Don’t take Chris Johnson #1 in fantasy football in 2010
Don’t share this article with friends you’ll be playing with in a fantasy league next year, but the article makes perfect sense. Running backs cannot hold up, regardless of age, to the constant pounding of a running back that touches the ball 400 times or more a year.
Yes, this year Chris Johnson touched the ball 408 times, and he complied 2509 yards of offense, but how much did his participation this year take off his longterm career as a running back?
I come back to an article posted on the cold,hard football facts website about running back abuse. I’d credit the author, but none is listed.
Here’s what we found on the topic of abuse: the punishment a back can take depends largely on a player’s age. But there is a benchmark that seems to apply to everybody, and that benchmark is 400 touches (25 per game in the 16-game era). It’s not just the touches, of course, but the corresponding punishment that goes with attempting to negotiate a minefield of 11 large angry men and Ed Hochuli himself 400 times in a single autumn. We don’t like getting hit 400 times in a pillow fight with pink panty-clad college girls, let alone getting hit 400 times by a guy with cannon balls for biceps. Here’s what happens:
- A very, very young player (21 to 24) can exceed 400 touches once or twice early in his career, but the statistical chinks in the career soon appear.
- A player in his mid 20s – fourth or fifth year in the league – will certainly see his career or productivity cut short soon, if not immediately, by a single 400-touch season.
- And a player who exceeds 400 touches in his late 20s is all done.
As noted earlier this week, the players remembered most for going out on top, Jim Brown and Barry Sanders, got out at exactly the right time based upon the historic life cycle of a running back. And they got out after careers in which they actually were not abused like some of the other notable backs listed below. It’s the biggest reason they they were productive to the very end.
So Titans running back Chris Johnson is worried about breaking the single season record, but is he shortening his career in the NFL? History says yes.
