The RB quandary....

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.

Before judging Avon, I think it's only fair to:

  1. Give him a few games to get up to speed. The rest of the team is in midseason form; Avon is just starting.

  2. See how he runs against a team other than Montreal, which is arguably the most difficult team in the league to run against.

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?

The closest I have found is the play-by-play breakdowns like the one for the Montreal game here:

[url=http://liveplay.cflcentral.com/LPFiles/37_2012_cfllive_playbyplay.html]http://liveplay.cflcentral.com/LPFiles/ ... yplay.html[/url]

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.

[url=http://liveplay.cflcentral.com/LPFiles/9_2012_cfllive_playbyplay.html]http://liveplay.cflcentral.com/LPFiles/ ... yplay.html[/url]

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:


NAME            COUNT   PERCENTAGE      DISTANCE
"A. COBOURNE"   "2"     "0.8734"        "46"
"A. COBOURNE"   "1"     "0.4367"        "32"
"A. COBOURNE"   "1"     "0.4367"        "24"
"A. COBOURNE"   "1"     "0.4367"        "23"
"A. COBOURNE"   "2"     "0.8734"        "22"
"A. COBOURNE"   "2"     "0.8734"        "20"
"A. COBOURNE"   "1"     "0.4367"        "17"
"A. COBOURNE"   "1"     "0.4367"        "15"
"A. COBOURNE"   "2"     "0.8734"        "14"
"A. COBOURNE"   "4"     "1.7467"        "13"
"A. COBOURNE"   "5"     "2.1834"        "12"
"A. COBOURNE"   "5"     "2.1834"        "11"
"A. COBOURNE"   "5"     "2.1834"        "10"
"A. COBOURNE"   "9"     "3.9301"        "9"
"A. COBOURNE"   "8"     "3.4934"        "8"
"A. COBOURNE"   "10"    "4.3668"        "7"
"A. COBOURNE"   "9"     "3.9301"        "6"
"A. COBOURNE"   "22"    "9.6070"        "5"
"A. COBOURNE"   "21"    "9.1703"        "4"
"A. COBOURNE"   "30"    "13.1004"       "3"
"A. COBOURNE"   "26"    "11.3537"       "2"
"A. COBOURNE"   "26"    "11.3537"       "1"
"A. COBOURNE"   "11"    "4.8035"        "0"
"A. COBOURNE"   "10"    "4.3668"        "-1"
"A. COBOURNE"   "7"     "3.0568"        "-2"
"A. COBOURNE"   "3"     "1.3100"        "-3"
"A. COBOURNE"   "3"     "1.3100"        "-4"
"A. COBOURNE"   "1"     "0.4367"        "-5"
"A. COBOURNE"   "1"     "0.4367"        "-8"

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