Bobby Mozitis: I was wondering if you guys could run some similarity scores for Reggie Bush for his first 2 seasons in the league. Just browsing some players, I think Michael Pittman might show up as one of his top comparables for his 2 year stretch.
Interesting question, since Bush is such a unique player. I ran some scores, and you have the right franchise, but the wrong era.
The most comparable player over a two-year stretch, by far, is James Wilder from 1982-1983 [1] (pro-rating his 1982 stats for the strike). Like Bush, Wilder ran about 160 times per season for a little less than four yards per carry, but caught a ton of passes. Of course, we know Bush's future looks nothing like Wilder's future. In 1984, Wilder finally became a feature back, with a ridiculous 407 carries. That isn't going to happen with Bush.
Also on the list:
Billy Taylor, 1979-1980 Giants
James Jones, 1983-1984 Lions
Herman Heard, 1984-1985 Chiefs
Keith Byars, 1986-1987 Eagles
Kevin Jones, 2005-2006 Lions
Anthony Toney, 1987-1988 Eagles
Edgar Bennett, 1993-1994 Packers
One of the interesting things here is that Bush's comparables are almost all guys from 20 years ago. He's a bit of a throwback player, because you just don't see teams giving a lot of carries these days to guys who gain less than four yards per attempt. (One of the items on my to do list is to try to normalize the similarity scores for era, but it doesn't quite work right yet because I have not had time to figure out the way to normalize carries and still get the proper effects of overuse.)
When we look at only one season, the most similar player to Reggie Bush in 2007 is Tiki Barber in 1997. Barber doesn't show up on the two-year list since 1997 was his rookie year.
Links:
[1] http://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/W/WildJa00.htm