Will Eagles RBBC Tendency Impact Miles Sanders 2020 Fantasy Football Production?
“Doug Pederson doesn’t use a workhorse running back, we all know that”
“But Miles Sanders has a three-down skillset that he’s never had before”
“Yeah, but Miles Sanders only won the job when Jordan Howard went down with injury last year”
Sound familiar? That’s the range of statements that we read and hear. So where are we supposed to land on Miles Sanders for fantasy in 2020? The Eagles haven’t added anyone to the backfield but they have a knack of using the guys off the street (Boston Scott, Cory Clement, Wendell Smallwood, Josh Adams, etc) so are they going to split the touches?
Instead of trying to pick apart the arguments from different analysts, I decided to delve in to it myself. The goal being can we trust Miles Sanders in fantasy for 2020?
What have the Eagles done at RB in the Doug Pederson era?
As we know, when we look at the yearly stats, or even the individual box scores, they don’t always tell us the full story. So for this exercise, I actually went game-by-game through all of the Eagles games from 2016 to 2019 (the Doug Pederson era) and looked at what happened.
Confession time – I’m a Cowboys fan (I know, I know). So believe me when I tell you that I realised part way through this exercise that I’d spent far more time looking at the Eagles than I ever wanted to! Although it does make up for it when I stumbled on the games where the Cowboys beat them and those memories flood back – Amari Cooper OT winner in 2018 anyone?!
I digress.
Let’s start in 2016 – Ryan Mathews was the guy, he was the main back and he dominated touches in most of the games. One point against the ‘Pederson doesn’t use a workhorse’ camp.
Except for one thing, Ryan Mathews didn’t catch passes. Less than one target per game – he was not used in the passing game. So in steps Darren Sproles – the pass-catching king of the Doug Pederson era. In games where the Eagles were chasing, Darren Sproles took over – they can’t give away the game plan by only putting Sproles in on passing downs so he also took plenty of carries in those games. Shall we call it 1-1?
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Conclusion of 2016 – the only thing that seemingly stopped his RB1 from dominating touches in every game was that his RB1 didn’t catch passes so he had to move away from him in those gamescripts. In other words, he tried to use one main guy but the skillsets didn’t allow it.
So let’s move in to 2017 – Donald Trump was sworn in as President of the United States, the UK triggered Brexit, Mitchell Trubisky was inexplicably drafted ahead of Patrick Mahomes and the Eagles won the Super Bowl (side note: this season was particularly difficult for us Cowboys fans).
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Doug Pederson in the meantime, signed LeGarrette Blount to be his new RB1. With an odd stutter here or there, Blount was used as the dominant back in the first half of the season – again, Doug Pederson tried to use one dominant guy to carry the workload. In games where this was more of a split, it was because Blount was struggling.
And here’s a side-step to prove the need to look in more detail than the box score – in week 8 against San Francisco, Blount had 16 carries to Clement’s 10 – that’s a chunky split for Clement to take off him. But look deeper and we see that nearly all of Clement’s touches came at the end of the game when the Eagles were so far ahead that they pulled Blount out of the game.
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Now if we look at Blount’s gamelogs through the first half of the season, where Pederson was trying to use him as the guy, we see that his efficiency drops off to the point where he was only getting 2.07 and 3.00 yards-per-carry in weeks 7 & 8. So what happened next, they sign Jay Ajayi.
Put yourself in the Eagles shoes for a minute – they signed their guy at the start of the year, they’ve tried to get him dominating and using him as the main guy but he just isn’t efficient. So they go get someone who they think can take over that spot in Ajayi.
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Now, if you can’t tell, I’m trying to steer you towards thinking Pederson likes to use one main guy when he can, so you’d expect me to tell you that Ajayi came in and dominated? Alas, not to be. In fact, Blount generally stayed on the right side of the split but it was much more of a straight up backfield split during the second half of the 2017 season – and this is when the Eagles were on their superbowl run and in the eyes of the world – so perhaps this period of time has a big impact on our view of Pederson’s preference for splitting carries?
Ok, so we’ve got through the 2017 season and we will never speak of it again…
Post-Superbowl
2018, Blount is gone and Ajayi is the guy – they brought him in, used him in the superbowl run and got him up to speed, now it’s his backfield. Until he fractures his back in week 2 and then tears his ACL in week 5 – Doug Pederson’s plans to use one main back is once again up in smoke. And so Cory Clement and Wendell Smallwood take over – I don’t care what your plans are to use a main running back, if these are your guys then you’re going to have to split the touches.
And then something magical happens in weeks 8 & 9 where Josh Adams starts getting some time. Then BANG, from week 10 onwards it’s Josh Adams’ backfield – he’s a workhorse kind of guy and he shows Pederson he can handle it, Pederson is back to having a dominant RB1.
And so we come to 2019, at pick 53 in round two of the NFL draft, the Philadelphia Eagles select Miles Sanders – a running back who can carry the ball AND catch passes – praise be!
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But lets not forget he’s a rookie, and it’s not that easy to fit straight in to a three-down role. There’s the scheme, the play-calls, the O-line, the Eagles ability to injure all of their players, pass-blocking, etc. He gets touches but Jordan Howard establishes himself as the trust-worthy RB1 by week 3.
Wait, hang on. Didn’t Jordan Howard actually earn himself that dominant RB1 role – yes, yes he did. We talk a lot about Sanders but Pederson once again did establish a dominant RB1, only it was Howard. Until HE GOT INJURED TOO! Seriously, what is going on over there?!
And, just like that, Sanders is the guy.
What does it all mean?
Before we bring this to a head, there’s some key stats to bring in to this. And yes, I’ve just spent this whole time trying to convince you that Doug Pederson isn’t a touch-splitter like many think he is, but that’s not completely true.
Even when he does have a main guy, he still sprinkles in an RB2/RB3 to mix it up. In fact, the more consistent touches are actually the RB2/RB3 touches – they get somewhere between 7 and 12 carries per game, regardless of how much work the RB1 is getting.
And the other thing – and this concept is going to shatter illusions – they run less when they’re behind. But where the rushes drop from say 30 to 20 the RB2/RB3 touches stay fairly consistent and it’s the RB1 workload which changes.
Example:
Game 1 – 30 total Rushes – RB1 = 22 rushes; RB2/3 = 8 Rushes
Game 2 – 18 total Rushes – RB1 = 10 rushes; RB2/3 = 8 Rushes – holy moly, that looks like a backfield split to me!
Technically yes, but its more that the RB1 just suffers from there not being as many rushes available in those games.
Ok, I promised you a conclusion.
2020 Outlook
Pederson uses a guy for the majority of rushing touches, unless they prove themselves to be inefficient or they can’t catch passes.
Can Sanders catch passes? Absolutely he can. He proved that last year and Eagles fans will go out of their way to show you that tight-window catch in the end zone against Washington.
Will Pederson trust Sanders to be efficient? Based on the end of 2019 and his pedigree, for sure. And what has Pederson done in an offseason when he’s not had a trustable back, he’s gone and got one. What did he do this offseason….nothing. That tells us what we need to know about his trust in Sanders. Which means we can trust Miles Sanders as a fantasy RB1 in 2020.
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So what production can we expect?
Lets work backwards – we’ve established that the RB2/3 is going to get 7-12 touches per game, so let’s give Scott and Clement 130 rushes across the season.
We also know that Wentz will rush around 60 times.
For total rushing production, we can expect the Eagles to rush around 440 times across the season – that’s close to 2019 numbers and Vegas expects a similar win/loss record.
How are your calculators going? I make that around 250 carries for Sanders.
That would have been 8th most last year. And with his pass catching (could be around 80 targets based on his second-half pace), that’s easily RB1 volume. I’m going to get further in to projections soon to look at his likely Yards Per Carry, touchdown volume, catch rate, etc to get a true value of where he sits. But one thing is for sure, we should not be concerned about his volume.
So does Doug Pederson really like to split his backfield touches? A little but not significantly.
Has Doug Pederson HAD to split touches due to circumstances (injury, inefficient backs, etc)? Absolutely he has. And the total season stats seemingly reflect this every year. But as noted by some famous philosophers, things are not always as they seem…
