Lucky Seven Series

Lucky Seven Series Explanation

In preparation for the NFL season, the unfortunate retirement of Jahvid Best, a strange conversation on NFL radio a few months back on if Curtis Martin was better than LaDainian Tomlinson, and the Packers two running backs they just drafted I started to think about running backs.  So I started to look back at the history of running backs in the 2000s.  This led me to an over extensive analysis of the top seven (lucky 7 or that the Packers took Jonathan Franklin at 7?) running backs taken in the draft since 2000.  Before the analysis I wondered if there were patterns in where running backs were picked.  So I decided to try and predict the futures of the seven running backs taken in this year’s draft based on historical statistics.  Nerdy huh?  In any case, I spent a great deal more time on all of this and discovered a lot of really strange and interesting information. 

So the system I used was looking at a players average yards rushing, average rushing touchdowns, average receiving yards, and average receiving touchdowns per season for their careers up until either retirement or the 2012 season.  From there I looked at the combined number of rushing and receiving yards and the combined number of rushing and receiving Touchdowns.  Obviously, the newer players skewered some of the data a bit, particularly Doug Martin.  There is so much information that I looked at and plotted in my spreadsheet that I decided I would do a series of lucky 7 blogs (hopefully) looking at different things.  90 running backs were analyzed (David Irons was excluded from most of the analysis done).

There were a few exceptions that I made. 

-        If a player primarily played fullback in the NFL I did not include them in the analysis. 

o   This means that B.J. Askew, Greg Jones, and Cedric Cobbs were excluded

o   J.R. Redmond was included in the sample because he played both HB and FB

-        If a player missed the entire season without stepping on the field that season was excluded from the statistics

o   This eliminated one season for Willis McGahee, one season for Jamal Lewis, and one season for Mikel LeShoure

-        David Irons was included in the list but he never had an NFL statistic due to injury.  Therefore, his stats were removed from all of the analysis except the analysis on Auburn players in the sample.