Originally posted by dontfeedthenerd
First:
One problem we have is that he has not had enough carries between 11 to 20 to be meaningful. Here are the games he had over 10 carries:
17
16
12
13
15
12
13
14
16
12
17
17
So, he only averaged 4.5 carries in that 11-20 band. We all know that you don't break a big run every time, so you have a few short or no gain carries and then you get a 5, 10 or longer run. (Ok, some may throw out the fact that I should have used the median instead of the average. I am not a statistics guru, so that might be right, but if I did my math right, 4.5 would also be the Median in this case).
Ok, now for my Second point to show how meaningless that YPC is:
The last two games of the season, Tatum rushed 17 times, which ties his career high in rushes that he has had in 3 games.
In week 17 against San Diego, his last seven rushes (rushes 11-17) were:
0
4
5
1
2
0
19
A couple stops, a could small gains, a couple decent gains, and broke a 19 yard TD on his 17th carry of the game.
In week 16 against Oakland, his last seven rushes were:
3
-3
2
2
2
4
3
Ok, other than the one loss, these were ok, but nothing great, but when you consider Dayne's last seven were
2
3
0
2
4
1
4
You see that the numbers are pretty comparable, Dayne is a little higher per carry, but it give you an idea of what the Oak D was giving up. (It should be noted that Dayne only had 8 carries, so these were carries 2-8 for him, no tired excuse here). Ok, but here is the interesting stat:
If you go back one more rush for each runner and look at Dayne's first carry and Bell's tenth:
Dayne 6
Bell 35
So, on Bell's tenth carry he runs for 35, but then poof, there is no more energy? It doesn't make sense, especially when we see the 19 yard TD run on his 17th carry in SD.
The fact is that when he is only averaging 4.5 carries per game in the 11-20 range (not even truely per game, that's only the games where he got over 10), then there just isn't enough data to know how he will run given more carries. In the last two games of the season, we see him break off a 35 yarder on his 10th carry in week 16and in the last game, he breaks off a 19 yard TD run on his 17th carry. That stat has been overused and isn't valid for lack of data.
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