom of the list. None have showed much in the NFL so far although Leonard and Booker are still young. However right above those four are some very successful running backs that had light collegiate workloads like Maurice Jones-Drew, Ronnie Brown and Joseph Addai. Again, it’s easy to see that a low number of touches are not an indicator of poor future performance.

Finally, it’s interesting to compare this year’s crop of college running backs to those from the past. The most interesting thing to note is that the previous record for touches in a season in this data set was 401 by Brian Calhoun. That record is shattered this season with Kevin Smith’s 474 touches for Central Florida. Ray Rice also beat Calhoun with 404 touches. In fact, adding in Matt Forte’s 393 touches puts 3 of the top 5 workloads in this year’s class, with Steven Jackson just ahead of Forte with 394 for 4^th place. It’s probably just a quirk, but it is interesting to see. Smith, Rice and Forte also all averaged over 30 touches a game, which had only been done by Tomlinson, Calhoun and Jackson among the past 54 RBs. I’m sure fantasy owners will be happy if this year’s trio has the same level of NFL success as those three.

On the low level, there are two interesting players to check. The first is Felix Jones, who at 11.46 touches per game would be the second lowest in that category of the data set. That puts him just above Brian Leonard and just below Greg Jones and Eric Shelton. The other player to watch is Ryan Torain, who got hurt after 6 games last season. His 117 touches in those games are the 2007 low, but he had a respectable 19.50 touches per game. The only player with a lower number of touches in his final season was Tony Hollings, who had 95. However, Hollings got those touches in only 4 games for a 23.75 per game average, good enough for 22^nd out of the 54 RBs in the data set.

On a side note, let’s hear it for LaDainian Tomlinson. He is ranked 1^st in rushes, 4^th in touches, 1^st in touches/game, 4^th in first year fantasy points per game, 1^st in career fantasy points per game and has only missed one game out of 112. That is a stud.

IV. Conclusions

Looking at the results of this study, it appears that there is not a correlation between college running back workload and NFL success nor is there a relationship between heavy workload and more games missed in the NFL. However, I think that showing that there is not a relationship or correlation is useful information for evaluating the NFL prospect of college running backs. The ideas that a heavy workload is bad due to greater injury propensity in the NFL or that a light workload means that a running back can’t handle a pounding in the NFL should be taken with a grain of salt after reviewing this study.

In retrospect, a way to make the study more accurate might be to include the workload over a running back’s entire college career instead of only their last season. We could also use more than the first 3 rounds of drafted running backs to get a larger data set than 54 runners. However, even with these minor quibbles, I feel confident in excluding these worries for the most part when I evaluate future college running backs.