Quality Starts: Running Backs

Photo: Imagn Images

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 2019 season, the first attempt was to use the #12 RB for the year (Todd Gurley, 189.4 fantasy points) and take that fantasy total and divide it by 16 for a per game average. The next step, however, was to take all of the Top 50 running backs from 2019 and sort them on a per game average. That method can account for missed games or a per-start performance metric, which is how most fantasy team owners would decide their roster for the week. The RB12 on a per-game average basis last season in 2019 was also Todd Gurley, which is rather unusual - but easily explained. The Top 12 running backs from last season played 180 combined games out of a possible 192 - meaning that the fantasy RB1s averaged only one game missed. The only Top 12 running backs to miss more than one game were Saquan Barkley (13 games played), Dalvin Cook (14) and Josh Jacobs (14). As the saying goes, the best ability is often availability, and these elite backs not only performed well but also stayed healthy. So for 2019, Todd Gurley - the RB12 by either his season-long numbers or his per-game average (12.63 points), will be the baseline for evaluating quality running back performances for last season. Now it is reasonable to also acknowledge that 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 an RB1 and a great RB2.

Next, we move on to the more meaningful 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 running back performances by starters over the season and it becomes evident that the using the 12th running back average and adding or subtracting a percentage gives us a good range for an 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: 2019 RB Quality Start and Fantasy Point Ranges - Standard Scoring

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

Table 2: 2019 RB Start Types Sorted By Top 50 RBs - Standard Scoring

That's a lot of info to digest, so here is some help. First, we see that there were slightly more Excellent Starts (180) than there were Quality Starts (174), but it goes even further than that. Last season's 180 Excellent Starts were the most since 2015 (204), but that year the bar for excellence was only 12.6 points. The 2019 requirement of 15.8 or more points is the second-highest in the 11 years since this metric has been studied, just behind 2010 (16.0) and slightly above the 15.7 mark from two seasons ago. To study it a bit further, adding both Excellent and Quality Starts together for all of the 11 seasons in the study, the combined total had been between 330 and 361 every season except for two outliers in 2015 (371) and 2016 (321). That means that roughly 20 running backs will have a Quality Start or Excellent Start in any given week, so having two in your roster is a big step towards success. As typical, there were also a lot of Bad Starts in 2019 (329), but we are only looking for the best here, plus a "start" is not as definitive for a positional player that may just see partial playing time. Table 3 summarizes a few of these trends:

Table 3: Excellent and Quality Starts - 2009 to 2019 - Standard Scoring

Now, to dig deeper, let's look at the numbers distributed in two different ways. First, we need to define a valuable starting running back in this system. We want a running back 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 4: 2019 RB Start Types Sorted By Value - Standard Scoring

This is a lot of information once again, but there are some important things to note here. Table 4 reflects the trend of elite running backs dominating the Net Value for top fantasy options, which has been consistent over the past four seasons. Christian McCaffrey, Derrick Henry, Dalvin Cook and Ezekiel Elliott represented more than 75% of the total positive Net Value, indicating that the NFL has reverted back to a feature back league. Last season, according to Table 4 above, builds upon the elite back hypothesis as every tailback with five or more Excellent Starts are all in the Top 15 on the Table, with only Mark Ingram's five excellent performances appearing beyond the Top 12 running backs on the list. Limiting the view to those same Top 12 backs alone, these “RB1” category players accounted for 47% of the Excellent Starts (78 of 166), which reaffirms the concept of a handful of elite feature backs across the league. Doing your homework this summer to know who is the lead back (and also who is the clear backup, if there is one) for all 32 teams could mean all the difference for your team this year.

Lastly, we 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 40 RBs on the 2020 ADP list.

Table 5: 2020 Top Drafted RBs Sorted By 2019 Value - Standard Scoring

The top of Table 5 is dominated by the running backs most likely to be selected in the first 12 picks in most fantasy drafts this year - but the players to discuss are those with positive Net Value with an ADP beyond the first round. Aaron Jones (ADP 22) also appears near the top of the final table, but he will be dealing with a rookie in A. J. Dillon who could contend for touches, especially with Green Bay not wanting to sign Jones to a new deal. That screams "see if the rookie can take over", which will severely cap the upside of Jones. Todd Gurley (ADP 39) has moved from the Rams to Atlanta, where he takes over the Falcons' backfield and could be an elite option - or an injury bust. His ADP certainly reflects the middle ground of the "Boom / Bust" extremes in his potential for this year. James Conner (ADP 32) returns as the projected starting tailback for Pittsburgh, but the fourth-year running back has yet to play a full slate in his three-year career. As shown earlier, availability is a big factor in fantasy success, so his risk matches well with his ADP. Each year the top running backs struggle to hold their value (too many references to list here to support this statement, but Matt Waldman's Upside Down Drafting articles are some of the best). Extending the view to the tailbacks that had a "Net Zero" season, and two potential value picks pop up in Jordan Howard (ADP 97) and Derrius Guice (ADP 76). If either back can stay healthy and stay in front of their respective depth chart, huge value and upside are there for either player.

In addition, Table 5 sure points to yet another season for uncertainty at the running back position after the first round is over, as the correlation between ADP and Excellent / Quality Starts tends to go out the window after the top tiers of tailbacks are selected. Throw in that we have six rookies in our Top 40 based on current ADP and only one thing seems certain - getting an elite option early in a draft may make your team a lot more stable this season. That will likely remain a hot debate all summer, as your options are either to take a running back early and cobble together depth later on or to lock up stud receivers (and a tight end) and let the chips fall where they may by snapping up a lot of options later. With so many viable choices at this time and so much change at the running back position across the league, you really need to know who is playing where and what the various depth charts will look like heading into September. Be sure to read up on your depth charts. So while 2019 data is nice to have, it may not be the best indication for 2020 value - preseason depth charts and following Footballguys news may be your best edge.

With so much turmoil at tailback, it is important to point out that thi