Draft grades can be funny things.
Looking at each team’s roster of selections immediately after the draft ends is a common – yet perhaps overvalued – way of assessing how each organization fared in the draft. In almost every single case, the passage of time is going to illuminate how each team executed their draft plan. Revisiting the selections a year or two down the road to get a better picture of how each team performed in the draft is probably a better exercise.
But that does not stop us from trying in the moment.
A team that was given high marks in most quarters for how they fared this draft season is the Baltimore Ravens. Eric DeCosta worked his draft board the way he wanted to, and saw linebacker Patrick Queen fall to him at the end of the first round. Then on Day Two of the draft they added five more players, including defensive tackle Justin Madubuike, wide receiver Devin Duvernay, linebacker Malik Harrison, and offensive tackle Tyre Phillips, all in the third round. They also added running back J.K. Dobbins in the second round, at the 55th selection overall. For many, that Day Two haul – coupled with the selection of Queen on the first night – made this draft a smashing success.
But there were also doubters, and they had their reasons. The Ravens are known as one of the league’s more analytically-minded teams. Daniel Stern, a behavioral economics major in college, sits right next to offensive coordinator Greg Roman in the booth on game days. Stern’s job? To provide a reasoned decision-making process on fourth down decisions. As a result of his influence, the Ravens are one of the league’s most aggressive teams on fourth down, and the results speak for themselves. The Ravens have also built out a strong analytics department, and general manager Eric DeCosta relies on the department to make the team better. “Analytics is a way that I see of organizing information,” DeCosta said. “We have all these different pieces of information – bullet points and different things. How do we organize that information effectively? And, how do we use that information to help us make decisions? So, is it a growing field? Yeah, I think it is. Is it something that we’ll just rely on strictly, ever? No, I don’t think that’s the case. Is it something that will help us make decisions? I think it can be. We would be foolish as an organization to not look at that and consider that as a way of helping us be better.”
But the selection of Dobbins flies in the face of much of the evidence put forth from the analytics world about the running back position, which has led to some questioning the Ravens’ draft – and their strategy – overall. So let us wade into the debate a bit, looking at it from both sides of the ledger.
The Case for Positional Value
The main crux of the argument against the Dobbins selection is rooted in the idea of positional value. Proponents of this position argue that in today’s NFL, where passing is king, a different position at that point in the draft (second round, 55th pick overall) would provide more of a benefit to a team than selecting a running back. Selecting a running back at this point is a poor expenditure of the draft capital, when compared with what the return on a wide receiver or even an offensive lineman might bring. Proponents of this position have a ton of evidence to back them up.
Now, the ideas behind this general position have often been boiled down to a simple argument: “Running backs don’t matter.” That has become almost a bumper sticker, political slogan of an idea that obviously has more behind it than just those four words. But as President Josiah Bartlett told us once, life is more complicated than ten – or in this case four – word answers. The main crux of this idea is that in the modern NFL, the passing game is more critical to an offense’s success than the running game, and there is data to back this up. For example, in this meaty piece from Josh Hermsmeyer at FiveThirtyEight.com, the author made the case that for a passing league, the NFL is still not passing enough. Hermsmeyer studied first down situations, which he termed the “most traditional run situation.” As he phrased it, “[i]t’s here where NFL coaches are consistently missing an opportunity to pass, particularly against defense that have stacked the box or are playing at least seven defenders close to the line of scrimmage.” Hermsmeyer called these situations “FANS,” or “First (down) Against Neutral or Stacked (boxes.)”
What did he find?
With seven to nine men near the line of scrimmage and the subsequent dearth of extra defenders in the secondary, we’d expect passing to be effective in these situations. That’s just what we found. Last season, 30 of 32 teams were more successful passing than running on FANS as measured by success rate.2 And passing wasn’t just a little more successful than running. The difference in passing success was large: 27 teams had a success rate that was at least 10 percentage points higher when passing on FANS than running; 14 teams were more than 20 points better. The league average difference of 19.3 leaned wildly toward passing.
Hermsmeyer also looked at Expected Points Added per Play (EPA/P) on these situations. Specifically, he examined NFL teams’ EPA/P and success rate when running vs. dropping back for a pass on first and 10 facing seven to nine men in the box, 2017. What did he find? Only three teams had a positive EPA/P when running in this situation. The New Orleans Saints, the Green Bay Packers, and the New England Patriots. How successful were they? In terms of EPA/P, the Saints added a whopping +0.03, the Packers a stout +0.02, and the Patriots a league-high number of +0.04.
But throwing the football? Only six teams saw a negative EPA/P when throwing the football in this situation. Every other team was positive, with some teams adding as much as +0.37 (Tampa Bay and Atlanta) or even the Los Angeles Chargers, who added an EPA/P of +0.60 when throwing the football in this situation.
The whole point of the game is to score more points than your opponent, and through the lens of EPA/P we know that the passing game adds more value than the running game. Hermsmeyer’s study is not alone in this regard.
Now the genesis of the “running backs don’t matter” argument can be traced, in all likelihood, to the unlikely MVP candidacy of Todd Gurley back in the 2018-2019 season. When the Los Angeles Rams were taking the football world by storm, and everyone was enthralled by the wizardry of Sean McVay, the running back became a common name associated with a potential MVP selection.
But people much smarter than me started to point out that his success rushing the football was due more to factors outside of what he brought to the table, and not his particular skillset as a running back. For example, it was pointed out that the Rams were a heavy 11 personnel team, and back in that season the Rams used that package 70% of the time, or on 586 of their offensive snaps, according to SharpFootballStats.com. More critical to this analysis is the fact that the Rams ran the football mor than they threw the football out of their 11 personnel package. In fact, they ran it 58% of the time when lined up with three wide receivers, above the league average of 46%. That meant Gurley was going up against lighter boxes for the most part, making his job easier.
In addition, it was also pointed out that by putting the defense in a light box, the offensive linemen were put in an advantageous situation. That gave the guys up front some good blocking angles to execute and some lighter personnel packages to beat up. This led to the overall point: Gurley’s success is due more to the impact of forces around him, such as offensive scheme, defensive personnel, and offensive line execution. Other running backs would be just as, or at least almost as, effective in this situation.
This fact was crystallized when Gurley suffered a knee injury down the stretch, limiting his effectiveness. In his place stepped journeyman running back C.J. Anderson. Now, nobody would call Anderson a generational talent – as Gurley was often described – but thanks to EPA/P we know that if that tag was going to be placed on someone in the Rams’ backfield, it was not Gurley. As Steven Ruiz wrote in a piece for For The Win:
The numbers back this up, too. We’re obviously dealing with a smaller sample size here, but Anderson was a far more efficient runner than Gurley was in 2018. On Anderson runs, the Rams averaged 0.31 Expected Points Added, according to Sports Info Solutions. On Gurley’s runs, the average dropped to 0.12. That was barely higher than the average for Malcolm Brown runs (0.10). In fact, Brown finished ahead of Gurley in percentage of run attempts that ended with a positive EPA — 60% to 53%. Anderson led the group with 76% of his handoffs resulting in a positive EPA. If traditional stats are more your speed, Gurley and Brown both finished the season averaging 4.9 yards per carry while Anderson averaged 7.0.
Ruiz encapsulated the argument as follows: “In other words, the Rams’ run game was effective no matter who had the ball in their hands. Behind that line and with that coach calling plays, a highly-paid running back is more of a luxury than a necessity. In a league with a hard salary cap, teams can’t afford luxuries.”
So while the bumper sticker, political slogan argument is drilled down to “running backs don’t matter,” the true position reads more as follows: Yes, running backs matter, but there are bigger factors at work that can lead to the success of a running back on a play-to-play basis, such as offensive line, defensive personnel, down-and-distance, game situation, and more. As such, the wise expenditure of either salary cap resources or draft capital would be in positions other than running back, if you want to bolster your ground game. But remember the overall picture here, passing is still king, so perhaps an even wiser investment would be in the passing game.”
But that does not fit on a bumper sticker — or in a tweet — so here we are.
Now that leads us to the Dobbins selection. Given what we know about the game right now, and given the value of the passing game juxtaposed with the value of the running game, is a second-round pick at the running back position a wise investment? After all, if passing is still the best way to achieve the ultimate goal of scoring points, wouldn’t a smarter investment be a receiver, or someone who can aid the passing game? Even if you want to still run the football, as we have seen there are other ways to aid your ground game besides using cap space or draft capital on a RB. The Ravens, after all, need to replace a retiring Marshal Yanda. If they wanted to help their ground game, they could have selected someone like Damien Lewis or Jonah Jackson, some highly-regarded guards who were available at that spot.
Furthermore, let’s look at it this way. Last year, the Tennessee Titans made a run to the AFC Championship Game, and their ground attack led by Derrick Henry was viewed as a huge reason for their success. But in terms of EPA/P at least, their passing game was usually more valuable. Ben Baldwin, who covers the league for The Athletic – Seattle, has created a box score tool at his website rbsdm.com (yes, short for running backs don’t matter) that allows us to look at EPA/P on a per game basis. Take Tennessee’s Week 17 victory that clinched a playoff berth for them. Henry had 32 carries for 211 yards and three touchdowns. Ryan Tannehill completed 13 of 20 passes for 198 yards and two touchdowns. Henry’s rushing attempts had an EPA/P of 0.31 per attempt. Tannehill’s dropbacks? They had an EPA/P of 0.78. MyCole Pruitt had two receptions for 13 yards, and that accounted for an EPA/P of 0.97 per target. A.J. Brown, who had four receptions on eight targets for 124 yards and a touchdown added an EPA/P of 0.70, more than double Henry’s output in the game.
The point? Even a great ground game might not contribute as much on an EPA/P basis as an average passing game. So when you factor that into the equation, it is one more arrow in the quiver against adding a running back. In fact, when you got to the playoffs, look at this. Tennessee upset the New England Patriots on Wild Card Weekend. Tannehill completed 8 of 15 passes for 72 yards, one touchdown and one interception. Henry carried the ball 34 times for 182 yards and a touchdown. And yet?
In Ryan Tannehill's horrible game, he added +2.7 Expected Points on 21 plays (0.13 EPA/play)
While carrying the Titans to victory, Derrick Henry added +2.6 Expected Points on 35 rush attempts (0.07 EPA/play)
— Ben Baldwin (@benbbaldwin) January 5, 2020
Now, maybe there is an argument to be made against EPA/P, but that is best left for another time. For now, there is a big body of evidence to be made that in terms of value, the passing game offers more than the running game. Furthermore, individual running back success is often predicated more on the factors outside of the individual player, so in the second round, even if you want to help the ground game, you can invest that draft capital elsewhere.