I didn't "google" it. We use Pro Football Reference here."In the heirarchy of touches"??? I've been an NFL fan for five decades but I've NEVER heard or seen THIS before.
but nobody will mistake either one for a traditional "feature back", unless BB decides to use them differently this year.
Either you are trying to pigeonhole Ridley for some arcane, indecipherable "fantasy" reason or you do NOT know what you are talking about.Ridley gained 1263 yards last season. That was good enough for SEVENTH in the entire league. He scored 12 TD's, tied with Adrien Petersen for THIRD in the league. He had 290 touches on a team that is a top three pass happy offense in the entire league. When the Patriots FEATURE the run they FEATURE Steven Ridley. This is INARGUABLE. Any statement to the contrary is preposterous.
To print on a team's message board that Steven Ridley is NOT a feature back and suggest that NOBODY would ever mistake him such a runner is OPENLY TROLLING . Ridley quite obviously became the Patriots feature back, the back they wanted when they drafted Maroney, last season. To even suggest otherwise is ludicrous.
I realize that fantasy football is a sore spot for some of you, not viewed as a meaningful pastime, or as a "real" football fan activity, but statistically, it mirrors real life. I saw this long, but interesting article on
Home - Footballguys that I thought I would share. Perhaps it gives some people here insight on my thinking. You may not be able to access the link if you are not a paid subscriber. Sorry about the tables not lining up... too much work to fix it.
http://subscribers.footballguys.com/apps/article.php?article=Pasquino_Quality_Starts_RB_2012
QUALITY STARTS - RUNNING BACK
by Jeff Pasquino, July 20
There are some fantasy football players that believe that the lineup you pick can lose you a game just as much as it can win a contest. Having a player give you a consistent performance week after week can be considered more valuable than a player who goes off every third week and then takes two weeks off between those fantastic performances. Consistency has a value, and it does not take much of a leap to understand that players that you can rely on for solid games when you need them (such as in your postseason) are a huge advantage.
Baseball has a term called "Quality Starts" for pitchers, which is a statistic that represents how often a starting pitcher will put up a good (not great, just good) performance in a given game. The bar is set neither high nor low (six innings pitched, three earned runs or fewer) so as to gauge a decent performance. The theory behind it is that if your pitcher gives you a Quality Start, your team has a fighting chance to win a given game.
So now we need to translate this to football. What is "quality" for each position? How do we define a "Quality Start" for quarterbacks or running backs or any other position? Looking back at the 2012 season, I decided to take the #12 RB for the year (Matt Forte, 179.4 fantasy points) and take that fantasy total and divide it by 16 for a per game average. Now a case can be made to argue against doing this. I did not account for missed games or a per-start performance metric, but I believe that the numbers will get averaged out by doing this method. Also, taking RB12 seems a bit arbitrary, but if you are looking for a bare minimum of quality, the 12th RB should be the "worst starter" in your fantasy league as a RB1 and a great RB2.
So now we move on to the next question - one of quantifying the quality. At what point do we decide whether or not a running back has given us a quality performance? Here is where it gets a bit murky, but looking at the distribution of RB performances by starters over the season and it becomes evident that the using the 12th RB average and adding or subtracting a percentage gives us a good range for a RB Quality Start.
Using the RB Quality Start range, we can also define a bad performance or an excellent performance as either falling below or exceeding the Quality Start range. Table 1 gives us the fantasy points that it takes to fall in each of the three areas:
RB Start Type Fantasy Points
Bad Start 0 to 8.9
Quality Start 9.0 to 14.9
Excellent Start 15.0+
Table 1: 2012 RB Quality Start and Fantasy Point Ranges - Standard Scoring
Table 2 shows us the breakdown of all the Top 50 RBs and how many of each type of start resulted for each:
Running Back Excellent Quality Bad Total
Adrian Peterson - MIN 9 6 1 16
Doug Martin - TBB 6 7 3 16
Arian Foster - HOU 13 1 2 16
Marshawn Lynch - SEA 9 5 2 16
Alfred Morris - WAS 7 5 4 16
Ray Rice - BAL 8 6 2 16
C.J. Spiller - BUF 5 8 3 16
Jamaal Charles - KCC 6 4 6 16
Frank Gore - SFO 7 4 5 16
Trent Richardson - CLE 8 4 4 16
Stevan Ridley - NEP 6 4 6 16
Matt Forte - CHI 5 5 5 15
Chris Johnson - TEN 5 4 7 16
Reggie Bush - MIA 2 7 7 16
Shonn Greene - NYJ 3 5 8 16
Darren Sproles - NOS 3 7 3 13
Steven Jackson - STL 1 8 7 16
Ahmad Bradshaw - NYG 4 3 7 14
Michael Turner - ATL 2 8 6 16
BenJarvus Green-Ellis - CIN 4 6 6 16
Mikel Leshoure - DET 2 7 5 14
LeSean McCoy - PHI 1 10 1 12
DeAngelo Williams - CAR 2 3 10 15
Danny Woodhead - NEP 2 2 11 15
Vick Ballard - IND 0 6 10 16
Willis McGahee - DEN 3 2 6 11
Darren McFadden - OAK 1 7 4 12
DeMarco Murray - DAL 2 5 3 10
David Wilson - NYG 1 2 13 16
Joique Bell - DET 1 3 12 16
Jacquizz Rodgers - ATL 1 1 14 16
Andre Brown - NYG 3 3 5 11
Felix Jones - DAL 2 3 10 15
Ryan Mathews - SDC 1 1 11 13
Pierre Thomas - NOS 0 3 12 15
Mark Ingram - NOS 1 3 12 16
Knowshon Moreno - DEN 2 3 2 7
Mike Tolbert - CAR 1 0 15 16
Bilal Powell - NYJ 1 2 11 14
Bryce Brown - PHI 2 0 14 16
Fred Jackson - BUF 2 2 7 11
Marcel Reece - OAK 2 2 10 14
Jonathan Dwyer - PIT 0 3 9 12
LaRod Stephens-Howling - ARI 2 1 9 12
Michael Bush - CHI 2 1 11 14
Darius Reynaud - TEN 0 1 15 16
Jackie Battle - SDC 2 0 13 15
Shaun Draughn - KCC 0 3 13 16
Isaac Redman - PIT 1 2 10 13
Daniel Thomas - MIA 0 4 9 13
153 192 381
Table 2: 2012 RB Start Types Sorted By Top 50 RBs - Standard Scoring
That's a lot of info to digest, so let me help. First, we see that there are not quite as many Excellent Starts (153) as Quality Starts (192), but given some injuries and more committee backfields it does make sense that there would be fewer elite performances. In comparison to the last four seasons, the numbers of Excellent Starts in 2012 are comparable to 2010 (154) but less that 2009 (173) or 2011 (197). Two years ago the uptick in excellence is easily explained by the low threshold for that level – only 14.1+ points were needed to achieve an Excellent Start, far less than last year (15.0+), 2009 (15.3+) or 2010 (16.0+). While in the big picture it may not matter – we do want RB12s and higher, regardless – but it does show how much RB value has declined with the passing game taking off in today's NFL.
Now, to dig deeper, let's look at the numbers distributed in two different ways. First, I need to define a valuable starting running back in this system. We want a RB that will win more fantasy games than lose them, so we want either "Quality" or "Excellent" starts. Using a simple formula of scoring each type of start, we can define the value of a given NFL running back. Here is the formula:
STARTING FANTASY RB VALUE = EXCELLENT STARTS - BAD STARTS
We neglect to look at Quality Starts because they neither win games nor lose them on average - they are just average RB performances. We only really care about how often he helps our team vs. how often he hurts it. Giving a "-1" value to bad starts and "+1" to excellent ones does this for us.
On with the results, sorted by value:
Running Back Excellent Quality Bad Total NetVal
Arian Foster - HOU 13 1 2 16 11
Adrian Peterson - MIN 9 6 1 16 8
Marshawn Lynch - SEA 9 5 2 16 7
Ray Rice - BAL 8 6 2 16 6
Trent Richardson - CLE 8 4 4 16 4
Doug Martin - TBB 6 7 3 16 3
Alfred Morris - WAS 7 5 4 16 3
C.J. Spiller - BUF 5 8 3 16 2
Frank Gore - SFO 7 4 5 16 2
Jamaal Charles - KCC 6 4 6 16 0
Stevan Ridley - NEP 6 4 6 16 0
Matt Forte - CHI 5 5 5 15 0
Darren Sproles - NOS 3 7 3 13 0
LeSean McCoy - PHI 1 10 1 12 0
Knowshon Moreno - DEN 2 3 2 7 0
DeMarco Murray - DAL 2 5 3 10 -1
Chris Johnson - TEN 5 4 7 16 -2
BenJarvus Green-Ellis - CIN 4 6 6 16 -2
Andre Brown - NYG 3 3 5 11 -2
Ahmad Bradshaw - NYG 4 3 7 14 -3
Mikel Leshoure - DET 2 7 5 14 -3
Willis McGahee - DEN 3 2 6 11 -3
Darren McFadden - OAK 1 7 4 12 -3
Michael Turner - ATL 2 8 6 16 -4
Reggie Bush - MIA 2 7 7 16 -5
Shonn Greene - NYJ 3 5 8 16 -5
Fred Jackson - BUF 2 2 7 11 -5
Steven Jackson - STL 1 8 7 16 -6
LaRod Stephens-Howling - ARI 2 1 9 12 -7
DeAngelo Williams - CAR 2 3 10 15 -8
Felix Jones - DAL 2 3 10 15 -8
Marcel Reece - OAK 2 2 10 14 -8
Danny Woodhead - NEP 2 2 11 15 -9
Jonathan Dwyer - PIT 0 3 9 12 -9
Michael Bush - CHI 2 1 11 14 -9
Isaac Redman - PIT 1 2 10 13 -9
Daniel Thomas - MIA 0 4 9 13 -9
Vick Ballard - IND 0 6 10 16 -10
Ryan Mathews - SDC 1 1 11 13 -10
Bilal Powell - NYJ 1 2 11 14 -10
Joique Bell - DET 1 3 12 16 -11
Mark Ingram - NOS 1 3 12 16 -11
Jackie Battle - SDC 2 0 13 15 -11
David Wilson - NYG 1 2 13 16 -12
Pierre Thomas - NOS 0 3 12 15 -12
Bryce Brown - PHI 2 0 14 16 -12
Jacquizz Rodgers - ATL 1 1 14 16 -13
Shaun Draughn - KCC 0 3 13 16 -13
Mike Tolbert - CAR 1 0 15 16 -14
Darius Reynaud - TEN 0 1 15 16 -15
Table 3: 2012 RB Start Types Sorted By Value - Standard Scoring
Much more can be learned by looking at the players in the negative value range. Michael Turner was clearly wearing down as he moved closer to the end of his career. Stevan Ridley was neutral (a net “0”) cracked the Top 12 since his lack of involvement in the passing game does not matter nearly as much in standard scoring.
