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Report User A comment from reader "underthebus1":
Aaron, regarding Alexander being pushed out of bounds, shouldn't you also account for td's scored untouched? Shaun had 28 td's in 2005 and 20 in 2004. I know from watching the games last year a good percentage of those were 'untouched' td's.This is a good point. Now, we can't tell from the play-by-play what was an "untouched" touchdown, but think about it -- a touchdown is really no different from going out of bounds, because you don't get smacked and tackled at the end of it. There are exceptions, of course: goal-line plunges. So let's re-run the numbers on which players had the most "untackled" runs. This represents all runs listed as ending out of bounds, plus touchdowns, minus touchdowns from the one- or two-yard line. Again, this is carries only, not catches.
37-S.Alexander 42
21-L.Tomlinson 34
39-S.Jackson 25
26-C.Portis 24
27-L.Johnson 23
21-T.Barber 22
28-C.Dillon 19
32-E.James 18
21-W.McGahee 18
20-T.Jones 18
Now we're really starting to see a difference between Alexander/Tomlinson and everybody else. Alexander scored 15 of his 27 touchdowns from more than two yards out. Edgerrin James, on the other hand, scored only four of his 13 touchdowns from more than two yards out. The percentages are stronger also. Alexander finished 11.4% of his runs "untackled." LT was untackled on 10.0%, Steven Jackson on 9.8%. Every other back with over 200 carries last year was under 7%.
To look at this a little differently, here's the list of the top 10 running backs in carries that ended with tackles (estimated off the PBP, of course), along with their actual number of carries:
32-E.James / 342 / 360
21-T.Barber / 335 / 357
37-S.Alexander / 328 / 370
26-C.Portis / 328 / 352
32-R.Johnson / 324 / 337
27-L.Johnson / 313 / 336
21-W.McGahee / 307 / 325
21-L.Tomlinson / 305 / 339
34-R.Droughns / 302 / 309
20-T.Jones / 296 / 314
One more note on this from reader "Skrest":
Based on a search for OB in the PBP, which I'm assuming is complete,
Reggie Bush ran out of bounds 9 times on Sunday. That's out of 25 touches.
The next highest OB for a player (not counting MNF) was 5 (Coles, Holt & Westbrook).
Only two TEAMS ran out of bounds more than Reggie Bush.
Just thought that was interesting....Looks like he's trying to avoid the big hits.
Post by Aaron Schatz