Leonard Fournette is averaging 5.0 yards per carry this season, a year after producing an anemic 3.3 average in 2018. After Fournette’s latest performance against the Bengals, his career average gain has once again bounced north of four yards. This prompted our friend Adam Harstad to note on Twitter that all those who were down Fournette because of his low yards per carry average could now rest easy since his YPC is once again above 4.0.

The graph below shows Fournette’s career yards per carry average after every game of his 28-game career.

There’s no question that Fournette’s YPC suffered for a large chunk of his time with the Jaguars. If we look at the middle 16 games of his career, he has 284 carries for 949 yards, an unimpressive 3.34 yards per carry average. That season-long stretch has been surrounded on each side with much stronger performances: in the first 6 games of his career, he had 130 carries for 596 yards and a 4.58 YPC average; in his last 6 games, he’s been at 131/649/4.95.

The graph below shows Fournette’s YPC average in each season of his career.

But the bigger point isn’t about Fournette, but about the usefulness of yards per carry as a metric. He’s now had 545 carries in his career. Four of them have gone for 69 or more yards, and all four came in the first or last 6 games of his career. His next two longest runs, of 30 and 48 yards, also came in the first or last 6 games of his career. The graph below shows Fournette’s gain on each of the 545 carries in his career.

Yards per carry is extraordinarily sensitive to outliers. Fournette has runs of 81, 69, and 48 yards this season. On those three runs, he’s picked up 198 yards; on his other 141 carries, he’s rushed for 517 yards, a 3.67 average. Yards per carry is always going to be an imperfect stat because it is not sticky from year to year; a player like Fournette is a good reminder of that.