Green Bay Packers running back Aaron Jones is on injured reserve with a sprained MCL in his right knee, so his 2018 season will end with the following stat line: 12 games played, 133 carries, 728 rushing yards, 5.47 yards per carry. And if the season ended today, Jones would be crowned the 2018 Yards per Carry king. But is that right? What makes Jones the winner? Let’s go into the fine print.

Johnny Townsend would be the YPC king if there was no minimum threshold involved: he has 1 carry for 42 yards this season.

Among players with more rushing yards than Townsend, Jarvis Landry (3-60-20.0) would be next in line.

Among players with more rushing yards than Landry, D.J. Moore (13-172-13.2) would be your YPC king.

Among players with more rushing yards than Moore, Raheem Mostert (34-261-7.7) is next up.

Among players with more rushing yards than Mostert, Josh Allen (80-536-6.7) would be the YPC king.

Now, should 500 rushing yards (or 80 carries) be enough to enable a player to qualify for the YPC title? It’s below the current threshold, which is set at an arbitrary 6.25 carries per game, or 100 carries in a 16-game season. So unless Allen has 20 carries next week, he’s not going to finish with enough carries to qualify for the crown.

The player with the highest YPC average among players with more rushing yards than Allen is indeed Jones, at 133-728-5.5.  But just as one could argue that Allen doesn’t have enough carries (or yards) to qualify, one could say the same about Jones.

After Jones, the player with the highest YPC average players with more rushing yards than Jones is Phillip Lindsay (182-991-5.4, prior to tonight’s game). And at higher levels than Lindsay, Christian McCaffrey, Saquon Barkley, Todd Gurley, and Ezekiel Elliott would all have claims to the throne.

But I don’t think we need to move past the Broncos running back, as I think any carry cutoff would include Lindsay: 182 carries is more than enough to qualify for the YPC crown. But what about Jones’s 133 carries? It’s 49 less than Lindsay, but only 53 more than Allen. By the end of the year, Jones will finish closer in carries to Allen than to Lindsay.

So what’s the right answer?  There’s no right answer as to what the minimum should be: 80 carries, 100 carries, 125 carries, or 150 carries could all “feel” like the right answer.  But I don’t like arbitrary cutoffs, so this summer, I introduced another solution: calculate the league average YPC both with and without that player; whoever moves the league average the most is the true YPC King. Right now, the NFL average gain per carry is 4.426 yards.  And the average gain on rushing attempts this season by everyone other than Aaron Jones is 4.414 yards.

That’s pretty good, but it only lands Jones in 4th place.  Cleveland’s Nick Chubb (183-972-5.3) would be in third place, as the average non-Chubb carry has gone for 4.412 yards.  Thought of another way, Chubb has 244 more rushing yards on 50 more carries, a 4.88 YPC difference.  That’s impressive, and in my opinion, makes Chubb more worthy of the YPC crown than Jones.

Allen is in second place: all carries not by the Buffalo rookie quarterback have gained 4.411 yards this season.  It’s harder to compare, but think of it this way: Jones has 53 more rushes than Allen, but only 192 more yards (3.62 YPC).  Let’s ignore that Allen is a quarterback: from a purely mathematical standpoint, Allen’s YPC average is more impressive.

But it’s Lindsay who steals the crown. All rushing attempts this season by every player in the league other than the Broncos undrafted rookie free agent have gone for 4.410 yards.  Lindsay has 263 more rushing yards than Jones on 49 more attempts, a 5.37 YPC average.  In my mind, it’s clear that Lindsay has had the most impressive YPC season of any player in the NFL in 2018, at least so far. ^[1]Of course, the season is not over. Lindsay has just 54 yards on 28 carries (1.93 YPC) the last two weeks. How he plays in his final two games will be critical to determining both the real YPC king … Continue reading

As an aside, it’s been a remarkable year for rookie running backs.  This season, rookies have rushed 2,376 times for 11,182 yards, an insane 4.71 YPC average.  That’s headlined by Barkley, Chubb, Lindsay, and Allen, of course.