NFL Rushing Data
For assignment five, I have decided to look at NFL player rushing data to see what I can understand about the various players who are tasked with running the ball. I am generally not interested in sports as a whole. However, the data that is collected on every aspect of the game/athlete and what can be done with that data is very fascinating to me. I scraped NFL player rushing stats from the ESPN website on 10/25/2021. According to the ESPN website, statistics are updated nightly. I collected the data through scraping the ESPN NFL Rushing stats page here. There are 256 NFL players who have made rushing attempts so far this season.
The NFL classifies rushing as “running with the ball when starting from behind the line pf scrimmage with the intent of gaining yardage”. This is why we see seven different positions with rushing statistics, not just running backs. As expected the position of Running Back holds the majority of rushing plays for the season, followed by wide receiver and then quarterback.
The Data
The below tables show the extensive number of players that have made rushing attempts this season. The second table in particular shows the disparity between the top ranked rusher this season and the bottom ranked rusher.
Summary of the data
| Variables in Dataset | Variable Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| RK | number | Overall rank in terms of rushing |
| Name | character | Player Name |
| POS | character | Player Position |
| GP | number | Games Played |
| ATT | number | Rushing Attempts |
| YDS | number | Total Yards Rushed |
| AVG | number | Average yards rushed per attempt |
| LNG | number | Longest Rushing Play |
| BIG | number | 20+ yard rushing plays |
| TD | number | Rusching Touchdowns |
| YDS.G | number | Rushing Yards Per Game |
| FUM | number | Fumbles |
| LST | number | Rushing Fumbles Lost |
| FD | number | First Downs |
| team | character | Team |
The Data Set
Data scraped from the ESPN Rushing stats page
Top and Bottom Ranked
Top ranked and bottom ranked rushers this season
The Rushers
Rushers by Position
The NFL classifies rushing as “running with the ball when starting from behind the line pf scrimmage with the intent of gaining yardage”. This is why we see seven different positions with rushing statistics, not just running backs. As expected the position of Running Back holds the majority of rushing plays for the season, followed by wide receiver and then quarterback.
Top Six Rushers
The top five rushers spots belong to running backs and the number six spot belongs to a quarterback. I found it interesting that a quarterback is so highly ranked among all rushers in the NFL considering they tradtional throw and hand the ball to other players.
Average Yardage
I ran three analysis comparing different variables to the Average yards rushed.
By Position
The result of comparing position to average yards rushed showed the running back with the most even distribution. This is likely because they are most commonly the rushers and they often run straight into the line to gain yardage. the wide receiver also shows a relatively even distribution but more spread out compared to the running back. Even though they are less likely to “rush” the ball, when they do it is typically closer to the side line. This, judging by the distribution, can go either way.
By Games Played
I found the result of this plot interesting because the median stays pretty close across all of the games played. To gain a better Understanding, I would scrape more individual player data in order to understand an players actual success in rushing the ball.
By Attempts
The plot shows a normal distribution for rushing attempts and the average yards picked up per attempt. To fully understand the significance of this, I would run a regression analysis.
