Source
r/fantasyfootball•
vsbom

I've updated my RB Yards per Carry (YPC) Histogram tool - take a look!

I've updated my tool that plots a histogram of a player's rushing attempts over the course of a season. Check it out here:

http://ypcgraph.com

What's a histogram?
It's just a fancy word for a distribution graph. The x-axis value an event (in this case it's the number of yards), and the y-axis is the number of times the event occurred (in this case the number of plays for the player that achieved that yardage).

I like my single YPC number just fine.
Well, you shouldn't, because it's an average (over the course of a season too), and averages generally suck, because you lose so much information. A histogram shows how often an RB makes 4-6 yard runs, versus many 1 yarders and a few long ones sprinkled in.

And how many times have we heard "if you remove that one long run..." There was a great post about how misleading YPC can be from a month ago here.

So, this is the perfect RB analytic tool then!
Not quite. Yardage isn't the best indicator of performance - for example in week 3 of 2015, LeGarrette Blount rushed 3 times for a gain of 1 yard... but scored touchdowns on all 3. So clearly those were good 1 yard runs, which this tool can't differentiate. And the same applies to first downs and time management. This is just one more dimension you can use to evaluate a player.

This looks familiar...
I shared it a year ago, but I've rewritten the entire UI since then and added some more features. Hopefully it's snappier and a little quicker to respond.

I have a cool idea for this. Can you do it?
I probably won't say no. Most of the features I have now were from other people's inputs a year ago. So fire away! Also, let me know if you see any bugs.

Posted Oct 15, 2016, 5:34 PM UTC

6019
Clispy•

Absolutely fantastic. Thank you for this resource

6
TotalFNEclipse•

What exactly are we looking for? Obv charting higher stats on the usage and the further right (indicating yards gained per touch).. also taking note of the green for PPR usage.

Is that the gist of it? Also, nice work!

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Clispy•

As I understand it, a positive indicator is the overall arch of the graphed data as a whole. the higher and further to the right the main arch is and the longer to the right the graph goes, the better.

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vsbomOP•

Yup, I added receptions as well to show off the pass-catching backs.

I like using this tool to compare two RBs on the same team, since there are fewer OL variables.

For example:
Langford and Howard (CHI)
Coleman and Freeman (ATL)

As for what do I look for? I would suggest looking at the top rushers of 2015 (AD, Gurley) and 2014 (Bell) and taking note of their shapes. I notice less talented backs tend to have a sharp dropoff around the 6-7 yard line (like 2016 Langford). Good rushers have a strong plateau of 3-6 yard plays, and a gradual dropoff further out.

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dibsODDJOB•

Could you add median Rush to the data? I wonder if that'd be an easy metric to gauge performance as well. Maybe add that and average to the graph?

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PaKii94•

Thanks for this dude. It should be useful when trying to assess talent for trades

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sammy_dumpster•

Thanks for making this. If you wouldn't mind could you add the median in the metrics section or highlight the median in the histogram.

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Singh711•

Chart doesn't it show on iPhone 7?

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luketastic•

This is great. One thing I might recommend as an option is the ability to scale all graphs based on the same max. For example if you compare Mike Evans to Sammie Coates, the scale is 0-10 vs 0-3 thus making it harder to visually compare.

Thanks!

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Jaerba•

This is very cool, thank you!

The player that strikes me the most is Deandre Washington. Most of the top RBs have a skewed normal distribution but his is bipolar which seems like it'd be unsustainable. He's either 1 yard or 5-10.

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[deleted]•

[deleted]

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vsbomOP•

Gotcha, so like if you're on Le'Veon Bell for 2016 and you click the year dropdown and select 2014, it'll load his stats right away?

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[deleted]•

[deleted]

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vsbomOP•

Fixed. Also, it was exactly three lines of code.

The behavior gets a little weird when players didn't exist that year or switched teams (the graph is blank), but you can just select another player.

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[deleted]•

[deleted]

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TetraBug•

Looking at Gurley made me want to cry

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ffootball1001•

Damn this makes Lamar Miller look like a chump. Only 7 carries for over 10 yards and 0 for over 15....

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rockstarrichg•

This is awesome, thank you for putting this together!

I have a few suggestions. I think when seeing this data people will instinctively try to use it to compare players, but I find it a bit hard to do that with this visualization. Would you consider these suggestions to help improve ability to compare?

Would you consider changing the Y axis to % of touches? This would not change the shape at all but would normalize the axes and allow you to compare across players. The data labels could still show the # of touches.

Would you consider adding the option to toggle a benchmark on/off? For example it would be useful to see the league-wide average, perhaps as a line graph with the histogram overlaid on top. Seeing the two data sets in the same chart will easily allow you to spot over/under-performers. Benchmarks could include league-wide average, team-wide offense, and team-wide defense. You could gain so much insight by looking at the data in this way.

Would you consider adding an option to change bucket size? i.e. buckets of size 2 would show runs of 0-2, 2-4, 4-6 yards as opposed to buckets of size 1 which show 0-1, 1-2, 2-3 etc. This can help smooth out the histogram shapes where sample size is smaller.

Would you consider adding visual indicators for the mean and median YPC onto the chart?

Would you consider adding a way to break out performance by week?

I have a few other suggestions related to general usability:

Consider a modification where you can create a unique URL for each chart you're showing (including when showing additional charts), and when you change options in your picklist, change the URL to match. This way people can share links to your site that will show exactly the chart(s) they want, rather than asking people to look something up or post images, as you've had to do in this thread. This could really expand your traffic - I could see this tool becoming an often-cited resource on r/ff and beyond if only it were easy to share. For example see the trade analyzer at FantasySP where I can link directly to a trade analysis on two players.

If you do the above modification I think it would be beneficial to link players from your top 100 page to their charts.

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vsbomOP•

Damn, that's a lot of good feedback! Let me try to respond to all of your points:

% touches

I typically dislike using percentages, because I don't like using percentages as a means of comparison. I'm working on a way to make the Y-Axis maximum more normalized, but some players have 52 2-yard runs, others have 3, which makes it visually tough to do.

League benchmarks

I can crunch the numbers each week, though I may roll this feature into the visual indicators on the chart. I really like putting the mean / median line on the graph.

Bucket size

Interesting - I'll play around with this one, never thought of it before.

Unique URLs

Absolutely. It's not as straightforward as it seems because I need some additional info along with the player, but I'm trying to make it happen. Probably the most important feature I want to add right now.

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IVovak•

FYI if you go to top 100 and sort by YPC, Heyward-Bey shows up at #3 with his 60.0 YPC.

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vsbomOP•

Thanks, you also helped me find a sorting bug. I appreciate the feedback.

Technically, he had one rush for 60 yards...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbNJJQ3HUmc

I may impose a minimum number of carries in the future.

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IVovak•

No problem. I figured you were somehow sorting by just he first digit and not the full number. I DID remember the run, was a nice play.

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