Now, their system is proprietary, so there is no way for me to nitpick specifics because the entire system is a black box. But here is a possible reason that Foster’s success rate is higher this past year than the prior year – he played in more winning games. FO sort of made their name off of the debunking of the “establishing the run” mentality but they then lower the threshold for a successful run if you are winning late in the game (I don’t remember the specifics and I am pretty sure what they have in their almanac isn’t an accurate reflection of their formula).

Burke’s methodology is much more convincing in my opinion (now if he could only separate rushing vs. receiving plays). That 4 Yard gain on 1st down that FO uses was based off the Hidden game of Football IIRC. Burke’s data shows that a RB needs 5+ yards on 1st down to make the likelihood of converting another set of down greater than they were the previous play (assuming 1st and 10). So, FO’s baseline doesn’t have much credibility. In fact, I believe that they said at one point they use 4 yards because 5 yards on 1st down doesn’t happen nearly as often so they thought it was a high benchmark. To me, that just illustrates how the running game isn’t that important and teams run far too much.

The thing that bugs me the most is that many of their stats don’t even pass the eyeball test – especially regarding players that break off big plays like Adrian Peterson, Chris Johnson, Barry Sanders etc. etc. In 1997, FO’s stats imply that a replacement level RB for the Lions would’ve rushed for over 1600 yards. In fact, throughout Barry’s career their stats imply that a replacement level RB would be *very* good rushing for the Lions (and not good for the Broncos, Cowboys, and many other rush heavy teams). The funny thing is, anyone you put on the Broncos was effective and the year after Barry retired the Lions didn’t even match (as a team) what Barry ran for in 1998 (and their stats suggested a replacement would’ve run for *more* yardage than Barry in 1998).

I can put up some other nonsensical results but I generally don’t look at FO’s stats as being good indicators of anything when it comes to individual players (for teams they are great).