Ian Allan

The regular season is over, so now I’m working with one eye on 2010. I will watch the postseason unfold, but I’m also kicking around ideas for next year.

After watching Jerome Harrison and Jamaal Charles in the last month become the only two running backs this year to exceed 250 rushing yards in a game, one area I’m looking at is tracking the value of backup running backs. We all know that some backup running backs will do big things, but how much should we pay for these guys on draft night? How early should one select a Jamaal Charles?

The answer, I think, is largely determined by league format. In all three of the leagues I played in last year, there were guys like Harrison and Charles sitting on the waiver wire for most of the year. So by that definition (which is what the market is bearing), there’s no need to use anything other than a last-round pick on that type of guy unless you’ve got a really good feeling about him.

It’s when you get into the larger type of leagues, where virtually everybody is selected, that it becomes trickier deciding where to slot these types of players.

But I’m just in the early stages of collecting and looking at data. I don’t have any firm recommendations yet.

Consider, for example, 100-yard games. I put all of the 100-yard rushers and receivers, as well as 300-yard passers, into a sortable database and started playing around with the numbers.

There were 111 games last year in which a running back went over 100 yards. Of those 111, six were by guys that weren’t even on the radar – Michael Bush, Arian Foster, Ryan Moats, Jason Snelling, etc. Of the remaining 105, exactly one third (35) came from running backs who were backups on opening day. Guys like Harrison, Charles, Ahmad Bradshaw and Maurice Morris.

Everyone agreed that Willie Parker was Pittsburgh’s best back in August, yet we all also saw that Rashard Mendenhall had some potential/value. Looking at 100-yard games gives one ballpark estimate of that type of potential. Of the 100-yard rushing games in a season (which are the big-time games that we’re all looking for), probably about a third of those will be produced by players who are just backups at the time we’re divvying up the players. So best not to undervalue these guys.

Some additional stats on 100- and 300-yard games:

Of the 111 games with 100-yard rushers, 69 were by players at home; 42 by guys playing on the road. And over twice as many were produced by players on teams that won (76) rather than lost (35). (So all those guys who refuse to change their lineups a definitely missing out on some potential stats by not adjusting their lineups to tilt them in favor of teams playing at home and teams likely to win their games).

There were 98 games with 300-yard passers. Of that group, only 11 were by quarterbacks who didn’t start on opening day: Chad Henne (3), Kevin Kolb (2), Chris Redman, Bruce Gradkowski, Alex Smith, Vince Young, Charlie Frye and Josh Freeman. So for 2009, your odds of landing a later-round gem were greater if you focused on backup running backs rather than backup quarterbacks.

Among 300-yard passers, 57 percent were playing at home, and 62 percent were playing on winning teams. Those numbers were a little higher than what I expected (the home-away and win-lose trends tend to be much stronger for running backs).

For 100-yard receivers, I’m seeing 127 wide receivers, 22 tight ends and 6 running backs. The home-away mix was 83-72 (not very strong). The win-loss ratio closed at 96-59 (so 62 percent of 100-yard receivers played on teams that won their games).

Looking at the backup/starter ratios, it’s also not nearly as strong as at running back. Of the 127 100-yard games by wide receivers, 100 of those were by guys who were starters on opening day (and of the 27 backups, a third of those were off-the-radar guys that you never would have drafted in any fantasy league anyway – Devin Aromashodu, Julian Edelman types).

At running backs, we saw the backups (the No. 2 guys) account for a third of the viable 100-yard games. At wide receiver, we’re seeing just 15 percent (18 of 118).

—Ian Allan

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