Quote:Actually, the article used a narrow sample of 'over 1000 yard rushers', which have drastically decreased over the last ten years anyway due to RB by committee. Of course guys in the first round are much more likely to have that situation especially going back that far (1994, which was a very different league).


Going by YPC is a much better stat and comparing it to round you can see that guys in the first are no more likely to be superstars than guys in the 2nd , 3rd, or even 6th over the last 10 years. What does that mean? That in general 1st round RBs aren't worth it anymore.

Despite it being limited to rushers over 1,000 yards, there were around six times as many RBs compared in the original article. That's what I mean by bigger sample size.


Yes, a lot has changed in the way RBs are used, but in using the smaller group of RBs from 2006-2016 you have taken a slice of draft history in which teams were waiting until the second round to draft players like LeVeon Bell, rather than picking them in the first round. And because fewer RBs are recorded, those players will skew the figures in favour of the second and third round RBs in a way those in the larger sample won't.


But I take the point that maybe there isn't a perfect way to compare, with the role and value of RBs changing so much.


And it's never that simple.


With Cook dropping out of the first round last night, we might see another "second round RB" performing just as well as the first rounders. Does that prove that you should wait until the second round or that this year a first round talent dropped into the second round because of character concerns? (Two, if you count Mixon).

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