Fifth Anniversary Special: Best and Worst RB Games, 95-07

by Aaron Schatz

In honor of our fifth anniversary, we're running a series of articles looking at the best and worst players in the history of our advanced stats, DVOA and DYAR. If you are unfamiliar with our advanced stats -- perhaps you are a new reader visiting our website for the first time after picking up a copy of Pro Football Prospectus 2008 [1] -- you can read all about them here [2]. The series so far:

• Best and Worst Quarterback Games, 1995-2007 [3]
• Best and Worst Quarterback Seasons and Career Totals, 1995-2007 [4]

First up today, the top 20 total DYAR games by running backs since 1995:

There has never been a rushing and receiving combination quite like Marshall Faulk, and he dominates the list of the top running back games, with seven of the top 20. For good measure, he also has the games ranked 24th and 28th. However, Faulk does not have the top game; that belongs to Priest Holmes in a wild 39-32 shootout loss to Seattle back in Week 12 of 2002. (On the other side, Shaun Alexander had a pretty good game too -- 145 yards on 23 carries with two touchdowns and 49 DYAR.)

Just behind Holmes is Corey Dillon, who ran for 246 yards against a Titans defense that ranked third in DVOA against the run back in 1997. The Titans only gave one other 100-yard rushing game all season -- oddly enough, to backup Seattle running back Steve Broussard, who had 138 rushing yards on just six carries in Week 6 (with touchdown runs of 43 and 77 yards). In nine out of 16 games that year, the Titans kept their opponent's leading rusher to 51 or fewer yards.

The always underrated Brian Westbrook shows up twice in the top ten with games from last year; that appearance is no surprise, but Pierre Thomas's appearance certainly is. His Week 17 game against Chicago was a testament to efficiency. Ten of his 20 carries gained six or more yards. Eleven of his 12 receptions gained eight or more yards. Between rushing and receiving, Thomas had 15 first downs and a touchdown, and he would rank even higher if he had not been stuffed twice at the goal line.

So if Thomas is here, where the heck is Adrian Peterson? Peterson's NFL-record rushing performance from Week 9 is worth 98 total DYAR (91.3 rushing, 6.3 receiving), making it the 22nd best game since 1995. As I've noted in the past, Peterson suffers a bit because of a fumble and three carries that lost yardage. Peterson's game still does a lot better in our stats than the game that held the record before 2007, Jamal Lewis's 295-yard day against Cleveland in Week 2 of 2003. That game doesn't even small the top 50, worth only 55 DYAR (59 rushing, -4 receiving). Playing against the run defense ranked 25th in DVOA, Lewis got 193 of his yards on just three runs, and he had ten runs for a yard or less (including a four-yard loss on first-and-goal from the Cleveland two-yard line).

A surprising name leads the list of the worst total DYAR games since 1995:

Going through these games, you can just feel the frustration of running backs running into a brick wall over and over. The highlight of Curtis Martin's day was getting drilled in the backfield for an eight-yard loss and a fumble on second-and-13. That was one of two fumbles and one of six carries that lost yardage, to go with five carries of zero yards, five carries of one yard, and six carries of two yards. Against the same Kansas City defense four weeks earlier, Ricky Watters fumbled three times, with five carries that lost yardage and a minus-seven-yard reception. And boy, did Ricky Williams know how to finish up a season, or what? In the last week of 1999, the Panthers stopped Williams for lost yardage on half his carries, a seven-yard carry was his only run over four yards, and he had no first downs. In the last week of 2001, he had catches for minus-six and minus-seven yards, proving that it may be a good idea to drop the ball whenever Aaron Brooks attempts to dump off to you.

And yes, that is the same Joe Aska who later resurfaced in the XFL.

Now, looking at this list of worst games, you probably are wondering why there aren't any games from the last five years. This exposes a general problem that I will need to fix with the individual stats. As I've noted in the past, he baselines are derived from the past five years, but the offensive environment of the league changes over time. This is particularly true when it comes to the running game; the average running back simply wasn't as effective between 1996 and 2001 compared to between 2002 and 2007. At some point, it makes sense to create "era-adjusted" stats that will translate all players into today's environment, but I want to try to do it in such a way that the translation of "success points" to yardage is still fairly accurate. Overall, it's a future project, and for now we'll run with what we have. In the meantime, here are the five worst running back games since 2003:

Yes, that's correct... the worst running back game since 2003 was the same night as the worst quarterback game since 1995. In case you were wondering how the Bears could win despite Rex Grossman having the worst quarterback game of the DVOA Era, well, now you know. I wrote a special Every Play Counts that year [5] about just how awful the Arizona run blocking was. James is actually worth -79 YAR before opponent adjustments, but of course the 2006 Bears had an excellent defense. Meanwhile, I said it at the start of last season and I'll say it again -- I have no idea how a running back possibly manages to catch only one of seven intended passes. The nice thing about a game from 2007 is that we have game charting. Only one of Jackson's seven passes that day was actually thrown behind the line of scrimmage, and none of them were dropped -- we have them listed as Thrown Behind, Overthrown, Thrown Ahead, Defensed (by Dan Morgan), Bulger hit in motion by Mike Rucker blowing through Adam Goldberg, and Defensed (by Thomas Davis). Of course, just because the passes aren't dropped doesn't mean Jackson doesn't share responsibility for some of the incompletes.

Now let's look at the best and worst games if we isolate just rushing DYAR or receiving DYAR. First, the best rushing days, extended to 12 games to get in Adrian Peterson's record-setting day from last year:

One game here that is particularly interesting is the day Priest Holmes went nuts on the 2001 Chargers. That gets a huge opponent adjustment because San Diego ranked second in run defense DVOA. Holmes's total of 181 yards was 50 percent higher than the total rushing yardage for the entire team combined in the 15 other games against the Chargers defense.

The problem of lower rushing productivity before the turn of the century rears its head on this table too, so I ran another table with the top rushing games from 1995 through 1999:

Can you imagine the roto stampede when backup running back LaShon Johnson, with 101 career rushing yards up to that point, came off the bench to run for 214 yards against New Orleans in early 1996? Johnson had 97 yards on 12 carries the following week... then managed just 319 yards the rest of the season combined.

The list of the least valuable rushing games has a better mix of the 13 years of DVOA:

Clinton Portis's game against San Francisco is the worst 100-yard rushing game of the DVOA Era. 35 carries for 110 yards looks good, right? Then you realize it is barely three yards per carry against the defense that ranked 31st in DVOA against the run. Portis was stopped for zero or lost yardage ten times.

Weird that the bottom three games all came against the same Kansas City defense, which ranked fifth against the run in 1998 and 15th in 1999. 

Here are the best receiving games by running backs since 1995, extended a bit to get a few games in there from the early years.

That Marshall Faulk game against Chicago in 1999 is just ridiculous, with six different receptions for 15 or more yards. Moe Williams gets a high rating for his 2003 game against San Diego because he had four different receptions that converted on third down, including two third-and-long situations.

Finally, the worst receiving days by running backs:

It was fun going through the game charting to figure out how Steven Jackson managed to catch just one of seven passes against Carolina last year, but I really wish we had 2002 game charting so I could figure out just how Edgerrin James managed to catch just two of nine passes from Peyton Manning (?!?!) including three incompletes in the red zone. Oh, and James fumbled away one of the two balls he did manage to catch.

A lot of games end up with negative receiving DYAR because of fumbles -- for example, Michael Bennett's double-fumble day against Chicago last year. When you don't have a lot of opportunities, fumbling once or twice will have a big impact on your rating for the day. Adrian Murrell, however, manages to make this list despite no fumbles and -- even more astounding -- only one incomplete pass. How on earth do you catch nine of ten passes and end up with -35 DYAR? Murrell had three receptions that lost yardage. They all lost at least four yards, and two of them came on fourth down. The one incomplete came on third-and-3. Murrell also had a zero-yard reception on second-and-10 and a three-yard reception on second-and-17.

Next week: The best running back seasons and career totals, and we add all running back DYAR from 1995-2007 to the website.