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Rams43
Two things...
1. You’re gonna have a hard time convincing me that Akers is not the significantly better back, dz. I don’t give a rip about the PFF or FO numbers say. I trust my own eyes far more.
2. We do agree that Hendy is a fine back and can get the job done if he can stay healthy. Rams are fortunate to have him.
As an aside, I hope we need to see limited Brown snaps. He’s a relative plodder when compared to Akers or Hendy. I’m intrigued by this Xavier Jones kid, btw. And I assume that he will be activated. Giving the kid a few snaps wouldn’t break my heart.
I trust my eyes too. It looks like Akers is really coming on and given his shiftiness he looks like he's better.
But I don't dismiss the metrics either because they are very telling. Especially Success Rate. That metric measures successful running plays and the definition of success is different based on down and distance. So for example, if you have 1st and 10 and the run gets 5 yards that's successful for that down and distance. 3 yards isn't. Since the standard for that metric is stable and consistent - it's the same for every RB in the league - it's a much more objective metric than almost any other.
So it becomes hard to argue against that number. And that number is saying that Hendy is successful on 57% of his plays, Akers on 52% of his. Now it's possible that Akers has a higher rate of success on his successful runs and that's what our eyes see.
All that to say, if we keep rolling with Hendy, we should be ok. Most of his runs will be successful so we have the consistency but maybe he breaks less big plays than Akers.
Agreed on Brown.