By Max Gross
Published: August 17, 2007 PrintEmail
Stats Behind the Stats: Running to Success?
by Max Gross
What’s in a running game? That which we call success, through any other means, would be as sweet.
The following statistics are not meant to imply that running the ball is not important in the NFL. Though, at times, it may seem to point in that direction, there is an important caveat to these statistics. Running the ball is clearly important to winning in the NFL in terms of controlling the clock, keeping defenses honest, wearing down a defense and other well-known clichés (that happen to ring true).
That being said, there seem to be some misconceptions about the importance of the running game—or more specifically, the quality of the running game—for teams and their quarterbacks. Below, I will take a look at some of last season’s most successful teams in terms of wins and total offense, compared with the performance of their rushing attacks. The results may open some eyes.
Last season, 12 teams made the playoffs and seven of those 12 ranked in the top 10 scoring offenses in the league. Including the other three top-10 offenses, that leaves 15 teams about whom it would be reasonable to say they had successful seasons (at least on offense). Eight of those teams had 10 or more wins. This analysis will focus on the eight 10+ win teams and the 15 "successful" teams.
Of the eight teams with 10 or more wins, only one—yes one—was in the top 10 in rushing yards. Expanding upon that, only four of the total group of 15 earned that distinction. Bear in mind that many teams with more wins have inflated rushing totals due to grinding out the clock late in games with large leads. That makes the dearth of successful teams atop the league’s rushing elite even more surprising. On the other side of the coin, four of the eight teams with 10+ wins finished in the bottom half of the league.
Furthermore, when broken down on a basis of yards per carry, the results are not much different. Only two of the top eight teams finished in the top 10 in yards per carry, while an astounding five out of eight finished 21st or below in that category. Expanding from eight to 15 successful teams found similar results, with only four of the teams finishing in the top ten in yards per carry. Seven of those 15 finished inside the league’s top 15 in that category.
All of these numbers strongly indicate that a low-quality running game does not create a serious detriment to having a top ten scoring offense or a playoff season, and conversely, having success in the running game does not necessarily lead to wins or elite offensive performance.
As promised, though, there is a caveat. As alluded to earlier, the notion that winning teams run the ball frequently is a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario. Does running the ball lead to wins or do big leads lead to running the ball. I’m of the opinion that there is a little bit of both that contributes to the equation. With that question lingering, it’s time to look at those same groups of successful teams in terms of number of rushing attempts.
Four of the top eight teams were in the league’s top 10 in rushing attempts. Meanwhile, 10 of the 15 successful teams were among the league’s top 15 in rushing attempts. On the other end, only three of the 15 teams finished 20th or below in this category, with only one of those teams coming from the 10-win group.
While the quality of the running game seemed to have little correlation to success on offense or in the win column, it appears clear that the frequency of the rushing attempts has a much stronger correlation with success. Again, the cause of the correlation could be mutually beneficial from both sides, but the fact still remains that, when evaluating a team’s chances for success, it matters more that the team is running the ball than it matters how efficient or how productive that rushing attack is.
