Ultimate Fantasy Football Strategy - Breakout Running Backs

Breakout Running Backs

Every year there are running backs that come out of nowhere and are amongst the best fantasy performers. Although the performance of the offensive line has a big impact on a running back’s statistics, I believe there are still certain statistical criterions that can increase the chances of finding a breakout running back. Similar to my previous article on breakout wide receivers, I decided to look at all running backs in years two to six and find out which running backs are most likely to breakout. Moreover, I looked at the RBs that did breakout and tried to find criterions that differentiate RBs that do breakout from the ones that do not.

First of all I just want to clarify that I am using the term breakout a little loosely and I still include RBs who might have had a strong rookie season, struggled in their second season and had a solid third season. The two criterions that a running back had to respect to be considered a breakout running back are: at least 150 points in a point per reception scoring system, an increase of at least 40 points per 16 games or a 25% increase in points per 16 games. Since 1983, there have been 142 running backs that had a breakout season in their second, third, fourth, fifth or sixth season out of a possible 887 which is equal to 16.0% of them. To qualify amongst those 887 the only criterion was that the player had to have at least 250 rushing yards in the previous year. The following chart has the breakdown of the breakout running backs by year:

Year	Breakout	Number	%Breakout
2	27	137	19.7%
3	30	136	22.1%
4	23	136	16.9%
5	22	123	17.9%
6	18	113	15.9%

As expected, the most likely breakout candidates are second and third year running backs but there are still quite a few fourth, fifth and sixth year backs that do breakout. By limiting yourself to running backs in seasons two to six, you have an 18.6% chance of finding a breakout running back as opposed to only 9% for more experienced running backs. However, even for third year running backs, there are only 22.1% that do have breakout seasons so I decided to look at criterions to attempt to increase these percentages. The first criterion I applied to all the running backs is that they must have had 11 touchdowns or less in their previous season. Only six running backs who did not respect this criterion were considered breakout running backs while 83 were not. This increased the percentage for running backs in seasons two through six from 18.6% to 20.3%:

Year	Breakout	Number	%Breakout
2	27	124	21.8%
3	28	117	23.9%
4	22	117	18.8%
5	21	106	19.8%
6	16	98	16.3%

Those percentages are a slight improvement over the previous ones but are still relatively low since even if we only select third year running backs, our success rate is less than one out of four. I decided to take this one step further and try to find more criterions individually for each year to increase these percentages. Since we are dealing with relatively small samples this is a little tricky and I had to make sure the percentages were real and not simply a random coincidence. To make sure of this, when looking for more criterions, I made sure that I used rounded numbers so that I would not have criterions such as fewer than 233 carries or more than 567 yards. The other rule I used is that I could remove players from my sample at both edges but not in the middle such that I don’t have a criterion that says a running back must have more than 200 carries or fewer than 150. Although some of the criterions I will find may still be a random coincidence I think that by using these two rules I will limit that chance.