Production is nearly always undervalued at the running back position. In part that’s because it’s not always the easiest thing to measure. Yes, we can easily look at the leaderboards in rushing and receiving yards and see who compiled the biggest numbers. But doing so leaves out a lot of context.
For one thing, it doesn’t tell us much about a player’s offensive environment? Was he playing with a running quarterback who didn’t throw much to RBs? Was he playing in a scheme that limited RB touches? The backfield dominator rating (BDR) attempts to account for these contextual elements by comparing a player’s production to that of his backfield mates. It tells us what percentage of a team’s backfield production each player accounted for.
While being a featured back in college is no guarantee of success, it has helped us to hit on some late-round gems who were otherwise going unnoticed and often undrafted in most fantasy leagues. Jamaal Williams, Aaron Jones, and Phillip Lindsay all dominated their college teams’ backfields, and all went on to NFL success despite a lack of significant draft capital.
In this piece we’ll look at the BDR numbers for 2023, break down a few of the more provocative individual RBs, and explain what is and is not a red flag for this particular metric. Is there a similar late-round gem in the 2023 class?
