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Should we be buying shares of Darrell Henderson?
There is some clamor in fantasy circles that Darrell Henderson is a buy now candidate. They are slating him into the Todd Gurley role and hoping he has a 2nd season breakout.
How often does that actually happen?
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There is some clamor in fantasy circles that Darrell Henderson is a buy now candidate. They are slating him into the Todd Gurley role and hoping he has a 2nd season breakout.
How often does that actually happen?
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Henderson was active for 13 games and had 39 rush att for 147 yds. A little under 4 ypc, which was on par with Gurley and Brown.
How often does a rookie RB garner so few carries in year 1 and then go onto success in the NFL?
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How often does a rookie RB garner so few carries in year 1 and then go onto success in the NFL?
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I am going to define success as rushing for over 5k yards in a career. This allows for at least 3-4 seasons of fantasy relevant stats. Since 1970, there have been 119 players who meet this criteria.
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For rookie season parameters, I used </= 150 rushing yards and >10 attempts to weed out true bench players. Since 1970, there have been 436 rookie running backs who meet this criteria.
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Only 10 of those rookies went on to rush for over 5000 yards. They are Brandon Jacobs, Michael Turner, Larry Johnson, Deuce McAllister, Michael Pittman, Sr., Stephen Davis, Neal Anderson, Joe Morris, Mike Pruitt, and Mark van Eeghen.
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Based on these numbers, he has about a 2% chance of having a good career as an RB.
"But, JJ," you say, "he was a 3rd round pick and that draft capital will help him."
Let's narrow the search...
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"But, JJ," you say, "he was a 3rd round pick and that draft capital will help him."
Let's narrow the search...
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There are 89 rookie RBs who meet the criteria and were drafted in the first three rounds. Of those, 6 rushed for over 5k yards. That is a little better, giving Henderson a 7% chance of turning it around.
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7/9
Those 89 include the following from post 2000: Reuben Droughns, Deuce McAllister, Tony Hunt, Garrett Wolfe, Jacob Hester, Isaiah Pead, James Conner, Ronald Jones, and Darrell Henderson.
Jones has 768 Rush yds through 2 years and Conner has 1581 Rush yds through 3 seasons.
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Jones has 768 Rush yds through 2 years and Conner has 1581 Rush yds through 3 seasons.
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But realistically, only Deuce has done it in the past two decades. Chances are, if you can't get on the field as a rookie, you aren't going to be ultimately successful.
All stats are from Pro Football Reference.
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All stats are from Pro Football Reference.
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