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In the summer of 2013 Ray Rice was a surefire RB1 being drafted in the first round of nearly every league. He was coming off of four straight seasons of RB1 production, including an outstanding 2011 campaign where he was the #1 running back in fantasy football. At 26 years old he was in the prime of his career and with Dennis Pitta injured and Anquan Boldin gone many thought he may top 75 receptions. He was the consensus RB4 in our PPR redraft rankings with several writers ranking him as high as #2. Of course, if you owned Rice you know that things didn't exactly work out that way.
After a disappointing season and a potentially troubling offseason incident it's difficult to know how to rank Rice. While it will be very important to keep tabs on Rice's possible legal issues, it's much easier today to take a look back at what went wrong on the field for Rice. Just know that this evaluation will focus on this aspect of whether or not Ray Rice can return to form. There are plenty of ideas out there about why Rice failed to meet his preseason value in 2013 and we'll take a look at the film and the stats to try to find the truth.
Rice started the year with a decent fantasy performance against Denver and a stinker against the Browns that ended with him injuring his hip in the backfield without being touched. While that injury only cost Rice one game many speculated that he never fully recovered and that was the main reason for his struggles. That's the first claim I'd like to examine; did a hip injury derail Rice's 2013 campaign?
The game tape from the first two games of Rice's season makes it difficult to think that Rice was himself even before the injury. He struggled to stop and go like he so effectively had in the past with his best runs coming downhill or off of one cut. Even on those longer runs Rice was often taken down by the first defender he saw, even if it was a cornerback or safety. Perhaps more damning was Rice's ineffectiveness in the passing game. He saw 14 targets in those first 2 games and turned them into 11 catches for 44 yards. The tape shows that this lack of production wasn't all Rice's fault. Both teams were clearly keying on him in the passing game, largely because outside of Torrey Smith the Ravens gave teams little else to worry about.
Another thing that really hurts this theory is the fact that Rice's best fantasy performance came just three weeks after the injury in week five against the Dolphins. Those results came largely because of volume as Rice tallied a season high 33 touches. It's hard to believe that there was concern about the health of Rice's hip yet they gave him the ball 33 times just 3 weeks after the injury occurred. Even in this game Rice didn't really do anything spectacular. His longest carry went for seven yards and his fantasy production was largely dependent on a pair of touchdowns he scored from inside the three yard line. This leads us to the main reason for Rice's lack of production, the lack of a big play.
From 2009-2012 Rice averaged 6 touchdowns per year from outside the 5 yard line. In 2013 he scored zero touchdowns from outside the five. In those 4 prior years he averaged 7 runs of 20+ yards per year; in 2013 he had one run of that length. Rice's lack of big plays can be traced back to several factors, not the least of which was his inability to escape the first tackle. He was the worst in the league after contact, averaging barely more than a yard after he was touched. A part of that is on Rice, but it's also true that he was often "touched" in the backfield while moving laterally. The Ravens offensive line on film looked solid at the point of attack but nearly every time that Rice tried to make a lateral movement in the backfield one of his linemen would lose contact and someone would escape into the backfield.
Another huge factor in Rice's lack of productivity was his lack of usage. Part of that can be traced back to the fact that the equally ineffective Bernard Pierce was given 152 carries. It was known in August that the Ravens wanted to get Pierce more involved in the running game but several of us thought that was because they wanted to use Rice more in the passing game. As it was, Rice saw fewer touches in both the running game and the passing game. In fact, his total touches (272) were down more than 21% from his 4 year average. Essentially we're looking at a less explosive back that saw a huge reduction in touches, do we really even to look any further? Probably not, but for the purpose of this article I'd like to look at what needs to happen for Rice to return to the ranks of the RB1s.
First and foremost this offense must improve. While Rice's lack of explosiveness and Pierce's increased involvement were responsible for a lot of Rice's struggles, the fact that the offense struggled mightily for large parts of the year is not without blame. The Ravens must add another weapon in the passing game so that Rice can start catching the ball in space again and some improvements along the offensive line would be really helpful. If those things happen it's possible that Rice could move into the RB10-15 range again if he can regain some of his explosiveness. The Ravens owner speculated to The Baltimore Sun that Rice may need to lose the weight he added in 2013 for that to happen: "I think he learned that adding 10 pounds to his frame made him less elusive, not more powerful," owner Steve Bisciotti told The Baltimore Sun. "I think he'll come back with a vengeance, down to 210, than the 217 or wherever he is now. And if he doesn't, then we'll be making a tough decision next year, probably."
That's not exactly a ringing endorsement and it's difficult for me to give Rice one in 2014 either. We're essentially dealing with a 27 year old running back that looked like he lost a step last year. He's on an offense that could very easily struggle again in 2014 and he's all but guaranteed to be in another timeshare. The great thing for you is that it's looking like Rice's draft stock has plummeted as quickly as his YPC. He's being drafted in the late third/early fourth and at that price he's a bargain. Rice was a low end RB2 in 2013 and I'd expect a slight bounce back to make him a solid RB2 this year. Landing your RB2 in the 4th round is a bargain, especially when he comes with the elite history that Rice does. Just don't draft him like you're expecting 2009-2012 production.
Contact Heath at cummings@footballguys.com or on Twitter @heathcummingssr.