How Bad Was Ray Rice in 2013?

by Chase Stuart on March 15, 2014

Rice just barely averaged his height in 2013.

The 2013 season was a disaster for Ray Rice, and 2014 isn’t off to a very good start, either. Last season, Rice carried 214 times for just 660 yards and four touchdowns, producing an anemic 3.1 yards per carry average. On November 9th, I asked whether Rice was already washed up; at the time it felt a bit premature, but in retrospect, such a view seems much more reasonable. Averaging so few yards per carry over such a large number of carries is pretty rare. How rare?

As a disclaimer, I’m in the camp that thinks YPC is an overrated statistic. In 2013, Marshawn Lynch, Eddie Lacy, and Frank Gore all averaged around the league average of 4.17 yards per carry, but that doesn’t make them average backs. So consider much of this post to be a bit of trivia and fun with stats, rather than the best way to identify running back productivity. With that disclaimer out of the way, I calculated each player’s “yards above league average” for each season since 1950, which is the product of a player’s number of carries and the difference between his YPC average and the league average YPC rate.

For example, since Rice averaged 3.08 YPC on 214 carries, he gets credited for being 231 yards below average in 2013. By this measure, Rice was the worst running back in the league. He was worse than his teammate Bernard Pierce (who actually had a lower YPC average but on fewer carries, so he finished 197 yards below average), worse than Willis McGahee (-198) or Rashard Mendenhall (-217), and even worse than Trent Richardson (-220). And this wasn’t your typical worst season in the league, either: his 2013 performance ranks as the 15th worst in this metric since 1950:

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Rk	Runner	Year	Age	Tm	Rsh	RshYd	RshTD	YPC	LgAvg	YdsOvAvg
1	Eddie George	2001	28	TEN	315	939	5	2.98	4.06	-339
2	Lamar Smith	2001	31	MIA	313	968	6	3.09	4.06	-302
3	Jonathan Wells	2002	23	HOU	197	529	3	2.69	4.22	-302
4	Eddie George	2002	29	TEN	343	1165	12	3.4	4.22	-281
5	Eddie George	2003	30	TEN	312	1031	5	3.3	4.16	-267
6	Ottis Anderson	1989	32	NYG	325	1023	14	3.15	3.95	-261
7	Ricky Williams	2003	26	MIA	392	1372	9	3.5	4.16	-258
8	Larry Brown	1973	26	WAS	273	860	8	3.15	4.06	-249
9	Harold Green	1993	25	CIN	215	589	0	2.74	3.89	-247
10	Edgerrin James	2006	28	ARI	337	1159	6	3.44	4.16	-242
11	Cedric Benson	2010	28	CIN	321	1111	7	3.46	4.21	-240
12	James Jackson	2001	25	CLE	195	554	2	2.84	4.06	-237
13	Karim Abdul-Jabbar	1997	23	MIA	283	892	15	3.15	3.98	-234
14	Benny Malone	1979	27	WAS	176	472	3	2.68	4	-232
15	Ray Rice	2013	26	BAL	214	660	4	3.08	4.17	-232
16	Trent Richardson	2013	22	2TM	188	563	3	2.99	4.17	-220
17	Tom Tracy	1961	27	PIT	147	402	2	2.73	4.22	-218
18	Rashard Mendenhall	2013	26	ARI	217	687	8	3.17	4.17	-217
19	LaDainian Tomlinson	2009	30	SDG	223	730	12	3.27	4.24	-216
20	Darren McFadden	2012	25	OAK	216	707	2	3.27	4.26	-214
21	Abner Haynes	1966	29	DEN	129	304	2	2.36	4.01	-213
22	Jerome Bettis	2003	31	PIT	246	811	7	3.3	4.16	-212
23	Rob Carpenter	1984	29	NYG	250	795	7	3.18	4.02	-210
24	Lee Bouggess	1970	22	PHI	159	401	2	2.52	3.83	-208
25	Chester Taylor	2010	31	CHI	112	267	3	2.38	4.21	-205

In the 2000 calendar year, Eddie George had 519 carries. In the 2001 season, he produced the single worst season (according to this formula) since 1950. The next two seasons was nearly as bad, as George produced bottom-5 seasons in three consecutive years.

As you might expect, most of the running backs at the top of the list were very good running backs (or the lead backs on terrible teams — or both). They made it on to the list by virtue of getting too many carries when they were washed up or simply having a ton of carries in a very down year. At 27 in 2014, Rice is still pretty young, so he could end up with a Ricky Williams-like bounce back. Or, at 27, Rice is now old for a running back, and he could have a Larry Brown-like dropoff: the former Washington star was the NFL MVP in 1972, made this list in 1973, and then rushed for just 838 yards on 280 carries over the rest of his career. To the extent you believe a heavy workload signals overuse which leads to the wheels falling off, note that Rice led the NFL with 1,299 carries from 2009 to 2012 (including the postseason).

Since I already crunched the data, let’s close with a look at the best performances since 1950 in this statistic:

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Rk	Runner	Year	Age	Tm	Rsh	RshYd	RshTD	YPC	LgAvg	YdsOvAvg
1	Barry Sanders	1997	29	DET	335	2053	11	6.13	3.98	720
2	Jim Brown	1963	27	CLE	291	1863	12	6.4	4.05	684
3	O.J. Simpson	1973	26	BUF	332	2003	12	6.03	4.06	654
4	Barry Sanders	1994	26	DET	331	1883	7	5.69	3.72	651
5	Adrian Peterson	2012	27	MIN	348	2097	12	6.03	4.26	614
6	Eric Dickerson	1984	24	RAM	379	2105	14	5.55	4.02	582
7	Walter Payton	1977	24	CHI	339	1852	14	5.46	3.85	547
8	Michael Vick	2006	26	ATL	123	1039	2	8.45	4.16	528
9	Jamaal Charles	2010	24	KAN	230	1467	5	6.38	4.21	499
10	O.J. Simpson	1975	28	BUF	329	1817	16	5.52	4.01	497
11	Chris Johnson	2009	24	TEN	358	2006	14	5.6	4.24	488
12	Randall Cunningham	1990	27	PHI	118	942	5	7.98	4.1	458
13	Jamal Lewis	2003	24	BAL	387	2066	14	5.34	4.16	456
14	Earl Campbell	1980	25	HOU	373	1934	13	5.18	3.97	452
15	Terrell Davis	1998	26	DEN	392	2008	21	5.12	3.99	445
16	Jim Brown	1958	22	CLE	257	1527	17	5.94	4.23	439
17	Tiki Barber	2005	30	NYG	357	1860	9	5.21	4.01	430
18	Jim Brown	1965	29	CLE	289	1544	17	5.34	3.92	411
19	Ahman Green	2003	26	GNB	355	1883	15	5.3	4.16	407
20	Michael Vick	2004	24	ATL	120	902	3	7.52	4.14	405
21	Larry Johnson	2005	26	KAN	336	1750	20	5.21	4.01	404
22	Frank Gore	2006	23	SFO	312	1695	8	5.43	4.16	398
23	Shaun Alexander	2005	28	SEA	370	1880	27	5.08	4.01	398
24	Marshall Faulk	1999	26	STL	253	1381	7	5.46	3.9	395
25	Otis Armstrong	1974	24	DEN	263	1407	9	5.35	3.88	387

Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of overlap between this list and this list. But this time, Barry Sanders takes the top spot.

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