Running backs
Designed runs and targets. Scrambles belong to the QB.
Workload vs. efficiency
Each dot is a qualified back. Right = a bigger share of the team’s designed runs; up = more EPA per carry. Dashed line: league average on all designed runs.
Leaderboard
Click a column to sort. Ranks (EPA per carry) are among qualified backs.
How these are computed
- Designed runs are nflfastR
rush == 1plays that aren’t scrambles, including plays wiped out by a penalty. - Qualified: at least 6 designed runs per game the team played.
- An opportunity is a designed run or a target. Carry share is the back’s share of the team’s carries in the games he played.
- Stabilised (the Numbers switch): each rate pulled toward what similar players usually do, by an amount set by how much one season of plays can tell apart (fitted on 1999–2017 by splitting seasons in half; on 2018–2025 it predicted the other half of a season 25–56% better than the raw rate). The range after each number is a 90% interval; after the rank, the range of ranks it could plausibly hold. The prior rises with playing time: starters are better than backups.
- All numbers are descriptive: they don’t adjust for teammates, opponents or play-calling (except the teams page’s adjusted columns).
- EPA is nflfastR’s expected points added. WPA is win probability added from our own model (the registered WP model behind the 4th-down tool): per play in WP points, totals in wins. A touchdown earns the score plus the expected try; tries, kickoffs and returns earn their own WPA. For 1999–2025 these are the production model’s in-sample values.
- ± is a game-clustered standard error.
- * Some of this season’s games have play-by-play errors in the source (for example, every 2001 Jaguars home game is scored 21–3), so our WPA totals skip those games; rates use the games that remain.