Quote:I mostly agree on your take about Fournette.


I disagree slightly with the quote above. I think the O-Line was a far greater problem than what the backs did at the second level.

I'll try to illustrate that with some facts on message-board-whipping-boy TJ Yeldon. I'm not championing the guy. I was underwhelmed a bit when we drafted him, but he showed some potential in his rookie year and was largely stifled by poor blocking in 2016.


Yeldon had a whopping 4 games in which he received more than nine carries in the game in 2016. (Basically the weeks that Ivory was out or clearly not healthy enough to be effective yet.)


I'll break down his runs in these 4 games to illustrate my point that the line was more of a problem than Yeldon's ability at the second level. He rarely had any opportunity at the second level.


(Ivory actually ran over some defenders on the second level in about half of the few instances he had the opportunity -so I'll leave that one alone)

----------------------------------------------------------


Yeldon's Game One - 21 carries vs the Packers:


- On FIVE carries he gained more than five yards.

(3 of those were good stops by a LB. On was a shoelace tackle by a falling DT. The last was a TD in which he glanced off of a LB and than ran straight over HaHa Clinton Dix to score.)


- On FIVE more carries he was contacted by defenders behind the line of scrimmage and stopped behind, at, or just beyond the LOS.


- On THREE carries he was met behind the LOS but evaded the pressure to make a modest gain.


- On SEVEN carries he was met by contact right AT the LOS. (O-linemen were beaten by their opponents -

- in one of these plays he had an open hole to bounce into but failed to see it.)


- On the ONE remaining carry he made a short gain and was tackled by a LB and safety quickly. Nowhere to go.


----------------------------------

I'll get to the other games after lunch hopefully. But analyzing those 21 carries, I only saw 3 opportunities where he could have possibly done more than he did with the blocking he was given.


Maybe a Fournette or Cook or "RBx" does something magic with those 3 carries, but we're talking about a small amount of opportunity behind some pretty bad blocking in 2016.


Yeldon also had ~8 good runs mixed into those 21 carries including a touchdown that you must consider.

I'll try find it again but I seen a YPC analysis on all the NFL running backs yesterday. They picked each spot in the line like LT-LG-C-RG-RT and showed how many yards they got from each spot.


Turns out Yeldon was well below average running behind the LT-C-RT spots with around 2-3 YPC, where as he was well above league average running behind the LG and RG spots , around 5-6 YPC.

---