In my last article, I outlined a method for estimating how much each player's fantasy statistics were helped or hurt by garbage time. It started as an investigation into a general question, but evolved into a discussion of Anquan Boldin, who turned out to be an extreme case.

If a general conclusion was reached, it was that garbage time is likely somewhat beneficial to wide receivers as a group. That is not surprising. It is far less clear what kind of impact garbage time has on running backs. Here we might expect to see a split. Backs who are a big part of their teams' passing attacks should benefit from garbage time for the same reason receivers do, possibly even more so, as the short passes to running backs are the ones defenses would be most willing to concede. Runners who do most of their work on the ground, however, are likely to see their numbers suffer when garbage time comes.

That's what we might expect. Let's see if that's what actually happens. First we list, for every running back who had 100 or more total fantasy points last season, his fantasy points per team offensive snap in garbage time and in non-garbage time. (Recall that the exact situations that qualify as garbage time were defined in the previous article.)

Comments

• In contrast to the much-less-clear situation with wide receivers, the above list shows very clearly that running backs, on the whole, are harmed by garbage time.



• As expected, the plodding backs with less receiving skill are more harmed by garbage time than the more versatile backs. Jamal Lewis was rendered very ordinary in garbage time. So was Travis Henry. Eddie George and Troy Hambrick weren't even on the field during their teams' small amount of garbage time.



• The stud every-down backs with receiving skill --- McAllister, Green, James, Holmes, Tomlinson, Barber --- were, as a group, not harmed by garbage time. Some of them had better numbers in garbage time, some worse.



• I hammered on this point a good bit in the previous article, but small sample sizes and injuries are throwing various wrenches into the works here as well. A good portion of the Rams' garbage time occurred in their week 9 loss to San Francisco. Marshall Faulk did not play at all in that game because of injury. This method does not distinguish injury from garbage-induced inactivity, so it makes Faulk's split look bigger than it actually was. The same is true of Clinton Portis and the Broncos' week 17 garbage game against Green Bay.

Here is the estimate of how much each of these runner's stats were altered by garbage time. A positive number indicates that the player's 2003 were inflated by garbage time; a negative number indicates that they were deflated.

Comments

• The only running back who appears to have benefited substantially was Deuce McAllister. His garbage time production came from both rushing and receiving and was spread across several different games both early and late in the season. At least based on the 2003 numbers, Jim Haslett's offensive philosophy appears to include riding McAllister hard when the Saints are trailing.



• Travis Henry was probably better than he looked in 2003. Were it not for the McGahee question, he might be a good candidate to improve his numbers in 2004.



• Probably the most interesting find in this investigation is LaDainian Tomlinson, who is estimated to have been robbed of 31 points last year. The logical assumption is that San Diego used Tomlinson less in garbage time. But because I have a direct line to Maurile Tremblay --- one of the three people on the planet who willingly watch the Chargers every single week --- I decided to ask him what the deal was. Here, in part, is what he said: "I think it's possible that Tomlinson didn't always score fewer points per snap in garbage time because it was garbage time, but that certain games had lots of garbage time because Tomlinson was relatively ineffective (for him) in those games from beginning to end....If you consider the week 1 game vs. the Chiefs and the week 17 game vs. the Raiders together, it looks like Tomlinson does a lot worse in garbage time. But if you consider each of those games separately, there may not be any drop-off from his non-garbage time stats to his garbage-time stats. He just had a worse game from beginning to end in the game that had lots of garbage time."

  So is Maurile right? Yes, yes he is. If you look only at the games --- all 10 of them --- in which the Chargers saw garbage time, Tomlinson actually had a slightly higher fantasy points per snap rate in garbage time than in non-garbage time. In the other six games --- the ones in which the Chargers saw no garbage time --- Tomlinson was a monster. So in this case, the causality arrow is pointing in the direction opposite of what I am assuming. It's not that garbage time leads to decreased Tomlinson production, it's that decreased Tomlinson production leads to more garbage time. I suspect that this is the exception rather than the norm.

Comments

• It is clear, and not surprising, that quarterbacks are generally helped by garbage time.



• Don't read anything into Garcia's and Plummer's appearance at the bottom of the list. Both missed time in garbage games due to injury and so are mismeasured by this system.



• Culpepper's appearance at the top of this list is interesting in light of the fact that Randy Moss did not post big numbers in garbage time. Minnesota's garbage time appears to have consisted primarily of Culpepper runs (he had half his rushing TDs and over 20% of his rushing yards in garbage time, which was 12% of the Vikings snaps) and dump-off passes to Moe Williams.



• Jake Delhomme posted some big numbers in the Panthers' limited garbage time. We might be tempted to put this fact together with our memories of the Super Bowl and predict that Delhomme could be a monster if he were allowed to open it up. But then we would remember that we need to be very careful with this kind of conclusion. The Panthers only had 51 garbage time snaps last year, and anything can happen in 51 snaps. Then we would remember that John Fox isn't going to be opening it up any time soon. So the thought, while potentially exciting for Panther fans, is largely moot from a fantasy perspective.

Finally, I'll leave you to ponder the tight ends.

In the next installment, I will be taking a look at the other side of garbage time: clock-killing time.