RB Metrics That Matter | Just The Tips

Welcome to the fantasy footballers just the tips. I'm your host today, Andy Holloway. Last week we did an episode on what stats to focus on for the fantasy football wide receivers. We thought it would be valuable to come back on this episode and share about the running back metrics that truly matter. Running back is arguably, I think for a lot of people, the most important position in fantasy football. And if you've been playing for a while, you kind of understand why. We've seen season-defining performances from guys like Jamal Charles or Aryan Foster, which they were playing when we started this podcast 11 years ago. And if you ran into the buzz saw that was CMC or Todd Gurley in years past, you were likely left in shambles as those two broke fantasy football as one-man wrecking crews. Last year was a dominant performance from fantasy running backs like Saquan Barkley, Derek Henry, and Jumeer Gibbs could have helped propel you to a title as well.

Beyond the big names, we want to search for quality running backs that can give us high weekly floors based on projected workloads and potentially break through as newfound RB1s. Depending on your league format, you likely need at least three quality running backs to truly stand out from the other teams in your league. With a ton of leagues starting two flex spots, you've got to have that depth and you need it for the long haul. of an NFL season where injuries are claiming people left and right. What statistics should we be paying attention to for the running back position? Which ones actually matter for fantasy football? And who are some of the undervalued running backs to target in 2025? We're going to try to answer those questions. How many times have you been scrolling through social media and you see someone reference a stat and immediately you say to yourself, dang, I did not know that player was that good or that bad?

Statistics can be deceptive because it can be hard to sort out what is news and what is just noise. There are a couple of ways to approach this, but simply put, we are interested in what matters for running back fantasy points produced on your roster. That is all of our goal. There are so many advanced statistics out there that it can be confusing to sort through all of them and know what half of them are even meaning or detailing. Jason emphasized this in the wide receiver metrics that matter episode. But it bears repeating. Statistics can be descriptive. Here is what happened. But not necessarily prescriptive. Here is what will happen. Sometimes there is crossover, but all too often we assume that a stat is shared because it must mean something moving forward. We see it on social. People share it. It must mean something moving forward. But football is a chaotic game. You have 22 players on the field interacting with different schemes.

and running complicated design plays with different play callers every year, and we need to temper our tendency to use singular statistics to justify our fantasy decisions when this is such a complex sport with so much going on at once. We looked at the last five years of running back data across the NFL regular season to try to figure out what is truly a sticky staff. Keep in mind that the NFL evolves over time. The offensive schemes change, the talent pools ebb and flow, For example, last year's rookie running back class became the very first class over the last 15 years to not supply us with a top 24 or rather two top 24 running backs. Now, we know Bucky Irving was amazing and Tyrone Tracy had his moments, but the rest of the bunch just wasn't that good. Beyond player takes, we are interested in what is sticky. What stats matter? Sticky stats are statistics that replicate themselves over time. Non-sticky stats are essentially telling us that previous performances

are less impactful when predicting the future performance. First off, we need to say that rushing statistics pale in comparison to receiving statistics when it comes to year-over-year correlation. In other words, most of them are just not as strong in predicting future fantasy football success. The team environment and offensive line, they contribute a ton to success of individual running backs. But the actual correlation of metrics are much more volatile than maybe even we'd like to admit. For example, a running back like Josh Jacobs looked like a true shell of himself metrics-wise the final year with the Raiders. But he arrives in Green Bay and he exploded. He was great. So let's start with what is often more noisy. What are a few running back statistics useful in describing what we see on film, but not necessarily helpful in predicting?

fantasy points for running backs. Force, missed, tackle, rate. You hear this one all the time. This stat simply divides the number of missed tackles by rushing attempts to give you a percentage showing how elusive or strong a running back might be. Guys like Kenneth Walker the third last year showed out in this metric. But it also might describe the situation that they were in constantly behind a porous offensive line, which was his situation. He did a lot with a little, but elite forced miss tackle rate confirms his running style rather than predicting his future fantasy success. Guys like Derek Henry can also have a high rate because, well, let's be honest, if you watch the games, no one wants to tackle that guy. But we should not be using that statistic in particular, in isolation, over other ones that are truly better at predicting fantasy success.

Another one that is more noise than news is explosive rush rate. Who does not love a huge play where you're running back burst through to the next level of the defense for one of those back breaking 15 plus yard runs? They're awesome. And you have players like Jamir Gibbs that seem like they were born to do that and dominate fantasy football just because he's so great in that stat. Unfortunately, the reality is that stat, it's such a small sample size to work with. Only 4% of all rush attempts in general hit that mark in 2025. 15 plus yard runs just don't happen that frequently. And that means that they're stickiness year over year. It's just not good. We obviously welcome any and all big plays. We want the big runs. We love them. Sayquan last year. It was awesome. But sitting on a running back's explosive rush rate as the sole reason for drafting them for their fantasy goodness, that would be a fool's errand. And we saw that with even A. Chan in his rookie season.

In fact, the rate of five plus yard runs is much more, in fact, two times more predictive than the 15 yard run rate. Not only do you get a bigger sample size to work with, but consistently getting five plus yard runs on carries is how NFL drives are actually sustained. One more noisy stat that kills us to bring up, and we talk about it all the time, it's that rushing touchdown rate. Yes, we reference regression a lot like... He did this in 2024, so he won't do this in 2025. But as a caution that touchdowns just in general, they're frustrating, and the math that just doesn't lie on this, a running back's touchdown rate, which is simply the percentage of attempts that turn into touchdowns, actually carries a negative correlation coefficient for next season's fantasy points. It is so hard to maintain those rates year over year. This is why you saw Rahim Moster two years ago, that insane 8.6 touchdown rate, or even Gus Edwards in 2003.

was at 6.5%. Those are screaming red flags. And that is why James Cook wants to get paid, finally got paid, coming off a 16 touchdown season. That is really, really hard to repeat and be predictive. We need touchdowns for fantasy, and yet relying on a touchdown rate as a metric for predictive analysis is not what we would recommend. Projecting touchdowns in the ultimate draft kit is one of our toughest tasks. We go through and we project every player in the UDK, and that's one of the toughest things to do because the variance is so big. All right, so we're going to stop with the poo-pooing of metrics that are not sticky and predictive, and we're going to talk about what to pay attention to and some players. So what should we pay attention to? All right, I'm going to blow your mind. It's opportunities. Opportunities have the highest correlation year-over-year in fantasy simply by us acknowledging how involved a player will be and what percent of the offense they get. Yes, the same fantasy football that we talked about when this podcast began still holds up for predictive analysis.

Counting up how many rush attempts and targets is a go-to. It's our go-to on the show because it not only is explainable and easy for the listeners to understand, but it's actually predictive. It might not sound as cool as one of those tweets, but it's predictive. We've preached how a target is more than two times as valuable than a rush attempt on the show. But something we honestly don't bring up enough is a metric on every running back's player profile on the website. And that's called the work percentage or the workhorse stat. We cannot predict usage fully every year. We do our best. But it's important to note that the majority of RB-1s historically, they need to see upwards of a 30% number of the team's total rush attempts and targets. So that 30% number is important. Anyone seeing close to 40%? That's a different stratosphere. That's basically two players and one on the field. We talk all the time about...

targets and how they are earned. They show the skill of a player. The type of target a running back sees is even more indicative. Is it a screen? Is it a checkdown? Is it a downfield target for that running back? However, the most predictive type of a target for a running back isn't necessarily where it occurs on the field, but how it occurs. And so this is something very interesting to pay attention to. A checkdown target certainly can add valuable PPR points, right? The checkdowns, we like them. They boost your score. But it is less predictable and less valuable while considering the fact that, you know, even quarterbacks changing year to year, checkdown rates, they change year to year. On the other end of the spectrum, what is the most valuable? A first read target. It shows us the offense's intent on utilizing a running back in the passing game as a primary part of the play. Not just this last resort.

dump off, which is less predictive. Fantasy points is a site that tracks this statistic, and we sometimes use it to further illustrate how a play caller utilizes a pass catcher. Last year, on average, a checkdown target to the running back position was worth just over one fantasy point, while a first read target was worth 1.5 fantasy points. Anything above 6% is a pretty healthy number for a running back if you're looking at the first read target share. And the elites for first read target share, they see 8% or more. This stat can amplify target share and allow us to see how meaningful targets emerge for running backs at the running back position. Okay, so we know workload matters, right? That's a meaningful statistic. Targets matter. Well, what about touchdowns? That is the golden goose of fantasy football. And if you're telling me to not use touchdown rate, then, well, what do we pay attention to? What am I telling you to pay attention to? And this is important.

Red zone work. Red zone work is essential, considering 75 plus percent of all touchdowns are scored there in the NFL, right? You got the big plays, but 75 percent are scored in the red zone. We know that the carries inside the five are actually the most valuable carry for running backs. So how often is that running back counted on by the coach inside the five yard line? That is arguably one of the most important running back metrics that you could hold on to. Your buddy might have scoffed at you when you drafted Derek Henry and that pick last year, claiming he's old and changing teams. But he saw a league leading 91% of the teams carries inside the five. Proving that sometimes bigger does matter. Cream Hunt, it was 85% believe it or not in Kansas City's carries inside the five last year during the 13 games he played. So even older veterans can make noise and fantasy if they're seeing an insane share of the five zone target.

or five zone touches rather for kareem hunt to make that list it's impressive now that you know what matters for running backs here are a couple of undervalued guys this is what you're paying attention to worth targeting in your drafts using the value scout tool in the udk so here we go kairn williams despite being the rb6 and back-to-back seasons he's not being drafted anywhere close to that in 2025 and since bursting onto the scene in 2023 He has done everything asked of him with 31 total touchdowns in his last 28 games played. Only Jemir Gibbs can match that number. Kyron led the NFL in Red Zone touches and rushing touchdowns inside the five last year as the plan A for the Rams when they got close. We know Matthew Staver is not going to be sneaking them in. While some might cite his terrible explosive rush rate, right, that popular kind of noisy statistic, maybe they talk about the stiff arm.

And that would be great. But his carries inside the five were super, super valuable for fantasy football. And it was predictive. You saw the consistency year over year. What he lacks in pure explosiveness, he makes up for in raw volume and the type of touches that translate for fantasy. Alvin Camara, he saw a league leading 20% target share for the running back position. But to go even further, he saw nearly 16% of the Saints first read targets, those valuable targets that are worth a lot more than the checkdown. That percentage was slightly below what wide receivers Jalen Waddle and Roma Dunesay saw as wide receiver twos for their team. And according to our value scout tool, he is still criminally undervalued in 2025 drafts. One more name for you, James Connor, and maybe this is an every year thing. The always undervalued Connor saw 33% of the Cardinals total rush attempts and targets on the season, above that 30% number.

including a few games in the middle of the year where he saw over 40%. He is locked in as the goal line back in Arizona and seems to be the engine of the offense, according to offensive coordinator Drew Petsing. Oh, and in case you were wondering, he was also among the leaders in forced miss tackle rate, if you care about that now. When the season starts, be ready for the onslaught of running back statistics like explosive rush rate. and zone scheme success rate and all these other metrics you're going to see all over social media they certainly have their place in our fantasy football discussions but at the running back position our recommendation keep it simple opportunities inside the five carries and how involved they are in the passing game especially those first read targets those are the easiest to digest and the easiest to project moving forward so thanks for watching this episode if you want access to all

of the fantasy footballers draft information you can check out the ultimate draft kit and let us help you dominate your draft we'll see you next time