Quality Starts - Running Back

Photo: Troy Taormina, USA Today Sports

There are some fantasy football players that believe that the lineup you pick can lose you a game just as much as it can win a contest. Having a player give you a consistent performance week after week can be considered more valuable than a player who goes off every third week and then takes two weeks off between those fantastic performances. Consistency has a value, and it does not take much of a leap to understand that players that you can rely on for solid games when you need them (such as in your postseason) are a huge advantage.

Baseball has a term called "Quality Starts" for pitchers, which is a statistic that represents how often a starting pitcher will put up a good (not great, just good) performance in a given game. The bar is set neither high nor low (six innings pitched, three earned runs or fewer) so as to gauge a decent performance. The theory behind it is that if your pitcher gives you a Quality Start, your team has a fighting chance to win a given game.

So now we need to translate this to football. What is "quality" for each position? How do we define a "Quality Start" for quarterbacks or running backs or any other position? Looking back at the 2012 season, I decided to take the #12 RB for the year (Matt Forte, 179.4 fantasy points) and take that fantasy total and divide it by 16 for a per game average. Now a case can be made to argue against doing this. I did not account for missed games or a per-start performance metric, but I believe that the numbers will get averaged out by doing this method. Also, taking RB12 seems a bit arbitrary, but if you are looking for a bare minimum of quality, the 12th RB should be the "worst starter" in your fantasy league as a RB1 and a great RB2. 

So now we move on to the next question - one of quantifying the quality. At what point do we decide whether or not a running back has given us a quality performance? Here is where it gets a bit murky, but looking at the distribution of RB performances by starters over the season and it becomes evident that the using the 12th RB average and adding or subtracting a percentage gives us a good range for a RB Quality Start. 

Using the RB Quality Start range, we can also define a bad performance or an excellent performance as either falling below or exceeding the Quality Start range. Table 1 gives us the fantasy points that it takes to fall in each of the three areas:

Table 1: 2012 RB Quality Start and Fantasy Point Ranges - Standard Scoring

Table 2 shows us the breakdown of all the Top 50 RBs and how many of each type of start resulted for each:

Table 2: 2012 RB Start Types Sorted By Top 50 RBs - Standard Scoring

That's a lot of info to digest, so let me help. First, we see that there are not quite as many Excellent Starts (153) as Quality Starts (192), but given some injuries and more committee backfields it does make sense that there would be fewer elite performances. In comparison to the last four seasons, the numbers of Excellent Starts in 2012 are comparable to 2010 (154) but less that 2009 (173) or 2011 (197).  Two years ago the uptick in excellence is easily explained by the low threshold for that level – only 14.1+ points were needed to achieve an Excellent Start, far less than last year (15.0+), 2009 (15.3+) or 2010 (16.0+).  While in the big picture it may not matter – we do want RB12s and higher, regardless – but it does show how much RB value has declined with the passing game taking off in today's NFL.

Now, to dig deeper, let's look at the numbers distributed in two different ways. First, I need to define a valuable starting running back in this system. We want a RB that will win more fantasy games than lose them, so we want either "Quality" or "Excellent" starts. Using a simple formula of scoring each type of start, we can define the value of a given NFL running back. Here is the formula:

STARTING FANTASY RB VALUE = EXCELLENT STARTS - BAD STARTS

We neglect to look at Quality Starts because they neither win games nor lose them on average - they are just average RB performances. We only really care about how often he helps our team vs. how often he hurts it. Giving a "-1" value to bad starts and "+1" to excellent ones does this for us.

On with the results, sorted by value:

Table 3: 2012 RB Start Types Sorted By Value - Standard Scoring

This is a lot of information once again, but some names leap out at us. For example, the Top 10-12 names should come as no surprise except for perhaps the two newcomers, Doug Martin and Alfred Morris.  Those two names are important to note since there are a number of new names in the Top 36 ADP list for running backs this year.  Choosing the right one could get you quite the value.   Adrian Peterson, Arian Foster, Marshawn Lynch and Ray Rice are atop the list in part because they had just one or two bad starts each, but it is interesting to note that LeSean McCoy had just one as well – so McCoy could represent great draft value for 2013.

Much more can be learned by looking at the players in the negative value range. Michael Turner was clearly wearing down as he moved closer to the end of his career.  Stevan Ridley was neutral (a net “0”) cracked the Top 12 since his lack of involvement in the passing game does not matter nearly as much in standard scoring. Steven Jackson was overall a negative player, but with 9 of 16 starts being of Quality or better and with his move to a better offense in Atlanta, he should be a valuable draft pick this year.

Lastly I will sift through it for you and get right to the heart of the matter with our final table. Here we have the results sorted by value for the Top 36 RBs on the 2012 ADP list.

Table 4: 2013 Top Drafted RBs Sorted By 2012 Value - Standard Scoring

Note that a record number of players (11) are in the Top 36 this year that are not amongst the Top 50 RBs from 2012.  First, there are four rookies in the Top 36 ADP list (Giovani Bernard, Eddie Lacy, LeVeon Bell and Montee Ball), so they are absent from Table 4 for the simple reason that they did not start any games last year.   Maurice Jones-Drew has a very high ADP (21) but missed most of last year with an injury, so he was just outside of the Top 50 (RB52).  Jonathan Stewart had a similar year with Carolina (RB54) but has high expectations and an ADP to match (78).  Rashard Mendenhall (RB94) also missed  significant time last season, but he also has changed teams (now in Arizona), adding to his uncertainty.  Chris Ivory has also switched teams (from New Orleans to the New York Jets), and he is not included because he finished well outside the Top 50 RBs last season (RB79).  Three other running backs have much higher expectations (Lamar Miller, RB80, expected to start for Miami, Daryl Richardson, RB54, expected to compete to start with the Rams, and Shane Vereen, RB53 but expected to improve on that with Danny Woodhead now in San Diego). 

Judging from 2012, it seems that Alfred Morris and Frank Gore would appear be great values if they can repeat their performances.  All other running backs have ADPs in the Top 12, which reflects all of the uncertainty with the running back position for 2013.  You may have guessed that already with 11 new names in the Top 36 RB ADP list.  With so much turmoil at tailback, it is important to point out that this value list is based solely on last year's results. There is no reason to believe in these numbers as indications of 2013 performance, but having this information available should give you more to think about when deciding who you will have leading your fantasy team this year. 

Questions, suggestions and comments are always welcome to pasquino@footballguys.com.