Well, that was a fun set of games, and assorted events afterwards. Before I get into the game, I wanted to talk about what I see as the importance of success rate, as well as why I think getting rid of outlier long runs is important. I've gotten a couple comments about it, so I wanted to explain why that was my method. Let’s take someone who ran the ball 20 times during a game. They get one run of 75 yards for a touchdown, and the rest of their 19 runs go for a total of 25 yards. By all traditional stats, this is not just a good day, this is a great day. In fantasy this gets you 16 points which is pretty good and doesn’t include any receiving yards or receptions. 100 yards, 5 yards per carry, 20 carries, this sounds like a really good day, right?
Let’s compare this to someone who carried the ball 25 times with a long of 10, with 100 yards. They only have 4 yards per carry, so they were clearly worse, right? Well, here’s the thing that separates this efficiency stat from those more standard stats; it takes into account the efforts required to continue drives. As we have seen numerous times already, someone’s counting stats could look really good due to one or two good runs, but if you just look at those, you would ignore all the times that their running put their team behind the 8 ball, so to speak, in a series. Is one long touchdown run worth it if your team spent 5 other possessions starting from 2nd and 9 or even worse? The goal of Football, at its most basic, is to put points on the board. There are times when a drive that is just a single run is better, AKA when you’re losing and you need to get back in the game. There are times when an 8 minute clock churner is better, AKA when you’re winning by not too much and want to completely close the game out.
Of course, every stat can be gamed. Look at Monday for an example of that, or really even 2 examples. Thorbjornsson is a lesser example, with a 3 yard run counting as a success once, but his other 2 successes coming as 4 yard touchdown runs that arguably could have capped his yards per carry at the below 2.5 mark that they ended up as. He got more successes than failures that day. Vermillion I can confidently say gamed the system; getting 7 yards on 1st down and 2 yards on 2nd down are both successes. If you get only 1 yard on 3rd down and give your team a 4th and inches, I feel your 3 yards per carry is much more telling for that drive than the 2/3 success rate. Or, when you rush for 3 yards on 2nd and 5, only to get dropped for a 2 yard loss on 3rd and 1, your 0.5 yards per carry is more accurate than your 50% success rate. I will continue to do my best to call out when I feel the efficiency rating is over or underrating a performance. I will not apologize for removing long runs when they clearly buoy an extremely inefficient night, and will continue to do so.
With that said, first game up is...
Fire Salamanders at Yellowknife Wraiths:
Salamanders Rushers:
Joseph Petrongolo: 3/8
Terry Yaki: 3/5
Nick Kaepercolin: 0/1
Wraiths Rushers:
Acura Skyline: 4/16
Jameson Vermillion: 3/7
Colby Jack: 1/1
I thought this was going to end up a much better rushing day for Petrongolo than it ended up. Granted, it was still an OK day, but it wasn't outstanding. His successes were his first rush of the day, a 66 yard touchdown, and a pair of 5 yard gains with 10 yards to go, one on first down and one on second down. Petrongolo's yards per carry do get absolutely murdered by the long removal standard; 10.1 actual, but minus that first run on the day, it falls all the way to 2.1. That's an 8 yard drop and over 3/4ths of the YPC, just by removing a single run. Meanwhile, Terry Yaki's 3 successes were each runs for 1st downs, of 4 yards on 3rd and 3, and a pair of runs for 9 and 10 yards. He earned his over 50% success rate for the day. Kaepercolin got hit with one of those "sacks that are rush attempts" and that was his only action on the day.
Acura Skyline appears to have a habit of these, doesn't he? Great days on the ground that are not quite as good under the efficiency microscope. My mind immediately jumps to last week's game by Tatsu Nakamura, where he got the majority of his yards from his few successes, only this time it's even worse as all of Skyline's yards are clumped into 4 carries as opposed to 6. He got 103 yards from runs of 18 yards, 20 yards, 32 yards, and 33 yards in those 4 successes. The entire rest of his yards? 12. Over 12 carries, for a perfect 1 yard per carry ratio outside of those 4. Still, this is one of those days where they didn't need Skyline to be consistent, really, considering how often the Wraiths were able to overcome poor early down runs with long passes. Vermillion, meanwhile, continues his streak of bad days with good efficiency. A 3 yard gain on 2nd and 2, a 2 yard run on 2nd and 1 (that at least came from a 9 yard pass to him), and, most damningly, a 1 yard run on 3rd and -3. Yeah, that bug is still there and definitely inflated his success rate a bit. I feel comfortable saying Vermillion was much closer to his 1 yard per carry over his success rate, while Skyline is probably somewhere in between his success rate and his yards per carry. Colby Jack's one rush, by the way, was a QB Sneak at the 1 yard line for six.
Chicago Butchers at Sarasota Sailfish:
Butchers Rushers:
Baby Yoda: 3/18
Julio Tirtawidjaja: 0/3
Sailfish Rushers:
Raphtalia Chan: 6/14
Running Back: 1/5
Sigismund Sternenstaub: 0/2
The Butchers running backs excelled at one thing and one thing only today: Short yardage situations when attempting to get a touchdown. Yoda's only successes came a pair of 1 yard rushing touchdowns, and a 2 point conversion attempt after one of those touchdowns. Otherwise, well, he rushed the ball 18 times and never got longer than a 2 yard rush. He had a total of 10 yards including the 2 point conversion, for a neat yards per carry of... 0.5 repeating. He had 4 rushes of 0 yards or less, as in not even short gains, more than the amount of successes he had. Meanwhile, Tirtawidjaja I kind of feel bad for. He wasn't great, at 2.3 yards per carry and a long of 5, but that long of 5 should have gotten him a success. It almost actually did. If it didn't come immediately after a negative run from Baby Yoda, it would have been 50% of the yards to gain on 2nd down.
On one hand, the Sailfish weren't excellent running the ball or anything, although they definitely were better than the Butchers tonight. On the other hand, you really can't blame them over Mike Boss for the loss tonight. On the 3rd hand, rest in peace Frost's 150 million dollar bank account, he's now below 100 million due to betting a bit too much on his team to win. I really don't have all that much to say about Chan, it was just a really good game efficiency-wise, even if it did take a bit of a hit on the yards per carry front at 3.9. Chan's long was only 12, and thus the yards per carry only falls to 3.3 if you take the long out. Only one of his successes was shorter than 4 yards, a 2 yard touchdown run. As far as other rushers go, nobody else had any successes other than Running Back's 4 yard touchdown run. Any other time a Sailfish running back other than Chan got the ball, they took it pretty much nowhere. Especially Running Back, who got -1 yard on his other 4 carries on the day.
Austin Copperheads at Colorado Yeti:
Copperheads Rushers:
Zoe Watts: 5/15
Jim the Vampire: 0/2
Kichwa Jones: 1/1
Yeti Rushers:
Richard Gilbert: 4/18
Anders Christiansen: 0/1
Pictured above is an accurate depiction of Kyamprac sacrificing a football to the Sim Gods in order to get a decent percentage of successful rushes, courtesy of zEagle. The ratio looked even better before 4 late game unsuccessful rushes drove it from almost 50% to 33%. However, Watts was unable to get a good yards per carry, clocking out at 2.9, and that's even with a 21 yard rush that when taken out puts it down at 1.6. Kichwa Jones was able to get a 1 yard touchdown on his one rush attempt on the day. Jim the Vampire, meanwhile, had 1 yard on 2 carries for no successes.
Richard Gilbert was not all that great running tonight, with the possible exception of goal to go opportunities. 2 of Gilbert's successes were a 1 yard touchdown run on 2nd down (after an unsuccessful 0 yard run on 1st down) and a 2 point conversion to tie up the game in the 2nd half. His other 2 successes were a 6 yard run on 3rd and 2, and a 4 yard rush on 1st and 10. At least Gilbert was able to avoid doing what Baby Yoda did and kept the downright negative runs to a minimum, only having that single 0 yard run before the touchdown mentioned earlier. Christiansen's lone rush attempt was a 1 yard rush on 1st down, that was immediately followed up by 2 unsuccessful Gilbert rush attempts and a punt.
Baltimore Hawks at Philidelphia Liberty:
Hawks Rushers:
Mai Fukushu: 4/18
Matthias Hanyadi: 3/4
Chika Fujiwara: 2/2
Liberty Rushers:
Darrell Williams: 6/11
Sam Torenson: 4/4
Fuzzy Dotson: 0/1
That 4/18 feels a tiny bit unfair to Fukushu, as she was able to pull off a 10 yard run that unfortunately came after a long sack that prevented it from being a success. Still, Fukushu was unable to get any successful runs in the second half. She also was extremely hot and cold, with that 10 yard unsuccessful run and her 4 successes accounting for 86 of her 95 yards. The rest of the time she had 13 rushes for 9 yards. Besides her, when Chika and Hanyadi ran, they were almost always successful. Hanyadi had a run for no gain, and then a 4 yard touchdown, a 6 yard run on 2nd and 12, and a 5 yard run on 1st and 10, while Fujiwara had a 4 yard rush on 1st and 10, and also snuck a touchdown in from the 1 yard line.
The Liberty were extremely successful rushing last night, with only Dotson being under 50% rushing and he only had 1 attempt. Williams, to be fair, did have his yards per carry inflated massively by a run at the end of the game that did not matter at all due to the game already being over at that point; it was at 3.4 yards per carry before that rush, and it ballooned up to 7.9. On the other hand, he did have 2 successes that were just 1 yard touchdown carries, so that probably depressed his yards per carry a bit. I'd also say that one of Williams' successes was cancelled out somewhat by one of his unsuccessful runs, as he followed up a 5 yard successful carry on 1st and 10 with an unsuccessful -2 yard run on 2nd down. Meanwhile, Sam Torenson averaged 14 yards per carry. Minus his longest rush. He had a 43 yard carry to bring his average up to 21.2 yards per carry. Hell, his shortest rush on the day was a 13 yard carry that only got stopped by the pylon. This was definitely the best low carry performance of the season so far, and these rushing performances were the big fueler of the Liberty's 4th quarter comeback.
New York Silverbacks at Arizona Outlaws:
Silverbacks Rushers:
Captain Rogers: 6/13
Ashley Owens: 1/5
Outlaws Rushers:
Tatsu Nakamura: 11/28
Gunner Thorbjornsson: 2/5
Charlemagne Cortez: 0/1
Rogers did by far the best rushing job of anyone who played the Arizona Outlaws best rushing defense in the league heading into week 4. While without his long of 67, his yards per carry precipitously falls off a cliff to a flat 3 from its current 7.9, he still has a very nice success rate even with that yards per carry. Pretty much the only negative I can have on his performance is that 2 of his successes came before or after another unsuccessful run of his, leading to a 3rd and medium that the Silverbacks weren't able to convert in either instance. As for Ashley Owens, they only had one success, and even that's being a bit generous to them. Considering it came from a 1 yard carry on 4th and 1, I'd say take your pick of the 20% success rate or the 1.6 yards per carry because both tell a pretty good tale of Owens' rushing day: not anything good.
The Outlaws continued to be very efficient when running the football, Nakamura hovered around 50% for most of the day and only fell off a tad once the end of the day started rolling around. Perhaps you'd think that Nakamura's yards per carry would get decently hurt by removing his long of 44, but even with that it only falls to 4.6. I'm pretty sure Nakamura had the best efficiency day with this much usage, which I think says more about how hard it is to be efficient with 28 carries than anything else. Thorbjornsson meanwhile got a bit saved by efficiency metrics, he had a 17 yard carry that accounted for literally ALL of his yards, and then was able to squeeze in a 1 yard carry on 2nd and 2 to get another success in.
Orange County Otters at New Orleans Second Line:
Otters Rushers:
Ace Savage: 6/11
Jeffrey Phillips: 4/10
Bronko Mills: 0/1
Second Line Rushers:
Mike Rotchburns: 3/10
Mr Forty Two: 0/11
Forrest Gump: 0/1
Yep, you're reading this right. Ace Savage, who has been hovering around and even below 20% running efficiency all season, got a game where he got over 50%. He even arguably got ROBBED from another success on the same set of carries; he got a 4 yard gain on 3rd and 4 but got left with 4th and inches. Really, though, this was a good day for him that became an amazing one right at the end of the first half, where he got runs of 6 yards, 2 yards, and 2 yards to get 3 successes and bring the Otters into field goal range, giving them one of their two last second field goals on the day. Despite having a 3.5 yards per carry, that falls to 2.6 if you take out his long of 12, he was able to keep the chains moving and win in this battle of poor running back groups. Phillips was also decently efficient, although it's probably important to mention that one of his successes was a 1 yard touchdown run, he was able to keep the chains moving enough times to put up a decent efficiency rating and help the Otters win in the end.
Rotchburns was extremely feast or famine on the day, with 3 runs that were even close to good on the day. Taking out his long of 29 makes his yards per carry fall to 2.2, and I think that's much more accurate than the nearly 5 on the day. Besides his touchdown run, he had a run of 6 on 1st down and a run of 7 on 2nd and 3. Mr Forty Two's celebration last week might have been a bit premature. I feel sorry a bit, I feel he deserved 1. He had exactly 1 run worth anything, and I'm extremely surprised his long of 8 wasn't enough to get a success, but it came after a 7 yard sack so he got just less than half of the yards to gain on 2nd down. Other than that, though, he didn't really deserve any more successes than that 1, taking that long of 8 out causes his yards per carry to fall to 0.7, and the 1.4 yards per carry it started as wasn't really all that great to begin with. Hell, the running game's inability to go anywhere in the final seconds was part of what allowed Orange County to complete that miracle comeback.
Honolulu Hahalua at San Jose Sabercats:
Hahalua Rushers:
Nicholas Ayers: 3/13
Cobra Kai: 4/6
Sabercats Rushers:
Jamar Lackson: 4/18
Rando Cardrissian: 1/10
When I went over Ayers' rushes, I wondered for a second how the Hahalua were able to do so well against the Sabercats. Ayers has 3/13, but due to the layout of rushes I'd say it was actually worse than that for most of the day. He didn't have a successful run until deep in the 4th quarter, and while his last 4 runs had all 3 of his successes, all that meant was that they were able to chew through the clock while up a bit. In general, Ayers sucked for the vast majority of the day. 1.5 yards per carry, 1.1 minus his 7 yarder, I think that's slightly more accurate than the 3/13 success rate on the day. No, the guy who helped the Hahalua so much today was Kai. He had a 1 yard rush on 1st and 10, a 3 yard rush on 2nd and 8, and then 4 extremely important rushes for the rest of the day. 2 of Ayers' successes came immediately after Cobra Kai got 5 yards on 1st down, allowing for the 4 yards and 1 yard per carry on 2nd and 3rd down to be 2 successes instead of 1 or even 0. Kai got a 40 yard run at the end of the first half that could have gone for 6, he got a 46 yard touchdown run at the end of the game to seal the win for the Hahalua, and he got a 7 yard run on 3rd and 5 to give his team an important first down on the drive that put them up 14-0. Kai was a huge part of why the Hahalua are now 3-1 and at the top of the ASFC.
Remember when the Sabercats ran all over the Hawks, to the point that it was questionable whether the record setting rushing performance earlier that day was the best rushing performance on the day, or whether the almost record setting receiving performance from Hood was even the best performance from a Sabercat? Yeah, that feels very long gone at this point despite having happened less than a week ago. Lackson's yards per carry are pretty poor at 3.3, and they fall all the way to 1.6 once you take out his long of 31 on the day. 2 of Lackson's successes were a 4 and 5 yard run on 1st down, each of which was followed by an unsuccessful run on 2nd down leading to a 3rd and medium. He also got a 3 yard carry on 2nd and 6 for his other non long success. Speaking of that long success, that 31 yard run was the first play of the second half, and also happened to be his last success on the day. He had 8 more runs and was unsuccessful on all of them. Cardrissian had a 6 yard run on 3rd and 2 for his lone success. The entire rest of his day he had a 0.78 yards per carry and could not succeed at all. The Sabercats only had a single successful run during the entire second half, on that first play.
Time for the master list.
100% George O'Donnell 1/1 (+1) CHI
100% Kichwa Jones 1/1 (+1) AUS
61.5% Matthias Hanyadi 8/13 (+3) BAL
51.9% Gunner Thorbjornsson 14/27 (+1) ARI
50% Suleiman Ramza 1/2 (0) OCO
50% Mike Boss Jr 1/2 (0) SAR
50% Colby Jack 1/2 (0) YKW
50% Chika Fujiwara 2/4 (0) BAL
50% Forrest Gump 2/4 (0) NOLA
47.4% Running Back 9/19 (-1) SAR
44.7% Jameson Vermillion 17/38 (-4) YKW
43.3% Tatsu Nakmura 39/90 (-12) ARI
42.6% Captain Rogers 29/68 (-10) NYS
42.4% Cobra Kai 14/33 (-5) HON
41.7% Sam Torenson 15/36 (-6) PHI
39.5% Raphtalia Chan 32/81 (-17) SAR
39% Baby Yoda 32/82 (-18) CHI
38.9% Jeffrey Phillips 7/18 (-4) OCO
37.8% Rando Cardrissian 14/37 (-9) SJS
37.5% Terry Yaki 12/32 (-8) BER
37% Ashley Owens 10/27 (-7) NYS
36.4% Darrel Williams 20/55 (-15) PHI
34.4% Acura Skyline 22/64 (-20) YKW
33.3% Buster Bawls 1/3 (-1) NYS
33.3% Joseph Petrongolo 18/54 (-18) BER
31.9% Jamar Lackson 15/47 (-17) SJS
31.8% Mike Rotchburns 14/44 (-16) NOLA
29.4% Julio Tirtawidjaja 5/17 (-7) CHI
28.4% Nicholas Ayers 19/67 (-29) HON
28.3% Mr. Forty Two 13/46 (-20) NOLA
28.1% Richard Gilbert 18/64 (-28) COL
26.7% Mai Fukushu 20/75 (-35) BAL
26.1% Ace Savage 12/46 (-22) OCO
26% Zoe Watts 13/50 (-24) AUS
22.2% Jim the Vampire 2/9 (-5) AUS
14.3% Anders Christiansen 1/7 (-5) COL
0% Luke Skywalker 0/2 (-2) HON
0% Sigismund Sternenstaub 0/3 (-3) SAR
0% Zed Keppler 0/2 (-2) CHI
0% Fuzzy Dotson 0/4 (-4) PHI
0% Monty Jack 0/1 (-1) SJS
0% Bronko Mills 0/1 (-1) OCO
0% Charlemagne Cortez 0/1 (-1) ARI
0% Nick Kaepercolin 0/1 (-1) BER
Well, at this point, our kings of efficiency are Hanyadi, Thorbjornsson, Running Back, Vermillion, and Nakamura. Nobody has better efficiency on more carries than any of them. Going the other way, those who have nobody with more carries and less efficiency, we have Fuzzy Dotson, Anders Christiansen, Jim the Vampire, Zoe Watts, Mai Fukushu, Baby Yoda, and then Nakamura. Of course, this metric will share whoever has the most carries overall, but Nakamura definitely belongs on the top list considering the closest guy to him with over 40% still has 22 less carries.
(3738 words)
Let’s compare this to someone who carried the ball 25 times with a long of 10, with 100 yards. They only have 4 yards per carry, so they were clearly worse, right? Well, here’s the thing that separates this efficiency stat from those more standard stats; it takes into account the efforts required to continue drives. As we have seen numerous times already, someone’s counting stats could look really good due to one or two good runs, but if you just look at those, you would ignore all the times that their running put their team behind the 8 ball, so to speak, in a series. Is one long touchdown run worth it if your team spent 5 other possessions starting from 2nd and 9 or even worse? The goal of Football, at its most basic, is to put points on the board. There are times when a drive that is just a single run is better, AKA when you’re losing and you need to get back in the game. There are times when an 8 minute clock churner is better, AKA when you’re winning by not too much and want to completely close the game out.
Of course, every stat can be gamed. Look at Monday for an example of that, or really even 2 examples. Thorbjornsson is a lesser example, with a 3 yard run counting as a success once, but his other 2 successes coming as 4 yard touchdown runs that arguably could have capped his yards per carry at the below 2.5 mark that they ended up as. He got more successes than failures that day. Vermillion I can confidently say gamed the system; getting 7 yards on 1st down and 2 yards on 2nd down are both successes. If you get only 1 yard on 3rd down and give your team a 4th and inches, I feel your 3 yards per carry is much more telling for that drive than the 2/3 success rate. Or, when you rush for 3 yards on 2nd and 5, only to get dropped for a 2 yard loss on 3rd and 1, your 0.5 yards per carry is more accurate than your 50% success rate. I will continue to do my best to call out when I feel the efficiency rating is over or underrating a performance. I will not apologize for removing long runs when they clearly buoy an extremely inefficient night, and will continue to do so.
With that said, first game up is...
Fire Salamanders at Yellowknife Wraiths:
Salamanders Rushers:
Joseph Petrongolo: 3/8
Terry Yaki: 3/5
Nick Kaepercolin: 0/1
Wraiths Rushers:
Acura Skyline: 4/16
Jameson Vermillion: 3/7
Colby Jack: 1/1
I thought this was going to end up a much better rushing day for Petrongolo than it ended up. Granted, it was still an OK day, but it wasn't outstanding. His successes were his first rush of the day, a 66 yard touchdown, and a pair of 5 yard gains with 10 yards to go, one on first down and one on second down. Petrongolo's yards per carry do get absolutely murdered by the long removal standard; 10.1 actual, but minus that first run on the day, it falls all the way to 2.1. That's an 8 yard drop and over 3/4ths of the YPC, just by removing a single run. Meanwhile, Terry Yaki's 3 successes were each runs for 1st downs, of 4 yards on 3rd and 3, and a pair of runs for 9 and 10 yards. He earned his over 50% success rate for the day. Kaepercolin got hit with one of those "sacks that are rush attempts" and that was his only action on the day.
Acura Skyline appears to have a habit of these, doesn't he? Great days on the ground that are not quite as good under the efficiency microscope. My mind immediately jumps to last week's game by Tatsu Nakamura, where he got the majority of his yards from his few successes, only this time it's even worse as all of Skyline's yards are clumped into 4 carries as opposed to 6. He got 103 yards from runs of 18 yards, 20 yards, 32 yards, and 33 yards in those 4 successes. The entire rest of his yards? 12. Over 12 carries, for a perfect 1 yard per carry ratio outside of those 4. Still, this is one of those days where they didn't need Skyline to be consistent, really, considering how often the Wraiths were able to overcome poor early down runs with long passes. Vermillion, meanwhile, continues his streak of bad days with good efficiency. A 3 yard gain on 2nd and 2, a 2 yard run on 2nd and 1 (that at least came from a 9 yard pass to him), and, most damningly, a 1 yard run on 3rd and -3. Yeah, that bug is still there and definitely inflated his success rate a bit. I feel comfortable saying Vermillion was much closer to his 1 yard per carry over his success rate, while Skyline is probably somewhere in between his success rate and his yards per carry. Colby Jack's one rush, by the way, was a QB Sneak at the 1 yard line for six.
Chicago Butchers at Sarasota Sailfish:
Butchers Rushers:
Baby Yoda: 3/18
Julio Tirtawidjaja: 0/3
Sailfish Rushers:
Raphtalia Chan: 6/14
Running Back: 1/5
Sigismund Sternenstaub: 0/2
The Butchers running backs excelled at one thing and one thing only today: Short yardage situations when attempting to get a touchdown. Yoda's only successes came a pair of 1 yard rushing touchdowns, and a 2 point conversion attempt after one of those touchdowns. Otherwise, well, he rushed the ball 18 times and never got longer than a 2 yard rush. He had a total of 10 yards including the 2 point conversion, for a neat yards per carry of... 0.5 repeating. He had 4 rushes of 0 yards or less, as in not even short gains, more than the amount of successes he had. Meanwhile, Tirtawidjaja I kind of feel bad for. He wasn't great, at 2.3 yards per carry and a long of 5, but that long of 5 should have gotten him a success. It almost actually did. If it didn't come immediately after a negative run from Baby Yoda, it would have been 50% of the yards to gain on 2nd down.
On one hand, the Sailfish weren't excellent running the ball or anything, although they definitely were better than the Butchers tonight. On the other hand, you really can't blame them over Mike Boss for the loss tonight. On the 3rd hand, rest in peace Frost's 150 million dollar bank account, he's now below 100 million due to betting a bit too much on his team to win. I really don't have all that much to say about Chan, it was just a really good game efficiency-wise, even if it did take a bit of a hit on the yards per carry front at 3.9. Chan's long was only 12, and thus the yards per carry only falls to 3.3 if you take the long out. Only one of his successes was shorter than 4 yards, a 2 yard touchdown run. As far as other rushers go, nobody else had any successes other than Running Back's 4 yard touchdown run. Any other time a Sailfish running back other than Chan got the ball, they took it pretty much nowhere. Especially Running Back, who got -1 yard on his other 4 carries on the day.
Austin Copperheads at Colorado Yeti:
Copperheads Rushers:
Zoe Watts: 5/15
Jim the Vampire: 0/2
Kichwa Jones: 1/1
Yeti Rushers:
Richard Gilbert: 4/18
Anders Christiansen: 0/1
Pictured above is an accurate depiction of Kyamprac sacrificing a football to the Sim Gods in order to get a decent percentage of successful rushes, courtesy of zEagle. The ratio looked even better before 4 late game unsuccessful rushes drove it from almost 50% to 33%. However, Watts was unable to get a good yards per carry, clocking out at 2.9, and that's even with a 21 yard rush that when taken out puts it down at 1.6. Kichwa Jones was able to get a 1 yard touchdown on his one rush attempt on the day. Jim the Vampire, meanwhile, had 1 yard on 2 carries for no successes.
Richard Gilbert was not all that great running tonight, with the possible exception of goal to go opportunities. 2 of Gilbert's successes were a 1 yard touchdown run on 2nd down (after an unsuccessful 0 yard run on 1st down) and a 2 point conversion to tie up the game in the 2nd half. His other 2 successes were a 6 yard run on 3rd and 2, and a 4 yard rush on 1st and 10. At least Gilbert was able to avoid doing what Baby Yoda did and kept the downright negative runs to a minimum, only having that single 0 yard run before the touchdown mentioned earlier. Christiansen's lone rush attempt was a 1 yard rush on 1st down, that was immediately followed up by 2 unsuccessful Gilbert rush attempts and a punt.
Baltimore Hawks at Philidelphia Liberty:
Hawks Rushers:
Mai Fukushu: 4/18
Matthias Hanyadi: 3/4
Chika Fujiwara: 2/2
Liberty Rushers:
Darrell Williams: 6/11
Sam Torenson: 4/4
Fuzzy Dotson: 0/1
That 4/18 feels a tiny bit unfair to Fukushu, as she was able to pull off a 10 yard run that unfortunately came after a long sack that prevented it from being a success. Still, Fukushu was unable to get any successful runs in the second half. She also was extremely hot and cold, with that 10 yard unsuccessful run and her 4 successes accounting for 86 of her 95 yards. The rest of the time she had 13 rushes for 9 yards. Besides her, when Chika and Hanyadi ran, they were almost always successful. Hanyadi had a run for no gain, and then a 4 yard touchdown, a 6 yard run on 2nd and 12, and a 5 yard run on 1st and 10, while Fujiwara had a 4 yard rush on 1st and 10, and also snuck a touchdown in from the 1 yard line.
The Liberty were extremely successful rushing last night, with only Dotson being under 50% rushing and he only had 1 attempt. Williams, to be fair, did have his yards per carry inflated massively by a run at the end of the game that did not matter at all due to the game already being over at that point; it was at 3.4 yards per carry before that rush, and it ballooned up to 7.9. On the other hand, he did have 2 successes that were just 1 yard touchdown carries, so that probably depressed his yards per carry a bit. I'd also say that one of Williams' successes was cancelled out somewhat by one of his unsuccessful runs, as he followed up a 5 yard successful carry on 1st and 10 with an unsuccessful -2 yard run on 2nd down. Meanwhile, Sam Torenson averaged 14 yards per carry. Minus his longest rush. He had a 43 yard carry to bring his average up to 21.2 yards per carry. Hell, his shortest rush on the day was a 13 yard carry that only got stopped by the pylon. This was definitely the best low carry performance of the season so far, and these rushing performances were the big fueler of the Liberty's 4th quarter comeback.
New York Silverbacks at Arizona Outlaws:
Silverbacks Rushers:
Captain Rogers: 6/13
Ashley Owens: 1/5
Outlaws Rushers:
Tatsu Nakamura: 11/28
Gunner Thorbjornsson: 2/5
Charlemagne Cortez: 0/1
Rogers did by far the best rushing job of anyone who played the Arizona Outlaws best rushing defense in the league heading into week 4. While without his long of 67, his yards per carry precipitously falls off a cliff to a flat 3 from its current 7.9, he still has a very nice success rate even with that yards per carry. Pretty much the only negative I can have on his performance is that 2 of his successes came before or after another unsuccessful run of his, leading to a 3rd and medium that the Silverbacks weren't able to convert in either instance. As for Ashley Owens, they only had one success, and even that's being a bit generous to them. Considering it came from a 1 yard carry on 4th and 1, I'd say take your pick of the 20% success rate or the 1.6 yards per carry because both tell a pretty good tale of Owens' rushing day: not anything good.
The Outlaws continued to be very efficient when running the football, Nakamura hovered around 50% for most of the day and only fell off a tad once the end of the day started rolling around. Perhaps you'd think that Nakamura's yards per carry would get decently hurt by removing his long of 44, but even with that it only falls to 4.6. I'm pretty sure Nakamura had the best efficiency day with this much usage, which I think says more about how hard it is to be efficient with 28 carries than anything else. Thorbjornsson meanwhile got a bit saved by efficiency metrics, he had a 17 yard carry that accounted for literally ALL of his yards, and then was able to squeeze in a 1 yard carry on 2nd and 2 to get another success in.
Orange County Otters at New Orleans Second Line:
Otters Rushers:
Ace Savage: 6/11
Jeffrey Phillips: 4/10
Bronko Mills: 0/1
Second Line Rushers:
Mike Rotchburns: 3/10
Mr Forty Two: 0/11
Forrest Gump: 0/1
Yep, you're reading this right. Ace Savage, who has been hovering around and even below 20% running efficiency all season, got a game where he got over 50%. He even arguably got ROBBED from another success on the same set of carries; he got a 4 yard gain on 3rd and 4 but got left with 4th and inches. Really, though, this was a good day for him that became an amazing one right at the end of the first half, where he got runs of 6 yards, 2 yards, and 2 yards to get 3 successes and bring the Otters into field goal range, giving them one of their two last second field goals on the day. Despite having a 3.5 yards per carry, that falls to 2.6 if you take out his long of 12, he was able to keep the chains moving and win in this battle of poor running back groups. Phillips was also decently efficient, although it's probably important to mention that one of his successes was a 1 yard touchdown run, he was able to keep the chains moving enough times to put up a decent efficiency rating and help the Otters win in the end.
Rotchburns was extremely feast or famine on the day, with 3 runs that were even close to good on the day. Taking out his long of 29 makes his yards per carry fall to 2.2, and I think that's much more accurate than the nearly 5 on the day. Besides his touchdown run, he had a run of 6 on 1st down and a run of 7 on 2nd and 3. Mr Forty Two's celebration last week might have been a bit premature. I feel sorry a bit, I feel he deserved 1. He had exactly 1 run worth anything, and I'm extremely surprised his long of 8 wasn't enough to get a success, but it came after a 7 yard sack so he got just less than half of the yards to gain on 2nd down. Other than that, though, he didn't really deserve any more successes than that 1, taking that long of 8 out causes his yards per carry to fall to 0.7, and the 1.4 yards per carry it started as wasn't really all that great to begin with. Hell, the running game's inability to go anywhere in the final seconds was part of what allowed Orange County to complete that miracle comeback.
Honolulu Hahalua at San Jose Sabercats:
Hahalua Rushers:
Nicholas Ayers: 3/13
Cobra Kai: 4/6
Sabercats Rushers:
Jamar Lackson: 4/18
Rando Cardrissian: 1/10
When I went over Ayers' rushes, I wondered for a second how the Hahalua were able to do so well against the Sabercats. Ayers has 3/13, but due to the layout of rushes I'd say it was actually worse than that for most of the day. He didn't have a successful run until deep in the 4th quarter, and while his last 4 runs had all 3 of his successes, all that meant was that they were able to chew through the clock while up a bit. In general, Ayers sucked for the vast majority of the day. 1.5 yards per carry, 1.1 minus his 7 yarder, I think that's slightly more accurate than the 3/13 success rate on the day. No, the guy who helped the Hahalua so much today was Kai. He had a 1 yard rush on 1st and 10, a 3 yard rush on 2nd and 8, and then 4 extremely important rushes for the rest of the day. 2 of Ayers' successes came immediately after Cobra Kai got 5 yards on 1st down, allowing for the 4 yards and 1 yard per carry on 2nd and 3rd down to be 2 successes instead of 1 or even 0. Kai got a 40 yard run at the end of the first half that could have gone for 6, he got a 46 yard touchdown run at the end of the game to seal the win for the Hahalua, and he got a 7 yard run on 3rd and 5 to give his team an important first down on the drive that put them up 14-0. Kai was a huge part of why the Hahalua are now 3-1 and at the top of the ASFC.
Remember when the Sabercats ran all over the Hawks, to the point that it was questionable whether the record setting rushing performance earlier that day was the best rushing performance on the day, or whether the almost record setting receiving performance from Hood was even the best performance from a Sabercat? Yeah, that feels very long gone at this point despite having happened less than a week ago. Lackson's yards per carry are pretty poor at 3.3, and they fall all the way to 1.6 once you take out his long of 31 on the day. 2 of Lackson's successes were a 4 and 5 yard run on 1st down, each of which was followed by an unsuccessful run on 2nd down leading to a 3rd and medium. He also got a 3 yard carry on 2nd and 6 for his other non long success. Speaking of that long success, that 31 yard run was the first play of the second half, and also happened to be his last success on the day. He had 8 more runs and was unsuccessful on all of them. Cardrissian had a 6 yard run on 3rd and 2 for his lone success. The entire rest of his day he had a 0.78 yards per carry and could not succeed at all. The Sabercats only had a single successful run during the entire second half, on that first play.
Time for the master list.
100% George O'Donnell 1/1 (+1) CHI
100% Kichwa Jones 1/1 (+1) AUS
61.5% Matthias Hanyadi 8/13 (+3) BAL
51.9% Gunner Thorbjornsson 14/27 (+1) ARI
50% Suleiman Ramza 1/2 (0) OCO
50% Mike Boss Jr 1/2 (0) SAR
50% Colby Jack 1/2 (0) YKW
50% Chika Fujiwara 2/4 (0) BAL
50% Forrest Gump 2/4 (0) NOLA
47.4% Running Back 9/19 (-1) SAR
44.7% Jameson Vermillion 17/38 (-4) YKW
43.3% Tatsu Nakmura 39/90 (-12) ARI
42.6% Captain Rogers 29/68 (-10) NYS
42.4% Cobra Kai 14/33 (-5) HON
41.7% Sam Torenson 15/36 (-6) PHI
39.5% Raphtalia Chan 32/81 (-17) SAR
39% Baby Yoda 32/82 (-18) CHI
38.9% Jeffrey Phillips 7/18 (-4) OCO
37.8% Rando Cardrissian 14/37 (-9) SJS
37.5% Terry Yaki 12/32 (-8) BER
37% Ashley Owens 10/27 (-7) NYS
36.4% Darrel Williams 20/55 (-15) PHI
34.4% Acura Skyline 22/64 (-20) YKW
33.3% Buster Bawls 1/3 (-1) NYS
33.3% Joseph Petrongolo 18/54 (-18) BER
31.9% Jamar Lackson 15/47 (-17) SJS
31.8% Mike Rotchburns 14/44 (-16) NOLA
29.4% Julio Tirtawidjaja 5/17 (-7) CHI
28.4% Nicholas Ayers 19/67 (-29) HON
28.3% Mr. Forty Two 13/46 (-20) NOLA
28.1% Richard Gilbert 18/64 (-28) COL
26.7% Mai Fukushu 20/75 (-35) BAL
26.1% Ace Savage 12/46 (-22) OCO
26% Zoe Watts 13/50 (-24) AUS
22.2% Jim the Vampire 2/9 (-5) AUS
14.3% Anders Christiansen 1/7 (-5) COL
0% Luke Skywalker 0/2 (-2) HON
0% Sigismund Sternenstaub 0/3 (-3) SAR
0% Zed Keppler 0/2 (-2) CHI
0% Fuzzy Dotson 0/4 (-4) PHI
0% Monty Jack 0/1 (-1) SJS
0% Bronko Mills 0/1 (-1) OCO
0% Charlemagne Cortez 0/1 (-1) ARI
0% Nick Kaepercolin 0/1 (-1) BER
Well, at this point, our kings of efficiency are Hanyadi, Thorbjornsson, Running Back, Vermillion, and Nakamura. Nobody has better efficiency on more carries than any of them. Going the other way, those who have nobody with more carries and less efficiency, we have Fuzzy Dotson, Anders Christiansen, Jim the Vampire, Zoe Watts, Mai Fukushu, Baby Yoda, and then Nakamura. Of course, this metric will share whoever has the most carries overall, but Nakamura definitely belongs on the top list considering the closest guy to him with over 40% still has 22 less carries.
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