| 08 May 2010
On Thursday, Pro Football Focus unveiled its new Elusive Rating, a statistic designed to measure the elusiveness of a given running back. You can read PFF's full explanation of their statistic here, but to summarize the Elusive Rating takes a running back's total rushing attempts (Att) and receptions (Rec), missed tackles forced by the running back on both rushing attempts (MTrush) and receptions (MTrec), and average yards gained after first contact by a defensive player (YCo) and plugs them into the following formula:
Elusive Rating = (MTrush + MTrec)/(Att + Rec)*(YCo/Att*100)
Anyway, when PFF fed statistics for the 2009 season into their shiny new equation, Justin Forsett came out on top as the most elusive running back in the league. For comparison, here's the top ten:
| Running Back | Elusive Rating |
| Justin Forsett (Sea) | 70.19 |
| Jonathan Stewart (Car) | 67.66 |
| Pierre Thomas (NO) | 56.45 |
| Fred Jackson (Buf) | 55.99 |
| Ronnie Brown (Mia) | 54.04 |
| Ray Rice (Bal) | 48.92 |
| Ahmad Bradshaw (TB) | 48.86 |
| Michael Turner (Atl) | 48.69 |
| Adrian Peterson (Minn) | 48.60 |
| Jamaal Charles (KC) | 48.52 |
It's also interesting to note that former Saints running back Mike Bell, who visited Seattle as a free agent back in March before ultimately signing with the Eagles, had the ninth worst elusiveness rating in the league with 12.50. I know some readers here were disappointed at the time when the Seahawks failed to sign Bell, but this might help explain why he failed to pique Seattle's interest (or anyone else's, really -- Bell's contract with Philadelphia was just a one year deal for $1.7 million).
That being said, I feel obligated to point out that it's a good idea to be skeptical of newly minted statistics like this. As a personal rule of thumb, the more variables and mathematical operations a statistic requires to be generated, the more skeptical I become of its usefulness as an objective measurement.
Still, it's nice to see one of our favorite players getting some recognition for his abilities, and PFF's Elusive Rating formula does have the benefit of being significantly less complex than, say, the convoluted formula used by the NFL to compute quarterback ratings. Seriously, if you haven't seen this thing, you really should (I apologize in advance for my penmanship -- my teachers tried their best).
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