Corbin Young uses the Advanced Stat Explorer, NFL Stat Explorer, and Stealing Signals tool to examine the running back advanced stats.
After noting two North Carolina running backs popped in the running back advanced stats, Michael Carter exploded on Sunday against the Bengals as the No. 1 ranked running back heading into Monday night. With two weeks of data in Carter’s favor, we’ll look at what the advanced stats indicate. Could Carter be a league winner for the rest of the season?
Unfortunately, Derrick Henry suffered a foot injury that removed one of the top backs in the game. Outside of the elite opportunity, Henry boasted 3.1 YAC and the second-most percentage of YAC at 72%. There’s no replacing Henry, but we have some buy low or buy high running backs. Make sure to check out Sam Wallace’s weekly waiver piece with some backs to acquire.
Metrics like yards before and after contact, evasion rate, stuff rate, and designed gap rate tell you a lot about how an RB is using his blockers, how effective that blocking is, and how effective that RB is at making would-be tacklers miss — all skills that translate into future production. In this way, the advanced RB stats can help us find waiver wire gems and trade targets before the rest of our league mates.
