Let's Look At Some Big Ten Running Back Stats Comment Count

Brian

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Chris Evans acquiring highlight yards [Bryan Fuller]

Football Study Hall published an array of stats on running backs nationwide, so let's drill a little bit deeper to see what they might tell us about the state of Big Ten running games in 2017. There are a ton of caveats involving offensive lines and sample sizes, so let's just take those as read. These are rough metrics.

Bill Connelly has two main RB-related stats above and beyond plain old YPC: "opportunity rate," which is the number of rushes that get you five yards and presumably allow you to flash your skills instead of grind into the line, and "highlight yards per opportunity," which is the number of yards you gain after the 5 yard benchmark is cleared. Here are a couple tables of these stats for returning Big Ten players with at least 40 rushes to their name. There are 28 of these gents in the league. I left in De'Veon Smith for comparison's sake. Also I did not realize that Ke'Shawn Vaughn had transferred to Vandy, so ignore him.

First, opportunity rate:

RK Player Offense OppRate
1 John Moten IV Northwestern 50.9%
2 Chris Evans Michigan 47.2%
3 Ty Johnson Maryland 45.5%
4 Lorenzo Harrison Maryland 45.5%
5 Brian Lankford-Johnson Purdue 43.8%
6 Akrum Wadley Iowa 43.5%
7 Bradrick Shaw Wisconsin 43.2%
8 Ty Isaac Michigan 43.2%
9 Karan Higdon Michigan 43.1%
10 Mike Weber Ohio State 42.9%
11 Devine Ozigbo Nebraska 41.2%
12 LJ Scott Michigan State 40.8%
13 Demario McCall Ohio State 40.8%
14 Reggie Corbin Illinois 40.7%
15 Rodney Smith Minnesota 38.8%
16 Robert Martin Rutgers 38.8%
17 Kendrick Foster Illinois 37.3%
18 Devine Redding Indiana 35.8%
19 Markell Jones Purdue 35.7%
20 Shannon Brooks Minnesota 35.5%
21 Saquon Barkley Penn State 35.3%
22 Josh Hicks Rutgers 33.3%
23 De'Veon Smith Michigan 33.1%
24 Gerald Holmes Michigan State 33.0%
25 Justin Jackson Northwestern 32.2%
26 Tre Bryant Nebraska 31.8%
27 Devonte Williams Indiana 31.3%
28 Ke'Shawn Vaughn Illinois 26.7%
29 Tyler Natee Indiana 26.2%

This is not entirely fair to Smith because his heavy usage means he was light on carries against the Rutgerses of the world. There's a distinct tendency towards workhorses at the bottom of this list: Devine Redding, Saquon Barkley, and Justin Jackson got more touches than anyone else in the league and they're 18, 21, and 25 here.

Highlight yards:

RK Player Offense Hlt/Opp
1 Ty Johnson Maryland 12.39
2 Ke'Shawn Vaughn Illinois 10.33
3 Saquon Barkley Penn State 8.24
4 Lorenzo Harrison Maryland 8.17
5 Brian Lankford-Johnson Purdue 7.46
6 Kendrick Foster Illinois 7.29
7 Reggie Corbin Illinois 7.25
8 Chris Evans Michigan 7.11
9 Justin Jackson Northwestern 7.03
10 Akrum Wadley Iowa 6.31
11 Gerald Holmes Michigan State 6.31
12 Karan Higdon Michigan 6.2
13 Mike Weber Ohio State 5.59
14 De'Veon Smith Michigan 5.54
15 LJ Scott Michigan State 5.3
16 Bradrick Shaw Wisconsin 4.98
17 John Moten IV Northwestern 4.87
18 Robert Martin Rutgers 4.79
19 Ty Isaac Michigan 4.68
20 Rodney Smith Minnesota 4.56
21 Devine Redding Indiana 4.42
22 Shannon Brooks Minnesota 4.41
23 Demario McCall Ohio State 4.18
24 Tyler Natee Indiana 3.6
25 Tre Bryant Nebraska 3.24
26 Devonte Williams Indiana 3.21
27 Markell Jones Purdue 3.02
28 Josh Hicks Rutgers 2.88
29 Devine Ozigbo Nebraska 2.81

It should be noted that Ke'Shawn Vaughn and Lankford-Johnson are working with very small sample sizes here. That's about 16 Vaughn attempts and 20 Lankford-Johnson attempts.

This is more evidence in Chris Evans's favor here: he, Isaac, and Higdon all got about the same ratio of legit carries to second-half-against-Rutgers carries, and Evans grades out better in both metrics than his other competitors. Isaac is well behind Smith in highlight yards, which is a bad place to be when you're competing with two guys significantly above him. Evans's combination of many successful runs and not-quite top-tier explosiveness is highly encouraging. Multiply these two items together to get a "highlight yards per run" (as opposed to opportunity) and he's third in the league behind only the two little Maryland lightning bolts. This metric is essentially a measure of your ability to get chunk runs, and the high rankings of Barkley and Akrum Wadley are a good sanity check for the measure:

Player Offense Hlt/Att
1 Ty Johnson Maryland 5.6
2 Lorenzo Harrison Maryland 3.7
3 Chris Evans Michigan 3.4
4 Brian Lankford-Johnson Purdue 3.3
5 Reggie Corbin Illinois 3.0
6 Saquon Barkley Penn State 2.9
7 Ke'Shawn Vaughn Illinois 2.8
8 Akrum Wadley Iowa 2.7
9 Kendrick Foster Illinois 2.7
10 Karan Higdon Michigan 2.7
11 John Moten IV Northwestern 2.5
12 Mike Weber Ohio State 2.4
13 Justin Jackson Northwestern 2.3
14 LJ Scott Michigan State 2.2
15 Bradrick Shaw Wisconsin 2.2
16 Gerald Holmes Michigan State 2.1
17 Ty Isaac Michigan 2.0
18 Robert Martin Rutgers 1.9
19 De'Veon Smith Michigan 1.8
20 Rodney Smith Minnesota 1.8
21 Demario McCall Ohio State 1.7
22 Devine Redding Indiana 1.6
23 Shannon Brooks Minnesota 1.6
24 Devine Ozigbo Nebraska 1.2
25 Markell Jones Purdue 1.1
26 Tre Bryant Nebraska 1.0
27 Devonte Williams Indiana 1.0
28 Josh Hicks Rutgers 1.0
29 Tyler Natee Indiana 0.9

Takeaways: Maryland's running game is majorly underrated because they split carries so heavily, OSU is going to miss Curtis Samuel immensely unless Damario McCall steps up big (survey says: he probably will), and we should be optimistic about Chris Evans and Karan Higdon going into 2017. Also, Justin Jackson is back?! How many PhDs they gonna give that guy before his eligibility expires?

Comments

Seth

April 27th, 2017 at 2:29 PM ^

The Terp numbers have to do with those backs being good, and also a lot to do with the nature of Maryland's offense. They spread 3 or 4 receivers (usually 4) WAAAAAAY outside where the only possible passing game is a WR screen.

So they're consistently running into 5-man boxes, 6 at most. It's basically selling out everything for the run game, which gets their backs some mondo opportunities in space whenever they can crack the front, but gives the offense a definite ceiling. It was a great idea given Ty Johnson is a bitch to cover in open space (Lorenzo Harrison is Ty Johnson lite) since passing downfield was just an invitation to Perry Hills and PIGGY(!!!) to throw 30 interceptions a season again.

They also used a lot of Ohio State-like power option tricks to make those cracks:

That's 10-15 extra chunk yards because most of the secondary had to line up a mile away from the play.

DualThreat

April 27th, 2017 at 2:43 PM ^

and running backs in the same sentence, I immediately think of Poor Damn Toussaint.

I look forward to the days ahead when I do not think that.

Steves_Wolverines

April 27th, 2017 at 3:30 PM ^

Justin Jackson is a beast, and he's really the #1 reason why I'm picking NW to win the B1G West this season. They return everyone minus Austin Carr and a couple stud D-line dudes.

Michigan4Life

April 27th, 2017 at 5:43 PM ^

has to be Saquon Barkley who is a potential 1st round pick and Akrum Wadley.  Both are big plays waiting to happen.  I wonder if Kirk Ferentz wised up and give the majority of the workload on Wadley.

Justin Jackson is Just a Guy to me. Nothing too special and is a by product of volume stat padding that makes him look better than he appears to be.

adammilliman

April 28th, 2017 at 8:47 AM ^

Let's be honest.  This entire post was done so you could highlight how Higdon is better than Weber, but then you tried to throw us off by never mentioning it in your article...You sly little devils!

JamieH

April 28th, 2017 at 10:10 AM ^

Both Evans and Higdone have been impressive with their ability to find holds and make big plays, which is something we seem to have been lacking for a long time at RB.  I don't know how much of that has been poor blocking.