Though far from a household name, Baltimore Ravens running back Gus Edwards gave even the league’s most revered running backs a serious run for their money in 2018.
According to Chase Stuart of Football Perspective, Edwards led all running backs last season in success rate, which aims to measure a running back’s success in the context of each rushing attempt.
In order to calculate success rate, Stuart defined a successful run based on both down and distance.
On third or fourth down, a first down is considered a successful run regardless of the distance. On second down, a successful carry requires the runner to gain at least 6 yards or 50 percent of the yards needed to gain the first down, On first down, the 6-yard rule still holds, but a run that picks up at least 40 percent of the yards to gain is also called a successful run. Stuart also threw out attempts that involved an unsuccessful third or fourth down conversion requiring the running back to gain more than five yards.
Of Edwards’s 127 rushing attempts (10 were thrown out) last season, 79 — or 63.7 percent — were successful runs, according to Stuart’s metric. The league average among rushers with over 100 carries was 51 percent. For comparison’s sake, top backs like Ezekiel Elliott and Saquon Barkley had success rates of 53.2 percent and 42.9 percent, respectively.
Edwards, who joined the Ravens as a rookie undrafted free agent last season, was a revelation for Baltimore, emerging from a Week 6 practice squad call-up and becoming one of the league’s most productive rushers just weeks later. In 2018, Edwards led the Ravens in rushing, posting 718 yards and two touchdowns on 137 carries.
