

Yesterday, another reader thought it was a good thing I was not the Browns' GM when I joined a discussion of the relative merits of Saquon Barkley and Nick Chubb by saying that I'd take Chubb over Barkley every day of the week.

I based it upon my general sense of what's most important in a running back and what I've seen of the two men this season and in college. I share the view of many about Barkley: Immense talent whose spectacular plays are insufficient to offset the far too many ho-hum disappointing, unproductive plays and yards he leaves on the field.

I favor backs who get the most out of the routine plays - taking what the defense gives them and a little more or a lot more, depending on their talent. For me, and others, Barkley turns too many 5 yard gains into 1 and 2 yard gains or losses. Chubb, on the other hand, maximizes production every single time he touches the ball. Barkley has an edge in speed, but it's not that significant because Chubb is regaining the elite speed and acceleration he flashed in college. Like Barkley's, it is remarkable for a man his size.

Barkley is clearly the superior receiver, but we've seen some things this season from Chubb suggesting that he's going to be an excellent receiver himself as he matures.

Chubb's edge, in my opinion, is in the tough yardage he consistently gets that Barkley leaves on the table. Chubb has superior leg drive, balance and vision. He moves the stack, finds holes and exploits them more decisively than Barkley. Besides raw speed, he's lightning quick too. TV does not do justice to how he exploded up-field when he took the ball from the Bengals' six to their one yard line on Sunday. He looked more like a punt returner than a 225 pound running back.

What I (and others) see is confirmed by the data.

The leg drive, balance, vision and over-all superior RB skills are reflected in a couple places. First, there is the Yards After Contact stat often cited when comparing the two backs. Per Pro Football Focus, Chubb and Duke are 1-2 in Yards After Contact Per Attempt, at 4.5 and 4.4 yds respectively. Barkley is a distant 13th at 3.2 YAC/Att.

I downloaded cumulative data from Pro Football Reference for each team's offense. Plays. Yards. TD's, First Downs, % of plays resulting in first downs, TD's, INT's, Turnovers, PAT's, Punts, KO's, etc. Then I ran correlations between each metric and points scored by the offense (6 pts for TD's and 3 pts for FG's). I also ran correlations for those same metrics against average points scored per offensive drive. Data again, courtesy of Pro Football Reference.

Predictably, TD's had the highest correlation. PAT's and # of KO's were right behind. (stands to reason.)

Curiously, the second highest (albeit negative) correlation unrelated to TD's was # of punts. Makes sense - fewer punts means more scoring. Not surprisingly, then, the next highest correlation was first down conversion %, the percentage of scrimmage plays resulting in a first down. That was followed by total yards, # of first downs, and then, curiously, but if you think about it, not surprisingly, was another negative correlation with Average Yards To Go. The obvious connection is that the fewer yards needed to gain a first down, the more first downs you are likely to get. Consequently, given the high correlation between first down percentage and scoring, the more you gain on first and second down, the more you will score.

Rank Metric Value Rank Metric Value 1 TD 0.9347 11 2PR 0.3971 2 XPA 0.9025 12 Int -0.3949 3 KO 0.8855 13 Fum -0.3676 4 Punt -0.8854 14 Plays 0.3334 5 First Down % 0.8639 15 FG 0.1726 6 Yds 0.8364 16 FGA 0.1603 7 First Downs 0.7814 17 Pass 0.1478 8 ToGo -0.7470 18 2PP 0.0712 9 Sack -0.5751 19 Onsd -0.0504 10 TO% -0.5527 20 Rush 0.0419

With that information in mind, I examined Barkley and Chubb's stats. Sure enough, Chubb's First Down Percentage is substantially higher: 20% for Barkley, 25% for Chubb. Barkley has nearly twice as many Red Zone opportunities (carries + targets) (80-45), but only three more TD's (15-12), giving Chubb a much higher percentage of Red Zone TD's as a function of touches. (19% for Barkley to 27% for Chubb). [BTW- the percentages are similar when we count RZ receptions instead of RZ targets.)

Again, Barkley's edge is that he gets more carries and a lot more receiving opportunities in the Red Zone, just as he does elsewhere.

As for distribution of gains, both have a surprisingly high percentage of rushes for no gain or less, but Chubb's average loss is only half that of Barkley's, 0.9 Yds to 1.8. We see a similar difference in negative plays up to two yard gains, a number I arbitrarily selected as the cut-off for a reasonably productive rushing play.

Rushes Rushes Yds Yds % Rushes % Rushes % Yds % Yds Ave Carry Ave Carry Min Gain Max Gain Barkley Chubb Barkley Chubb Barkley Chubb Barkley Chubb Barkley Chubb -100 0 54 38 -95 -33 15.7% 15.3% 8.3% 3.4% -1.8 -0.9 -100 2 114 76 -6 25 33.2% 30.5% -0.5% 2.6% -0.1 0.3 1 2 60 38 89 58 17.5% 15.3% 7.8% 5.9% 1.5 1.5 3 5 55 50 208 194 16.0% 20.1% 18.3% 19.8% 3.8 3.9 6 10 38 24 288 177 11.1% 9.6% 25.3% 18.1% 7.6 7.4 11 15 7 9 95 111 2.0% 3.6% 8.3% 11.3% 13.6 12.3 16 20 3 6 55 113 0.9% 2.4% 4.8% 11.5% 18.3 18.8 21 30 6 4 160 99 1.7% 1.6% 14.0% 10.1% 26.7 24.8 31 50 2 2 96 81 0.6% 0.8% 8.4% 8.3% 48.0 40.5 51 100 4 2 249 155 1.2% 0.8% 21.9% 15.8% 62.3 77.5

Chubb does better in the 3-4 yard range, where most running backs "live", with a higher percentage of his runs and yards gained in that range. Barkley does better in the 6-10 yard range and the 50+ range, but Chubb pretty much rules the middle of the spectrum, whereas Barkley owns the bottom and the top.

Finally, Football Outsiders publishes a heavy-duty, bona-fide Analytics-based table of Running Back Value, measuring such things as DYAR (Defense Adjusted Yards Above Replacement), DVOA (Defense Adjusted Value Over Average), and Success Rate. Again, these metrics confirm numerically what the eye sees: Barkley the superior athlete. Chubb the superior running back. Per Football Outsiders, these terms are defined as follows:

The simple version: DYAR means a running back with more total value. DVOA means a running back with more value per play. The final statistic is Success Rate. This number represents the player's consistency, measured by successful running plays (the definition of success being different based on down and distance) divided by total running plays

Per their table (excerpted below), Barkley has more total value (lot more carries and total yards), but Chubb is more valuable per play and is much more consistent, which fits what we saw of Barkley in college and so far this season. NOTE: I moved Barkley and Chubb to the top to make it easier to compare their rankings, and reproduced some of the data for some of the more notable backs ranked ahead of both of them in DYAR.

Player Team DYAR Rk YAR Rk DVOA Rk VOA Runs Yards EYds TD FUM Suc Rk Rate N.Chubb CLE 85 17 142 9 2.10% 20 9.40% 183 972 817 8 0 51% 14 S.Barkley NYG 97 16 30 25 1.10% 23 -5.60% 244 1,198 1,019 10 0 41% 37 T.Gurley LAR 363 1 338 1 23.40% 1 21.10% 256 1,251 1,567 17 0 57% 4 D.Henry TEN 256 2 219 5 22.30% 2 17.90% 199 966 1,128 12 0 53% 11 A.Kamara NO 229 3 276 2 17.50% 5 22.90% 194 896 1,125 14 0 58% 2 M.Gordon LAC 196 4 231 3 20.60% 3 25.80% 165 843 896 10 0 53% 10 Omitted 5-8 E.Elliott DAL 142 9 117 14 2.40% 19 0.40% 304 1,437 1,343 6 6 50% 16 K.Hunt KC 132 10 130 11 8.70% 10 8.60% 181 840 867 8 0 55% 7 J.Mixon CIN 127 11 119 13 4.40% 14 3.70% 224 1,063 1,043 8 0 49% 20 Omitted 12-15

We can parse and nit-pick the data and what we see. It is not unreasonable to disagree with my point of view and maybe my homer-ism is showing. But to my "eye", Chubb looks more like an NFL Running back than a big, strong fast athlete. Thing of it is, Chubb is big, strong and fast in his own right.

Two articles mirror my thinking about Running Backs, and each provides a much more learned analysis. One is qualitative, and the other quantitative, discussing Football Outsiders' analytics.

As a couple other readers pointed out yesterday, one thing is sure. Chubb (35) >>> Barkley (2) in terms of bang for the draft capital buck.

I wish Barkley well. But I'm delighted with Nick Chubb. He's already a huge asset for this offense and will remain that way as long as he's healthy.