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Myths and Realities of Aging and Wearing Running Backs - Summary

Draft Recommendation: Be extremely careful with running backs over 32 years old or who have over 3,000 career touches. The ones with over 2,250 career touches require more studying but can be good picks.

Over the past few seasons there have been a number of articles written about aging and wearing running backs. We used to hear that the age where a running back would drop was 31 but more recently we have also heard 30 and sometimes even 28. Many are also suggesting that Clinton Portis will decline this season because he has reached 2,000 carries in his career. I decided to test out all these theories to find out once and for all, when do running backs really decline?

The first step was to look at the chances of running backs suffering injuries or not seeing the ball as much as they get older. Based on our analysis we determined that running backs are slightly more at risk when they reach the age of 28 and become a huge risk when they reach the age of 33. As for a decrease in performance, the only significant drop comes at age 32, not 30 as many would lead you to believe.

We often hear that running backs start struggling after a certain number of touches in their career and are more at risk because they have more wear. Based on our data, running backs that have more career touches are as likely to continue receiving 200 touches in a season as those with less wear.

The most interesting data however is when we look at the performance for running backs based on their number of career touches. As expected, there is a large drop when running backs reach 3,000 career touches (the exception was Curtis Martin) but there is also a drop when running backs reach 2,250 touches.

Here is a chart which shows the percentage change in fantasy points by number of career touches:

As you can see, running backs that start a season with more than 2,250 career touches generally see a performance drop. The difference with running backs that had between 1,500 and 2,249 touches is about 10% which is quite interesting but we need to be able to understand why this drop happened.

When we look at more specific statistics, we notice that running backs with more career touches drop for two main reasons: fewer touchdowns and fewer receptions. This means that when you analyze a running back with more than 2,250 career touches, you need to ask yourself whether or not his team might be looking to take receptions or goal line carries away from him in the upcoming season.

Three running backs had over 200 touches last year and are now over 2,250 career touches:
Ricky Williams – 2,468, Thomas Jones – 2,570 and LaDainian Tomlinson – 3,410. You should also be aware that Clinton Portis has over 3,250 career touches as well but he did not get 200 last year.

You can possibly expect a small drop in yards per rush and yards per reception for Risky Williams and Thomas Jones but you need to judge for yourself if you believe they will see fewer receptions and goal line carries this season. We can probably all agree that Thomas Jones will see a drop in performance with the Chiefs but Ricky Williams is an interesting one. He had 11 TDs and 35 receptions last year and will continue to split with Ronnie Brown, both of those numbers should drop. The interesting part is that if Williams has fewer TDs and receptions, Ronnie Brown will have more and could be worth moving up on your draft board.

As for LaDainian Tomlinson, we said last year that he had about a 50% chance of not even getting 200 touches and if he did, his fantasy points were expected to drop by about 15% on average. Because of that we recommended to stay away from him and as it turns out, he did get 200+ touches but his fantasy points per 16 games dropped by 26%.

In conclusion, the only two marks where running backs start declining drastically are 32 years old and 3,000 career touches. The risk is also slightly higher for running backs who are 28 years of age or older and those who have reached 2,250 career touches but it is not significant enough to stay away from them.

See the complete analysis