by Chase Stuart
on July 16, 2014
Over the last three years, Chris Johnson has rushed 817 times for 3,367 yards, a 4.12 yards per carry average. Over the last three years, the Jets have had running back seasons where a rusher recorded at least 150 carries: Bilal Powell and Chris Ivory in 2013, and Shonn Greene in both 2011 and 2012. Collectively, in those four seasons, the group rushed 887 times for 3,647 yards, a 4.11 yards per carry average.
If you put a lot of stock in yards per carry as a metric, it would seem as though Johnson won’t be bringing much to New York in the running game. But today we’re going to take a closer look at the production of Johnson and the Jets back. And I’ve created some graphs that I think are pretty interesting.
Because Johnson has 817 carries since 2011 and the Jets backs have 887, we can’t just compare things on a carry per carry basis (i.e., 20th best carry for each). So instead, I’m going to look at their percentile ranks — i.e., how many yards they gained on X percent of their carries. This first chart looks at the percentile ranks for Johnson and the Jets backs over the last three years. For example, 22% of Johnson’s runs have gone for negative yards or no gain, while the 22nd percentile of Jets runs has been for one yard. In the table below, the X-axis represents percentile, and the Y-axis represents yards gained. In this chart, being higher is better, and the Jets green line is higher or even with Johnson’s blue line on about 75% of all runs. Then, at the end, things switch, with Johnson being more productive with respect to each group’s best runs. [continue reading…]
Tagged as:
Chris Ivory,
Chris Johnson,
Jets
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by Chase Stuart
on April 8, 2014
CJ1K?
After six seasons in Tennessee,
Chris Johnson is now a free agent. The star running back has had an up-and-down career. The successes are easy to document: since 2008, only
Adrian Peterson has more rushing yards, and Johnson has rushed for 1,299 more yards than the next closest back,
Matt Forte. Johnson was just 32 yards shy of 10,000 yards from scrimmage with the Titans, the second most in the league over that period behind only Peterson. There was a magical 2009 season, where Johnson rushed for 2,000 yards, averaged 5.6 yards per carry, and set the still-standing record for yards from scrimmage in a season with 2,509.
But there’s also the bad. In the four seasons since his Hall of Fame-caliber performance, Johnson has had 24 games with five or more carries where he averaged three or fewer yards per rush, the most such games in the league. In the last three seasons, Johnson has recorded 10+ carries and averaged 3.0 YPC or worse in 17 of his 48 games, also the most in the NFL. The man known as CJ2K became famous for his big play ability but has recorded a below-average YPC rate in two of the past three seasons. And while he’s never been a success rate star, he’s still checking in at below-average in percentage of successful runs in recent times, so it’s not as though the lower YPC average is a reflection of a style change to become a more consistent back. Last year, Johnson ranked 53rd in Advanced NFL Stats’ measure of success rate out of 84 eligible backs.
Johnson’s a pretty complicated back to analyze. He’s boom or bust, but he’s also displayed excellent durability over his career and is a consistent yardage machine. But he now rarely make big plays and is at an age where nothing is assured. In 2009, Johnson had 22 carries of 20+ yards; last year, he had only five such runs. So I decided a fun way to project Johnson’s 2014 season would be to run him through a similarity program based on nine factors. [continue reading…]
Tagged as:
Chris Johnson
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by Chase Stuart
on November 1, 2013
Not too surprising, I suppose. This includes all rushing touchdowns, including in the postseason, but does not include rushing touchdowns for 2013, not that it matters very much for Chris Johnson. :rimshot:
All players with at least 30 rushing touchdowns are included since 1940.
[continue reading…]
Tagged as:
Chris Johnson
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