With the baseball postseason less than a week away and the football season now three weeks in, it’s one of the most enjoyable sports times of the year. This year, we are particularly interested in what is going on in the NFL because of new data from Sports Info Solutions. Sports Info Solutions (SIS), the new company name for Baseball Info Solutions, is in its second year of collecting in-depth NFL data similar to what has been done in baseball for the past 15 years.
The major challenge of football analysis is sorting out which players on a team are responsible for the things that happen on the field. Running backs are a perfect example. On some attempts, their speed, power, or elusiveness earn them yards that other backs would likely fail to gain in similar circumstances. However, on other plays, the offensive line or the play design could result in a relatively uncontested 10 or more yards. One way that charting at SIS attempts to isolate the ability of specific backs is by recording broken tackles on carries and receptions.
Here are the backs with the most broken tackles over the first three weeks of the NFL season: