Saquon Vs Zeke

I was excited to see how the 2 of these RBs would go Sunday night. I know they have a lot of respect for each other. I am super high on Barkley and never have been as impressed by Zeke as most are. I feel he is a very athletic RB with great instincts who benefits from a very good Oline.

I decided to go back and watch the film and look at each of there touches and crunch some numbers. What I was interested in was is not just the box score numbers i.e. 10 carries for 100yards etc etc. When you look at the box score it looks like Elliott had the better game with a TD and averaging 5 yards a carry to Barkleys 2. So I came up with a sabermetric game. So the rules to the game were as follows:

1. Watch every touch by each RB and only count the plays where the RB received the ball behind or very near to the LOS.
2. Determine when the RB was first encountered by a defender close enough to make a tackle and chart that.
3. After first encounter chart the amount of yardage after the first defender made or missed the tackle.
4. Keep track of how many plays the first defender missed the first tackle.

So what I came up with was this:

Barkley on average met his first defender -.7 yards behind the LOS
The first defender missed the tackle on 16 of 22 of those plays= 72%
After the first defender Barkley had 22 attempts for 86 yards = 3.9 ypa

Elliott on average met his first defender .5 yards in from of LOS
The first defender missed on 8 of 21 attempts=38%
After the first defender Elliott had 21 attempts for 68 yards= 3.3 ypa

Barkley is a rare rare RB and even if this season goes down the tubes atleast we have something to be excited for in the future.