You can find limitless analysis on NFL Network, ESPN, Twitter, etc. But, I wanted more. I wanted to create my own opinions about prospects, because no analyst is perfect. No draft class is looked back without question marks. How did David Johnson fall all the way to the 3rd round before becoming one of the best running backs in the NFL? How did Laurence Maroney get drafted 21st overall, but never rush for more than 1,000 yards in a season?
This article contains my findings. The stats that I have found will never be intended to be used on their own as a predictor. Rather, these stats are another piece to add to the puzzle, as coachability, passion for the game, scheme fit, and injuries are hard to predict from an outsiders view.
With that out of the way, let's have some fun shall we?
The College Dominator
I originally found this stat on playerprofiler.com. Here is their description:
College Dominator Rating – first outlined by Frank DuPont in the book Game Plan, the college dominator rating represents a player’s “market share” or his percentage of his team’s offensive production.
For wide receivers and tight ends, the dominator rating is the percentage of team receiving production. For running backs, it is the percentage of total offensive production, because running backs are involved in both the running and passing game. College Dominator Rating is not relevant for the quarterback position.
So basically, a player’s college dominator describes how large of a part of their college offense they were.
2017 NFL Season
Why is the College Dominator relevant? Since the scope of this article is for college prospects entering the draft, let’s grab the RBs that rushed for at least 300 yards in the NFL last season.
2017 RBs over 300 rushing yds
As this table shows, 36/48 or 75% of rbs last year with at least 300 yds rushing had a college dominator of 30% or more. Also notable is all 8 (drafted) rbs that rushed over 1000 yds have dominator over 30%.
Not included in the above table because of injury was David Johnson who posted a 46% college dominator.
History
There seemed to be a correlation with college dominator and successful running backs last year. Still, I needed to see if that trend held true in past years as well. I took it upon myself to grab data for all running backs in college since 2000. Then, starting with the 2004 draft class, find out what their college dominator was and see if we could split out busts from successful running backs in each draft class.
Stats were pulled from www.sports-reference.com/cfb/ and the formula I applied was the player’s percentage of team yards and percentage of team touchdowns averaged together over the course of the season (both rushing and receiving stats). Injuries were accounted for. In the event that a player missed one or multiple games, their stats were prorated over the whole season to give a more accurate representation.
Lots of names here in the table above. First off, as expected, most RBs that make a big impact in the league come from the first 3 rounds in the NFL draft. So, almost every RB listed in the table above was drafted in the first 3 rounds. Green players I’ve marked if they’ve been pretty good in the league. Players marked red are what I consider busts. Players not marked are what I’ve considered in between. You may disagree on some, but overall I think we can see some trends. Let’s break it down.
Column 2 is the column I’ve labeled “Who to draft”. Starting off, any player with a college dominator over 50% made this column. The following players accounted for half of their college’s offensive production in at least 1 season: Matt Forte(60.3% !!, Round 2), Brian Leonard (Rd 2), Mewelde Moore (Rd 4), Alfred Morris (Rd 6), and Brandon Miree (Rd 7). It’s a selective list, but it seems as if it’s worth a chance taking a RB over 50% dominator.
Next, players taken in the first 3 rounds and a dominator over 45% made Column 2. This includes a small list of Steven Jackson, Christian McCaffrey, Adrian Peterson, Le'veon Bell, David Johnson, and Garrett Wolf. Some real studs can be found here.
Following that any RB who scored a 40% college dominator and drafted in the first 2 rounds. Players in this category include Chris Johnson and LeSean McCoy among others.
Finally, moving into the first round, any player taken in the top 15 with a 35% dominator has a pretty high success rate. Todd Gurley Melvin Gordon, Marshawn Lynch, and Trent Richardson sit here. If we look in the top 10 of the first round, Ezekiel Elliott and C.J. Spiller round out this list with a dominator over 30%.
That covers column 2 and the players to draft. Following these “Rules”, you can get odds in your favor of selecting a successful RB. As you’ll see in the following paragraphs, there’s a lot of busts to be found with lower dominator ratings.
Moving on to Column 3 and players to consider drafting. This column, titled “maybe”, we find all running backs drafted in the first 3 rounds with at least a 30% dominator that were not already weeded out earlier. Also, I included any running back drafted in the later rounds that had a 40% college dominator.
The sobering truth is that while a large number RBs in the NFL have over a 30% dominator, there are many, many RBs that bust as well. At this point 62% of running backs that fall in this range and not taken out in column 2 have busted. The point here is that a RB with a 30% dominator or more does not make them a sure thing.
Lastly, column 4 called “Do not draft” is all remaining RBs under 30% college dominator and drafted in the first 3 rounds. Predictably, high bust rate in this area as well. 52% of RBs in this column are busts. That actually is a bit better than column 3, but I think that’s more variance than anything.
To recap, here are the rules, with the first column separating dominator ratings:
Note: If you are interested in seeing QBRs of QBs that were drafted in the past 2 years, I’ll list those at the end of the article.
2018 Draft Class
What does the 2018 draft class look like? Here are some of the notable names.
No RBs are above 50%. Those don’t come around every year.
Using the rules laid out above, 2 RBs rise to the top of my draft board. Rashaad Penny and Saquon Barkley. Barkley isn’t a surprise, as he is on the top of everyone’s board. Barkley posted 34.7% dominator during his sophomore year. Projected to be taken in the top 10, Barkley compares to Ezekiel Elliott and C.J. Spiller who had similar dominator ratings and were taken in the top 10. Penny, on the other hand, may come as a small surprise. With a 40% dominator during his last season, he put himself in position for a high chance of success in the NFL. If Penny is taken by the end of round 2, he compares to guys like LeSean McCoy and Ray Rice in terms of success.
Moving down to Ronald Jones, he needs to go top 15 to stand up next to guys that have been successful. Nick Chubb, shared the backfield with some good backs while at Georgia. During his Sophomore year he was only healthy for half the season. But, during those healthy games, he scored a 38% dominator. Going in the second round, and with that dominator, Chubb falls into a group that busted 85% of the time. Even if Guice goes in round 1, 6/10 players busted with a dominator below 30%. Sony Michel going in the second round with a 28.7% dominator gives him a very small chance of success as well.
Not too many other notable names to me. I listed a few guys at the end of the list with the highest dominator ratings in this draft. Yes, there will probably be a few successful RBs that I haven’t listed, but most will not.
Conclusion
Finally! The end of the article. What have we learned? Saquon Barkley and Rashard Penny are the two obvious choices in this year’s class. Probably only one out of Ronald Jones, Nick Chubb, Derrius Guice, and Sony Michel will live up to expectations.
Thanks for joining me! With any luck, I’ll have one more article out before the draft comes around that dives into WRs.
2016-2017 Draft Class
I didn’t include the last two draft classes above, because we have yet to get a perfectly clear read on these RBs. We saw how Todd Gurley rebound in his 3rd season and Jeremy Hill fall from grace after a good first year or two.
Here they are:
By Austin Goering
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