Here’s a good article by Matt Harmon presenting the contrarian case against Todd Gurley as a fantasy player. One of Matt’s arguments against Gurley’s fantasy value is that he’s on a bad offense, and his numbers last year were only strong because he scored such a high percentage of St. Louis offensive touchdowns.

That math checks out: Gurley ran for 10 TDs (with no receiving touchdowns), while the Rams scored 27 total offensive touchdowns. That means that Gurley rushing touchdowns made up 37% of all Rams offensive touchdowns, which was the highest rate in the NFL last year, and the highest rate in the NFL in three years. The only other players in shouting range of that number were Adrian Peterson (11/32, or 34% of all Vikings offensive touchdowns) and Devonta Freeman (11/34, of 32% of Falcons touchdowns).

Another rookie from the SEC holds the modern record in this category. In 1981, South Carolina’s George Rogers was drafted by the Saints, and he led the NFL in rushing yards as a rookie. He also rushed for 13 touchdowns, despite the Saints finishing last in the league in scoring. Rogers rushed for 13 of the team’s 24 offensive touchdowns, or 54%. The table below shows the top 100 seasons by this metric since 1960:

A quick note: from a historical perspective, note that Emmitt Smith has *six* seasons in the top 66; no other player has more than four seasons in the top 100. Shaun Alexander, Earl Campbell, Eric Dickerson, and Walter Payton. That’s pretty interesting, and I’ll let you guys offer up your own historical thoughts in the comments.

As for Gurley? Simple math tells us that he can only score a lot of touchdowns if he continues to get an enormous share of the Rams pie or if the Rams pies increases. There are likely regression-to-the-mean aspects of both: yes, Gurley probably won’t continue to account for close to 40% of his team’s offensive touchdowns, but Los Angeles should improve, too. After all, the Rams offense scored only 27 touchdowns last year, 4th-fewest in the NFL (the 49ers had 23, the Cowboys had 24, and the Browns had 25). Ten rushing touchdowns is hardly an enormous number that requires you to build in a projected decrease.

Perhaps the bigger concern would be the boom-or-bust style of Gurley’s rookie year: he was consistently failing to pick up 4, 5, and 6 yard chunks relative to the average back. Along those same lines, Gurley ranked 9th in DVOA but just 36th in success rate. When it comes to young backs, usage rate is perhaps the most important thing to focus on, though that is not exactly infallible, either. I guess my takeaway with Gurley is that while his upside still seems incredibly high after his rookie season, his inconsistency and the bad offense he plays on still leaves a bit more downside than you might otherwise think. In other words, Gurley’s a pretty high variance running back in 2016 for a player who is projected to lead the NFL in rushing attempts.