Darren McFadden and Young "Injury Prone" Stud Running Backs

Last year, if you drafted McFadden, you crapped out, as he played in 7 games before being shut down for the season. The year before, he missed three games, but was so productive that he still finished with the 6th most fantasy points at running back. So, you don’t need a full season out of him (though it would be nice), but you do need 12 or more games.

So far, through four seasons, McFadden has yet to play in more than 13 games, and has participated in 70% of his team’s games in his career. I tried to go back and look for examples of other backs like McFadden. Every case is different, but I ultimately settled on backs who, before age 25, had multiple seasons where they had missed at least 2 games, and had played in less than 80% of their team games overall.

Of course, to that, we need some sort of quality component. You’ll find many backs who have missed games because they were reserves and not activated. If we require an average of 50 or more yards from scrimmage per game when healthy, then the list shortens to 7 names.

Two of them don’t feel real similar to McFadden because they weren’t as good, though I’ll admit to potentially being the victim of hindsight bias. Lee Suggs struggled with injuries throughout his career, but in a short stretch in 2004 had three straight 100 yard games. He had 41 rushing yards after age 24. He missed almost half of his team games, was drafted later, and doesn’t feel all that applicable.

Julius Jones had an insane stretch as a 23-year old rookie, but by age 24, looked like a pedestrian back and plodded along after that for several years, staying healthy but not particularly good.

Another, Ricky Williams, doesn’t really fit McFadden as Williams had high workloads and had injuries early in his career, but Williams rebounded at age 25 in his first season in Miami.

The next four, though, seem most similar to McFadden: Fred Taylor, Robert Smith, Ricky Watters, and Freeman McNeil. Each of those guys had an injury prone label early. McNeil, Watters and Taylor had top 5 seasons at an early age when they played more often than not. Watters missed his entire rookie year, but was one of the best backs the next two years when missing 5 games. Robert Smith would have been a top 10 back early if he didn’t suffer two season ending injuries.

Over the rest of their careers, those players were good . . . when they played and didn’t miss too many games with injury. Watters didn’t miss a game for seven seasons after that. Smith and McNeil and Taylor had good seasons but also plenty of others where they continued to miss 2, 3, 4 games.

My guess is that Darren McFadden will have at least one season where he is Top 4 in Yards + Touchdowns between now and age 28. When will that be, though? That’s the rub. I think, risk + reward, he’s properly valued in about the #8 to #10 range in this year’s draft.

[photo via US Presswire]