re: Remember when Fournette said the NFL was "really easy"

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But the bottom line is they all count. You don't get to not count them to make your argument better.

Unless you feel like taking out every other RB's best runs.

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I could so that, but a quick perusal of the top rushers, indicates that of the top 20 besides Fournette, the longest 3 anywhere near 70 yards (Hunt at 69, Blount at 68, and Hyde at 61) with 3 more rushers with a long in the 50s. 8 of those have more 20+ yard carries than Fournette.

In the top 50, 2 other rushers have a long of 75. And 12 have more 20+ yard carries.

So it's clear that his stats are unique with 2 runs 75 or more yards. I just find that be reproducible with so many carries but so few long carries besides those 2 runs.

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we're also 6 games into the season....

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Yes. But there have been 4777 total rushes thus far or 4647 non-Fournette rushes.

There have been only 4 rushes of 75+ yards, and Fournette has 2 of them (50%), 100 the rate as the rest of the league.

But it drops from a there as he only has 2 of the 18 rushes of 50+ yards (11.1%), 2 of the 25 of rushes of 40+ (8%), 3 of the 47 of the 30+ yards (6.4%), and 3 of the 113 of (2.7%).

Given how rare a 75+ yard rush is, and he has 2 of them, if we would expect that to be indicative of a home run hitter, I would think that he would have more than 1 of his other 128 rushes (2nd most when minus 2 carries and 3rd is 123), to be more than 20 yards.

As it stands, that's a slightly lower percentage than the league average of runs of 20+ yards, he just happens to have 2 extemely long but extemely rare runs.

Taking away the 20+ carries brings the way of the league down to 3.35 YPC from 4.08. Whereas it brings Fournette down to 3.16 from 4.59, almost twice the drop 1.43 YPC compared to 0.73 YPC.

I know this is an LSU message board, so I'm going against have grain, but 2 uniquely long but impressive runs, doesn't somehow negate the fact that he's more likely to get 3 or fewer yards per carry than a YPC of the 130 carries would typically signify.

He had 55 yards on 20 carries after that 75 yd run. Teams are going to load up the box because Bortles sucks so bad. They are going to have to find a QB through FA or the draft. Bortles isn't going to get it done.

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Fournette has always had big play potential. He broke a 70+ yard run in almost every game in 2015.

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By every game I assume you mean 3 of the 11, and 7 games where the longest run was 32 or fewer yards, and 3 games where he was held to a long of 20 yards?

2015 game logs

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Then he breaks though the first level and out runs everyone.

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And that would make sense if all but 3 of his 130 carries were 18 yards or less.

He actually breaks long runs at a rate slightly lower than the rest of the league, he just happens to have 2 extemely long runs, on back carries.

All I'm arguing is that those are unlikely to be reproducible so when all other data points to > 4 YPC, closer to 3 YPC then I think that's what we should expect. And the few long runs he breaks moving forward will maybe push it to league average around 4 YPC, which isn't a bad rookie season all things considered, maybe even a pretty good.

I guess we'll find out, and maybe I'll be shown incorrect, but when the OP "really easy" is apparently acceptable nonsense, well then maybe something counter is necessary.

I wouldn't have even paid any attention if it was just "Leonard Fournette is having a good rookie season."

Also, just the fact that he is 12th in YPC while having wayyyyyyyyy more carries than everyone ahead of him and also leading the league with almost 50% 8 man fronts should be plenty enough to easily validate his yards per carry number.

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Also, just the fact that he is 12th in YPC while having wayyyyyyyyy more carries than everyone ahead of him and also leading the league with almost 50% 8 man fronts should be plenty enough to easily validate his yards per carry number.

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Well it validates his 58.5% of carries of 3 or fewer yards, and his 17% of carries with 0 or negative yards.

In fact, Chris Ivory, his teammate, actually has a greater percentage of carries with 8+ in the box, and 62.5% of his carries are for 3 or fewer yards and only 12.5% of his carries are for 0 or negative yards.

So the results are fairly comparable.

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Well it validates his 58.5% of carries of 3 or fewer yards, and his 17% of carries with 0 or negative yards.

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And it validates is YPC, as I said.

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And it validates is YPC, as I said.

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But all I'm arguing is that his 4.6 YPC, given the data, is skewed significantly. It's normally the expected value, a measure of Central tendency, but in his case, 2 exteme outliers far more than usual.

Statistically, if we were modeling the data for a study, we would usually institute some sort of resampling mechanism (bootstrap, jackknife, etc.), for this very reason. In fact we could do it for all players, to find an expected value and the bias of the expected value of just typical YPC. And Fournette, would like have a greater skew than most players with some minimum number of carries.

That's all I'm saying. I don't have anything against Fournette and think he's done pretty well, but the numbers don't support the OP.

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I have read all your posts. Your argument is basically saying that Leonard's numbers aren't as good as they look because he has longer runs than anyone else.......

You have given no positive statement on the fact he has longer runs than everyone else

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Those longer runs are great, but are you needing some validation of the obvious or something? I thought that was already covered, but here is your validation from me as well.

I'm just saying that I don't think his 4.6 YPC is as valid of an expected value as we would expect from 130 carries, and I expect it to regress closer to 4 YPC, roughly the league average.

If I'm wrong, then you can point it out, and I think he's good enough to make it more likely that I'm wrong than most players. But I still think the data suggest he's closer to league average, at least for this season on this team.