Regarding RB aging, I've never bought into the notion of using chronological age. Chronological age works only if the RB starts immediately - but many do not. This ironically includes Derrick Henry who for some inexplicable reason (a topic for some other long form piece) was in the Tennessee building for more than two seasons before the coaching staff decided to finally give him a shot at the starting job. That historically awful discretionary decision has arbitrarily pushed his aging curve out according to chronological age.
The better metric is touches. This make sense, since you don't age as fast blowing out birthday candles while sitting on the bench. In fact, if you look at touches, RBs begin to seriously decline after 1,500 to perhaps 1,800 touches. 1,500 touches is a sort of running back wall that can be extended for perhaps an additional year, but no more in the vast number of cases. Age works as a proxy for touches only for starting/star running backs who start right out of the gate. However, in the modern era these types of running backs are increasingly rarer and the need to look at touches instead of age is even more essential.
For example, I warned my fantasy football playing friends that taking the just turned 28-year-old Christian McCaffery this year was a huge risk since he was at 1,806 touches. Some listened, some unfortunately did not. Same with Saquon Barkley currently sitting at 1,489. His story as a pickup for Philly won't be fully revealed until next season when his $13MM per year comp could look mighty expensive as he hits the wall. I'm betting the Eagles paid 3 years for 1. Early warning for that 2025 fantasy draft night.
But what about Henry's touches? They are impressive. Outside of a freak foot injury in 2021, he's been remarkably healthy for the position. His touches currently stand at 2,326 and counting. Well over the RB 1,500 wall. For this reason, publications, like this one, almost reflexively note his performance as being almost superhuman.
But is it really?
One trend I've noticed is to view time in sports according to certain arbitrary cutoffs that are not analytically, but psychologically driven. Consider how often you hear the phrase "since 2000..." Why is the year 2000 an appropriate cutoff for any analysis? It's not but is used solely because of the way the human brain experiences time as a flow and has built calendars to capture that experiential flow. Consequently, year 2000 "feels" significant to us and a legitimate cutoff for analysis - but it isn't really.
Take RBs. How does Henry compare to the greats at that position - not ever - but just over the past 30 years? Not a particularly long look back really. Well, Barry Sanders ended an abbreviated career at 3, 414 touches. Emmitt Smith over a 15 year career had 4,924 touches. Henry isn't halfway to Smith.
Go back a bit further and you'll stumble upon Walter Payton at 4,330 touches over 13 years. Better yet, how about the bizarrely ignored accomplishments of Frank Gore in this century - 4,219 touches in a 16-year career. I guess to the sports media, it's not all about the U after all.
Henry is not quite as impressive now, is he? That's a large part of why he sits low on the all time rushing yardage list.
Look, Derrick Henry is certainly an outlier - a terrific player worthy of discussion - but not a superhuman one just yet. He has a lot of work to do to simply catch the likes of Sanders, Smith, and Gore. This is something that everyone seems to have forgotten about because most of the use cases aren't captured by the trendy artificial cutoff of "since 2000..."
Henry is certainly outstanding at his position, but superhuman only from our misleading use of chronological age as a marker and our unrecognized recency bias that misleads us.
Regarding RB aging, I've never bought into the notion of using chronological age. Chronological age works only if the RB starts immediately - but many do not. This ironically includes Derrick Henry who for some inexplicable reason (a topic for some other long form piece) was in the Tennessee building for more than two seasons before the coaching staff decided to finally give him a shot at the starting job. That historically awful discretionary decision has arbitrarily pushed his aging curve out according to chronological age.
The better metric is touches. This make sense, since you don't age as fast blowing out birthday candles while sitting on the bench. In fact, if you look at touches, RBs begin to seriously decline after 1,500 to perhaps 1,800 touches. 1,500 touches is a sort of running back wall that can be extended for perhaps an additional year, but no more in the vast number of cases. Age works as a proxy for touches only for starting/star running backs who start right out of the gate. However, in the modern era these types of running backs are increasingly rarer and the need to look at touches instead of age is even more essential.
For example, I warned my fantasy football playing friends that taking the just turned 28-year-old Christian McCaffery this year was a huge risk since he was at 1,806 touches. Some listened, some unfortunately did not. Same with Saquon Barkley currently sitting at 1,489. His story as a pickup for Philly won't be fully revealed until next season when his $13MM per year comp could look mighty expensive as he hits the wall. I'm betting the Eagles paid 3 years for 1. Early warning for that 2025 fantasy draft night.
But what about Henry's touches? They are impressive. Outside of a freak foot injury in 2021, he's been remarkably healthy for the position. His touches currently stand at 2,326 and counting. Well over the RB 1,500 wall. For this reason, publications, like this one, almost reflexively note his performance as being almost superhuman.
But is it really?
One trend I've noticed is to view time in sports according to certain arbitrary cutoffs that are not analytically, but psychologically driven. Consider how often you hear the phrase "since 2000..." Why is the year 2000 an appropriate cutoff for any analysis? It's not but is used solely because of the way the human brain experiences time as a flow and has built calendars to capture that experiential flow. Consequently, year 2000 "feels" significant to us and a legitimate cutoff for analysis - but it isn't really.
Take RBs. How does Henry compare to the greats at that position - not ever - but just over the past 30 years? Not a particularly long look back really. Well, Barry Sanders ended an abbreviated career at 3, 414 touches. Emmitt Smith over a 15 year career had 4,924 touches. Henry isn't halfway to Smith.
Go back a bit further and you'll stumble upon Walter Payton at 4,330 touches over 13 years. Better yet, how about the bizarrely ignored accomplishments of Frank Gore in this century - 4,219 touches in a 16-year career. I guess to the sports media, it's not all about the U after all.
Henry is not quite as impressive now, is he? That's a large part of why he sits low on the all time rushing yardage list.
Look, Derrick Henry is certainly an outlier - a terrific player worthy of discussion - but not a superhuman one just yet. He has a lot of work to do to simply catch the likes of Sanders, Smith, and Gore. This is something that everyone seems to have forgotten about because most of the use cases aren't captured by the trendy artificial cutoff of "since 2000..."
Henry is certainly outstanding at his position, but superhuman only from our misleading use of chronological age as a marker and our unrecognized recency bias that misleads us.