"Why the Rams can't build an offense around Todd Gurley"

Why the Rams can’t build an offense around Todd Gurley

Aaron Schatz, Football Outsiders

http://espn.go.com/nfl/insider/story/_/id/13090969/why-st-louis-rams-build-offense-todd-gurley-nfl

The St. Louis Rams selected Georgia running back Todd Gurley with the 10th overall pick in this year’s NFL draft, but even that number 10 discounts just how strongly the Rams felt about Gurley as a player. Reports say that Gurley was the top player on the Rams’ entire draft board.

“We place a premium on that position,” head coach Jeff Fisher told the press. All reports indicate that the Rams plan to build their entire offense around Gurley and a run-first mentality.

It’s not going to work. In the modern NFL, it’s simply not a consistently winning strategy to build your offense around any running back. In the modern NFL, passing is king, and you need to build your offense around a quarterback.

Discussion of Gurley has to start with the fact that he may not even live up to the draft hype. Over the past decade, the only running backs taken high in the draft who really lived up to their draft status were Adrian Peterson and Marshawn Lynch, and Lynch had to be traded to a second team before he truly prospered. Every running back chosen high in the draft was supposed to be great. Trent Richardson and Darren McFadden were both supposed to be the next Peterson. C.J. Spiller was supposed to be the next Reggie Bush.

But let’s assume that Gurley is as good as advertised. Let’s assume he comes back from his ACL tear in fine form, and doesn’t spend his NFL career struggling with the ankle problems that have bothered him since high school. Let’s assume that he is one of the top 10 running backs of the next three seasons, the way Field Yates ranked him in a piece last week.

The best argument against the idea of a team building around the running back is the season that Peterson had for the 2012 Minnesota Vikings. He gained over 2,000 yards on the ground at over 6.0 yards per carry, and added an extra 40 catches to boot. It was the best-case scenario for what a team can get from a running back in today’s NFL. It’s very unlikely that Gurley will ever have a season as good.

And how good was this offense built around Peterson having one of the most dominant seasons by a running back in NFL history? The Vikings clawed their way to 10-6 and got clobbered in the wild card round of the playoffs. Their offense, despite Peterson’s incredible season, ranked just 15th in Football Outsiders’ DVOA ratings. The Vikings simply couldn’t overcome having a mediocre quarterback — in this case Christian Ponder putting up a 51.7 QBR in his second NFL season.

Football Outsiders measures an offensive skill player’s total value using a stat called DYAR, or defense-adjusted yards above replacement. Over the last 10 years, there have been 21 running backs who finished in the top five for total DYAR (combining both running and receiving) despite having a quarterback who did not finish in the top 10. Those 21 teams won an average of 8.8 games. Only nine of these 21 teams had top-10 offenses overall, according to Football Outsiders’ DVOA ratings that combine passes, runs and penalties. (Teams led by Peterson make this list twice, in 2012 and his rookie year of 2007 when Tarvaris Jackson was Minnesota’s starting quarterback.)

Now, let’s switch that around. In that same period since 2005, there have been 25 quarterbacks who finished in the top five for total DYAR despite not having at least one running back on their team in the top 10. Those 25 teams won an average of 10.5 games. Twenty of the 25 teams were top-10 offenses overall by DVOA. Two of these offenses, the 2009 Patriots and the 2011 Packers, were the No. 1 offenses by DVOA despite not having a running back who ranked in the top 10 for total value.

Look at the top running backs in the game, and you’ll find a number of players who share the field with a top quarterback — and often a top wide receiver as well. Le’Veon Bell actually led all running backs last year in combined DYAR, because he had such an outstanding season as a receiver. Some will make the case that the Pittsburgh offense is built around Bell, and yes, the Steelers did struggle without him in the playoffs. But Bell gets to play with Ben Roethlisberger, who was fifth with a 72.5 QBR last season, and Antonio Brown, who led all receivers in DYAR.

Eddie Lacy plays with Aaron Rodgers, Jordy Nelson and Randall Cobb. DeMarco Murray played last season with Tony Romo, Dez Bryant and a fantastic offensive line. As great as Lynch is, the Seattle offense is built in part around Russell Wilson’s ability to throw from outside the pocket and his threat to run as well. And criticize Jay Cutler all you want — no, really, go ahead, I’m not stopping you — but Chicago’s offense over the last couple of years was built more around receivers Brandon Marshall and Alshon Jeffery, making room for Matt Forte underneath rather than vice versa.

Other than Peterson, there are only two running backs right now who truly are the players their offenses are built around. One is LeSean McCoy, but we haven’t even seen what that Buffalo offense looks like yet. In Philadelphia, the offense wasn’t really built around McCoy; Chip Kelly’s scheme is the star of the offense, not any specific player.

The other is Jamaal Charles — but like Peterson, there’s only so far Charles can lift the Kansas City offense given its mediocre quarterbacking. We’ll never know how far the Chiefs could have gone in the 2013 playoffs if Charles had not gotten hurt early in the wild-card matchup against Indianapolis. But we do know that the Chiefs have only made the postseason twice in Charles’ five seasons as their leading rusher, because they have had mediocre quarterbacks and been thin at wide receiver.

There’s one additional reason why it’s difficult to build an offense around a running back, and it’s not just because passing is generally more efficient than rushing. It’s also because the most important players in the passing game always stay on the field, and the best running backs don’t. No team platoons its quarterbacks, but running backs now work in committees. The era of the workhorse running back who played every snap and took every carry is long gone.

Last year, only two running backs played at least 75 percent of their team’s offensive snaps: Forte and Bell. To give you an idea of how that’s changed over the past decade, there were eight running backs in 2004 who played at least 75 percent of their team’s offensive snaps, and in 2003 there were nine. And running back snap counts pale in comparison to the snap counts for the top wide receivers. Last year, 26 different wide receivers played at least 85 percent of snaps when active. Forte, in both 2013 and 2014, is the only running back in any of the past three seasons who could match that. It’s very unlikely that Gurley will play that many snaps, even if he overcomes the durability concerns.

Chronologically, the Rams are certainly building around Gurley. He’s the first important offensive building block for the championship team they are hoping to put together. But he’s not the most important. The Rams will need to improve their offensive line. They’ll need to improve their no-name receiving corps. And unless Nick Foles can somehow find the magic of his fabulous 2013 half-season in a completely different non-Kelly scheme, they’ll need to find themselves a better quarterback. Otherwise, even the Gurley everyone hopes to see won’t be enough to take the Rams much past 10-6.