If a Team Trades Up for an RB, Is It More Likely That He’ll Produce?
We hear it all the time—the team traded up to get this player, they really must want him. But does it actually translate to increased fantasy production?
Third rounders Alvin Kamara and Kareem Hunt are the two latest examples of this—I’m going to refer to them as Trade Up RBs—who went on to have great rookie seasons. Kamara posted 1,556 total yards in 13 touchdowns once the Saints decided to jettison Adrian Peterson. Hunt took advantage of a season-ending injury to Spencer Ware and went on to rack up 1,782 total yards and 11 scores.
Background
Since we have a couple of Trade Up RBs this year—the Bears’ David Montgomery and the Rams’ Darrell Henderson—I thought it would be interesting to study recent history to see if Trade Up RBs really do produce at a higher rate as rookies than their counterparts.
I went back to 2008 and manually compiled a list of all the running backs selected in the first four rounds whose picks were traded for (i.e. the team moved up) after the draft had begun and prior to being selected, so pre-draft trades weren’t included. I came up with a list of 27 players, 25 of which you’ll see below. (Joe Williams and Donnel Pumphrey didn’t play as rookies, so they aren’t included.) As I said, I compiled this data manually, so if I’m missing anyone, let me know.
Year | Player | Round | G | Touches/G | Yards/G | TD/G | FP/G (PPR) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2015 | Melvin Gordon | 1 | 14 | 15.5 | 59.5 | 0.00 | 8.3 |
2012 | Trent Richardson | 1 | 15 | 21.2 | 87.8 | 0.80 | 17.0 |
2012 | Doug Martin | 1 | 16 | 23.0 | 120.4 | 0.75 | 19.6 |
2011 | Mark Ingram | 1 | 10 | 13.3 | 52.0 | 0.50 | 9.3 |
2010 | Ryan Mathews | 1 | 12 | 15.0 | 68.6 | 0.58 | 12.2 |
2010 | Jahvid Best | 1 | 16 | 14.3 | 65.1 | 0.38 | 12.4 |
2018 | Kerryon Johnson | 2 | 10 | 15.0 | 85.4 | 0.40 | 14.1 |
2017 | Dalvin Cook | 2 | 4 | 21.3 | 111.0 | 0.50 | 16.9 |
2014 | Carlos Hyde | 2 | 14 | 6.8 | 28.6 | 0.29 | 5.4 |
2011 | Mikel Leshoure | 2 | 14 | 17.8 | 72.3 | 0.64 | 13.5 |
2011 | Daniel Thomas | 2 | 13 | 13.6 | 50.2 | 0.08 | 6.4 |
2010 | Toby Gerhart | 2 | 15 | 6.8 | 32.6 | 0.07 | 5.1 |
2010 | Ben Tate | 2 | 15 | 12.5 | 69.3 | 0.27 | 9.4 |
2010 | Montario Hardesty | 2 | 10 | 10.2 | 38.8 | 0.00 | 5.3 |
2017 | Alvin Kamara | 3 | 16 | 12.6 | 97.1 | 0.81 | 19.7 |
2017 | Kareem Hunt | 3 | 16 | 20.3 | 111.4 | 0.69 | 18.6 |
2014 | Terrance West | 3 | 14 | 13.0 | 52.6 | 0.36 | 8.2 |
2012 | Ronnie Hillman | 3 | 14 | 6.8 | 28.0 | 0.07 | 3.9 |
2012 | Bernard Pierce | 3 | 16 | 7.2 | 36.2 | 0.06 | 4.4 |
2009 | Shonn Greene | 3 | 14 | 7.7 | 38.6 | 0.14 | 4.7 |
2008 | Kevin Smith | 3 | 16 | 17.3 | 78.9 | 0.50 | 13.3 |
2013 | Johnathan Franklin | 4 | 11 | 2.1 | 12.5 | 0.09 | 2.2 |
2012 | Lamar Miller | 4 | 13 | 4.4 | 22.7 | 0.08 | 3.2 |
2011 | Roy Helu | 4 | 15 | 13.3 | 67.9 | 0.20 | 11.3 |
2010 | Joe McKnight | 4 | 9 | 4.7 | 23.2 | 0.00 | 2.7 |
Then I compiled a dataset including all the rookie seasons of running backs drafted since 2008, filtering them by round and whether or not they were a Trade Up RB.
Here’s a summary of how each group of running backs fared against their counterparts, by round. I used PPR points per game as the standard.
Round | Trade Up | No Trade Up | Diff |
---|---|---|---|
1 | 13.1 | 11.5 | 14.4% |
2 | 9.5 | 9.1 | 4.3% |
3 | 10.4 | 6.8 | 54.1% |
4 | 4.8 | 4.6 | 5.2% |
All Rounds | 9.9 | 7.5 | 30.9% |
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