Many say you need longevity to make the Hall of Fame. Of the 72 backs with over 1000 carries since 2000, Jamaal is one of just three backs (the other being Marshall Faulk, a current Hall of Famer, and Priest Holmes) who were able to make running the ball efficient for their teams. Let’s look at the total EPA Charles added to his teams throughout his career - as compared to other top backs. So he’s one of - if not the - most prolific rusher of the past 20 years.īut is efficiency (production per carry) all that matters for the Hall of Fame? Longevity has to play a role too, right? Otherwise, how can we say Charles is any better than a back like Alvin Kamara? Over the past 20 years, there has not been a single back who has even sniffed his huge yards per carry - and even when contextualizing those yards by down and distance (EPA) he beats all but the Chiefs own Priest Holmes. We see that Charles is much more of an outlier when we look only at backs who have large sample sizes. If we restrict our sample to the 72 running backs with over 1000 carries since 2000, how does he stack up? Peak performance is one thing, but how a player sustains that performance over many seasons is another. This graph is an absolute mess (there are 240 running backs here), but the takeaway is clear: whether you look at yards per carry or contextualize those yards by down and distance, Charles was elite during his career.īut it might be a bit unfair to compare Charles to players like Aaron Jones, or Gus Edwards, who only had a few seasons in the league notice Charles’ much larger bubble, which corresponds to how many carries he had. If you’re unfamiliar with EPA, please read here. This lets us see a player’s contributions on a per-play basis - using both the traditional measure of yards per carry and one that allows us to better contextualize how those yards improved the team’s chances of scoring. We’ll start with a pretty standard plot: Yards per carry (X-axis) and EPA per carry (Y-axis). That certainly matches my perception of Charles’ career, but let’s see if the numbers back that up. The dictionary definition of an outlier is a person or thing differing from all other members of a particular group or set. Jamaal Charles - the outlier of all outliers The full code for this analysis may be found here. Note: All of data for this analysis was pulled from NFL play-by-play data through the publicly available R package nflfastR, and analyzed in the Python programming language. But in this article, I’m going to stick to the numbers, doing my best to put them in the proper context. In the past, plenty have done that for Charles. Recently-developed advanced metrics like Expected Points Added (EPA) are certainly superior to traditional box score stats - but if you want a real look at the greatness of a player, you need to turn to the film. So in this article, I’m going to do just that.ĭisclaimer: Stats are in no way the end all be all of a player’s skill. But I have yet to hone in on a player I consider to be one of the greatest running backs of all time. While I’ve been at AP, I’ve analyzed many aspects of the performance of the Chiefs and their players. Specifically, a player like Charles is a polar opposite to a player like running back Frank Gore, whom many now claim deserves a spot in the Hall of Fame because of his long tenure as a solid running back. He is being used in the national media as one extreme of the duality of greatness: longevity vs.The other three - Charles, Derrick Johnson and Patrick Mahomes - aren’t even eligible yet. Of the top nine, six are enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. In fact, by his inclusion in these lists, he is currently ranked as the seventh best Chief of all time. Arrowhead Pride writers have often been including him in our lists of the top five Chiefs of all time.And no, it isn’t because he’s said he wants to make a comeback. Lately, former Kansas City Chiefs running back Jamaal Charles has been making a lot of Arrowheadlines - if you’ll pardon the obvious pun.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |