This was not a “stat butchering.” I could call it a quote butchering as you neglected to include, in your post, the comment by Hammer, to which I was responding and pointing out that Cobourne’s performance against Montreal was much like the performances of Walker about which Avon’s supporters regularly complain.
Hammer’s words: “I will take four-six yards a play any day over the occasional TD followed by several 2 yard runs and missed blocks.”
He, I believe, was suggesting that if we discard the occasional long TD run by Walker that the rest of his performance would be 2 yard runs and missed blocks. In response, I discarded Avon’s one long run and pointed out that the rest of his performance was “less than 2 yds.” per carry.
Is there somewhere where we can download detailed data on carries, not just total rushing yards and total number of carries, but how many yards were gained on each individual carry?
Unfortunately, some games include the player names in each play, but infuriatingly, some do not. So they play-by-play will tell you it was a rushing play by Hamilton, but it doesn’t always say who the ball carrier was. I thought the play-by-play for the Montreal game just hadn’t been “finished” yet, but some other games from this year (e.g. the opener against Saskatchewan) are also missing the player names. GRRRRRRRR.
Here is a breakdown of Avon’s regular season carries from last year (2011), which I believe is not missing carries from any of the regular season games. Note this is running plays only, not including pass receptions:
Just a quick note that my Cobourne 2011 breakdown below includes the two playoff games. I’m pretty sure it also includes all 17 regular season games Avon played in (he did not play in the last regular season game vs. Saskatchewan).
Here is another fun breakdown from 2011. Based on all the rushing plays, I looked at what each player's longest run per game was, and then averaged those across all the games where they had carries, to arrive at what each players "average longest run per game" was.
There was data missing from 3 games for 2011. The Grey Cup play-by-play had play results, but didn't identify players. The same was true for a late-season game between B.C. and Montreal. An early-season game between Edmonton and Toronto included 7 rushing plays where the runner was not identified. Note that "Games" in the table below is not necessarily all "Games Played", but rather, "Games where they had at least one rushing carry".
With that, here is the "average longest run per game" for players with more than 10 Rushes and an "Avg_of_longest_per_game" greater than 10 yds:
PLAYER Rushes Games Avg_of_longest_per_game
R. RAY 50 18 10.0556
A. CALVILLO 24 14 10.0714
M. THIGPEN 27 10 10.3000
D. DURANT 57 16 10.5000
J. ROBERTSON 63 9 10.6667
H. BURRIS 59 18 11.2778
C. LEMON 12 6 12.0000
T. BROWN 64 12 12.5000
B. PIERCE 64 16 12.7500
J. REYNOLDS 104 13 13.3077
A. HARRIS 102 17 14.4118
W. CATES 141 13 15.0769
H. CHARLES 60 10 15.4000
F. REID 183 12 16.0000
T. LULAY 46 17 16.4118
S. JYLES 56 8 17.3750
J. MESSAM 206 19 17.4211
A. WHITLOCK 11 1 18.0000
A. COBOURNE 229 19 18.0526
C. KACKERT 58 5 19.2000
J. CORNISH 135 19 20.7368
B. WHITAKER 240 18 21.1667
C. GARRETT 122 7 23.2857
C. BOYD 192 14 24.5714
L. COKER 29 6 25.5000
T. GRANT 21 4 28.0000