Yesterday, I looked at how consistent passing offenses — as measured by Relative ANY/A — were from year to year. What happens if we look at rushing consistency from year to year?

To do that, I looked at rushing yards, relative to league average, for all teams from 2002 to 2018. That is shown in the graph below, with rushing yards relative to league average in Year N on the X-Axis, and rushing yards relative to league average in Year N+1 on the Y-Axis. The best rushing offense over this period was the 2006 Falcons, but they were actually below average in 2007 without Michael Vick.  In general, though, we see similar results to what we saw yesterday: a slight (and not as large as yesterday) positive correlation between Year N and Year N+1 productivity.

What about rushing defense? The biggest surprise is how similar the data appear for both rushing defense and rushing offense.  Again, the X-Axis shows rushing yards relative to league average, with a positive number meaning a good rush defense.  The Y-Axis shows the Year N+1 data.  In 2005, the Minnesota Vikings rush defense was slightly below average, but in 2006, Minnesota posted the top rushing defense of this period.

In terms of stickiness from year to year, rushing defense looks more consistent than passing defense, and exactly as consistent as rushing offense.