Two-year extension for Jaylen Warren

You and SGSteelers kept bragging about Warren's YPC when he was RB2, I told both of y'all it would drop once he became RB1 .

 

A few of us did that. I believe STD did as well. What many of us have been saying about the offense limiting Harris the last four years is showing up again with Warren in the same role. It is even more pronounced because Warren is also less durable. That is part of why the running game is worse than it was last year.

 

It is subjective in how the criteria are chosen. I already explained this.

 

It is kind of funny given Warren's inability to handle much volume, but the averages per carry are the same.

 

Run along

 

Harris 1095 attempts
Warren 517 attempts

Warren in 2025 with the most attempts in one season… 4.0 ypc

 

No, we aren't saying they ignore them. We are saying they treat them differently.

The comparisons you brought up don't work, either. Gibbs is an elite back, far better than Harris, Warren, Montgomery, or all but a handful of backs in the league. The same is true of Robinson. I am certain you know this.

The fact remains that once thrust into the lead back role, Warren's average per carry dropped significantly. In fact, it is right in line with what Harris did last year. Question the logic all you want, the actual numbers demonstrate that we were right.

 

Nope, and I'm not falling for the distasteful bait you laid, either.

 

Run along

 

Got something to say about the topic? If not, perhaps you should be the one to run along. Smiles.

 

RBs that get paid are the dual threat types.

Both Gainwell and Warren are top 10 in receiving yards for RBs

 

You're using information from beyond Edmund's 5th season and comparing it to Najee's first 5 years.

We don't know what will happen with Najee in the future. Will the Chargers "want him" next year? We'll see.

I think he was better than Edmunds (but in a similar tier), so I won't be surprised if he's more wanted the rest of the way. Just like he was slightly more wanted in the offseason before his 5th season than Edmunds was. But will a massive injury like an Achilles soften his market? We don't know.

I think Najee seems like a good human. I hope he recovers fully in the off season so that he can get a job at the beginning of the preseason. And if he can be close to what he was, I think he'll find a consistent role in the league moving forward. But it's certainly not a given. RBs decline quickly (although maybe slow guys have less to worry about here?).

I agree strongly with your last sentence!

 

I think if you're going to make the claim that this matters, then I think you've got a bunch of work to do to prove it. Would results meaningfully change if you said a 3.75 yard run on 1st down was good?

It's also true that you can make this argument about any stat.

I think by this logic, it would be fair to argue that YPC is subjective because it subjectively chose to represent the distribution of results as a single number without any context for what the goal was on a particular play. Or that completion% is subjective because when WRs drop the ball, it's not the QBs fault.

But this argument would be silly. This is an objective stat. Just like succ%.

You can argue that you don't think it's meaningful. That you think that getting 2 yard runs on 1st down are actually a good thing. I think that's also silly. But it would explain why someone would like Najee's performance in the Burgh!

Note: Like all stats, there are issues with succ%. One thing I'd change about succ% would be to have some absolute threshold where a run was considered "successful". If your coach goes "Cowher style" and decides to run a draw on 3rd and 18, if you get a 10 yard gain I think that's still probably a good play. I still think it's a better stat than YPC. Because YPC implies consistency that's not that. And it's really telling you about how frequent a player gets long runs vs. how consistent they are.

Personally, I wish that I could click on a RB and see the distribution of their carries so we didn't have to use a "stat" to reflect it. But you might have to make the bins larger as the distance gets bigger (or maybe have the long tail on a log scale or something) because those lower probability big runs are really important.

 

Felt, you've finally realized why paying RBs isn't a good idea in the NFL!!!

Run success rate isn't a W/L stat.

Just like yards isn't a W/L stat.

This is why the position has been massively devalued.

1. Taylor leads the league in rushing yards. His team is 8-6 (same as us with Gainwell, which apparently "doesn't add up"). They won't make the playoffs.
2. Cook is 2nd. Bills are 10-4.
3. Achane is 3rd. Dolphins are 6-8.
4. Robinson 4th. 5-9.
5. Henry 5th 7-7.

At best 2 of these guys will make the playoffs (shockingly, it's the two that play with elite QBs). Hopefully Henry missed and it's only Cook that goes to the playoffs. Combined record of the top 5 RBs by yards is 36 - 34 (0.514).

It's not some big mystery here. It's that individual RBs aren't that important in the NFL. Even when you have guys who are the best in the league. It doesn't have a strong correlation to winning. Again, of the 5 best RBs in the league this year. The only 2 that still have a shot at the playoffs are the ones that play with Allen and Jackson.

I think the same thing should happen with WRs. And non-elite QBs. Edge rushers probably get paid too much too. The best edge rushers of this generation (TJ and Garrett) don't have great team success either. But the league makes it so you have to spend money somewhere. And most teams don't have the option to spend it on a QB that's actually worth the money.

Even when RBs mattered more, having an elite yard producer didn't mean you were going to be a good team.

Barry Sanders was one of the best RBs of all time (arguably the best all time). And played in an era when RBs mattered more than they do today. Lions were 74-90-1 with him starting. He averaged an insane 1,500 yards a year over 10 seasons! And they were playing 16 games. Most rushing yards ever by a RB in 1997. And they were 9-7 and lost in the WC.

OJ had the best RB season ever in 73 with only 50 fewer rushing yards (but they played 2 fewer games / season). And they didn't make the playoffs (although the playoffs were much harder to make back then).

 

Success rate is born from Expected Points Added (EPA) statistics. For every position on the field there are expected points from the possession. As an example,
1st and 10 is worth about the same as 2nd and 2 for just about every position on the field, meaning a team needs to gain 8 yards per play to maintain their expected points on a drive (aka “stay on schedule”). Further, there is no point on the field where a 3rd down is worth as much as a 1st and 10, meaning the notion of “3rd and manageable” is actually a misnomer.

 

Harris's average per carry as the lead back in 2024: 4.0

Warren's average per carry as the lead back in 2025: 4.0

Now remember that this is in an offense that is overall worse at running the ball than 2024, even if you take out the numbers from Fields.

Very much yes, whether you like it or not.

 

I think we're technically a little bit better at running the ball this year (I would agree that we still aren't good at it though).

But the defense sucks at getting off the field.

So we've had far fewer opportunities to run.

This is not good for guys like Warren who don't get big runs. It would likely be worse for a healthy Najee. Because he was even worse at getting big plays. Which is what we need if we're going to continue to run far fewer plays than the opposition.

The good news is that we were much better at this in Miami. We just need every game to be at home on Monday night in frigid weather against a team that generally sucks in the cold.

Sadly, this next game is against a team with an amazing offense in a dome. I think we're going to get killed...but this team is impossible to figure out.