The false analogy may be true. But it’s possible that the long-run outliers had other effects on the game. For example – and this is anecdotal, not statistical – it seems clear to me that teams were forced to stack the box against McCoy because of his threat of breaking the long run. So it would be interesting to see if there were a correlation between the presence of a long run threat, and the long or mid-range pass game, which would show you the influence of the long runs on the game overall. In football, everything is connected to everything else in one way, shape or form.