Should Austin Ekeler get paid?

On May 23rd, it was announced that Austin Ekeler was going to get $1.75 million added to his contract in incentives. According to Tom Pelissero, Ekeler can make up to $1 million for total yards, tiered from 1,125 to 1,639. He can make up to $600K for touchdowns, tiered from 10 to 16. Additionally, he can make $150K for making the Pro Bowl.

Ekeler previously announced that he wanted a contract extension with the Chargers, but after there was shown to be little progress, he requested a trade. After nothing arose from that request, the Chargers gave Ekeler these contract incentives.

Ekeler's average annual value (AAV) jumped from $6.25 million this season to possibly $7 million, depending on his production for the upcoming season. Ekeler ranks 13th of all RBs in terms of AAV, which he feels is way too low, causing him to ask for more money and a contract extension.

I wanted to analyze how much Austin Ekeler really deserves to make on an annual basis, and if any team, including the Chargers, should give him more than his current AAV of $6.25 million. Throughout the article I will be using data of all RB's in the 2022 season with more than 40 rush attempts.

Firstly, I will look at where Ekeler ranks in terms of average yards per attempt. This stat is rather simple, but it is still good regardless.

Ekeler is slightly below the league average with 4.5 rush yards per attempt. While 4.5 yards per attempt is good, there are several RBs that have more, many of which average less money per year than Ekeler. By the way, this will be a reoccurring trend in this article.

Rushing yards per attempt is a solid statistic, but there are several other metrics that showcase a player's production more effectively. Rushing yards per attempt does not take into account how good the offensive line each RB runs behind, as well as the defense faced on each run. It is just a quotient of the total rushing yards and rushing attempts.

We can use the rushing yards per attempt data in combination with other statistics to give it more meaning. A stat that would be helpful in seeing if the rushing yard average is impressive or not based on defense faced is pairing it with how many rushes the RB sees against 8 men in the box. For those unfamiliar, the box is the space on defense that spans from LT to RT with a depth of 5 yards downfield. This is typically where the defense has defensive linemen and linebackers.

The following graph shows each RB's yards per attempt as well as the percentage of rushes they have against 8 men in the box:

In theory, a great RB should cause the defense to stack the box in order to stop the run game. A great RB should also be able to get a lot of yardage on these runs.

For context, the top 9 RBs in terms of the percent of rushes against 8 defenders in the box consist of 3 Atlanta Falcons RBs (Huntley, Allgeier, Patterson), 3 Baltimore Ravens RBs (Dobbins, Edwards, Drake), Derrick Henry, Christian McCaffrey, and D'Onta Foreman. Teams can either stack the box against elite RBs, as seen with McCaffrey and Henry, or against teams that run the ball at a rate much higher than league average, such as the Falcons and Ravens.

Even with seeing many defenders in the box frequently, 7 of the top 9 RBs still averaged an above average yards per attempt (the only exceptions are Kenyan Drake and Derrick Henry). When looking at this data in specific, it would be correct to come to the conclusion that the 7 RBs all had very productive and great seasons.

In regards to Austin Ekeler, he rarely sees a box with 8 or more defenders, most likely because defenses are more cautious to the Chargers passing game. With rarely seeing this stacked boxes, it should be expected that Ekeler would have a great yards per attempt, but he is below average in that. There are only 5 RBs that make more money than Ekeler that faced a below league average stacked box while also having a below league average yards per carry (Joe Mixon, Dalvin Cook, Saquon Barkley, Leonard Fournette, and James Connor). These RBs did not have great years, and many of them actually have been having their own issues in terms of contract extensions and not getting the money they feel like they deserve.

There are still better metrics that we can use to analyze Austin Ekeler's production last season. NFL's Next Gen Stats provides Yards Over Expectation data. This data uses tracking data to estimate how many yards each RB should get at the point of hand off based on where the defenders are (X,Y coordinates), speed of the defenders, and acceleration of the defenders. Using that estimation of each rush attempt, it can get how many more yards each RB got than what they were expected. A RB with a lot of Yards Over Expected is likely better than a RB with negative Yards Over Expected.

There are two ways that I used this data in analyzing Austin Ekeler. The first method is by just getting the rushing yards over expected (RYOE) per attempt:

Ekeler averages .42 yards over expected per attempt, which is slightly below average. A positive RYOE means that he is still doing a better job than expected, but for someone that wants to be paid like a great/elite RB, it would be better if he performed at that rate in terms of RYOE.

I do not like just using rushing yards over expected. I will give an example on why I believe that by using two different RBs:

Running Back A is expected to have a 5 yard run because of a defender close to him, but then breaks the tackle and runs for an 80 yard TD while breaking no other tackles, he gets credit for 75 rushing yards over expected. Hypothetically, Running Back A ran for 9 other attempts and got the yardage that was expected of him. He would finish with 10 rushes for 75 yards over expected.

Running Back B had 10 rushes, each of which were expected to get 5 yards, but got 10 instead on all of them. Running Back B would have 50 rushing yards over expected, which is 25 yards less than Running Back A.

Running Back B should be rewarded more for doubling the expected rushing yards for all 10 of his rushes. Running Back A only had one rush that was over what was expected, yet finished with 1.5x the amount of RYOE Running Back B had. Some people and teams prefer explosive RB's, so RYOE is a good value for them to use regardless, but for people who prefer consistency, this next metric would be best.

Percentage of rushes over expectation is a better metric to measure consistency. It calculates the percentage of rushes a RB has that got more yardage than what was expected. Here is where Austin Ekeler stands in this metric:

Ekeler only had 38.5% of his rushes go for more yardage that what was expected using NFL's Next Gen Stats. He ranks 41st out of 52 qualified RBs in this metric. This means that Ekeler is inconsistent in his rushes, as he normally does not get the amount of yards expected. When looking at players paid more than Austin Ekeler, only two RBs had a worse percentage (Dalvin Cook and Ezekiel Elliott, each with a percentage of roughly 35%). There are also many RBs who make less than $4 million with a greater percentage.

The next metric that I will be covering is EPA (expected points added). In rather simple terms, it calculates the expected points for each play and then gets the difference between that and the outcome to determine the success of the play for each player. This is a great metric to use to capture the value each player brings. For example, a RB will be given a greater EPA for getting 5 yards on 3rd and 3 than a 5 yard run on 3rd and 7. This correctly calculates the value the RB brought to the game because they were able to convert the 3rd down, hence likely adding to the expected points. EPA takes into account down, distance, yard line, etc.

Here is where Austin Ekeler ranks in Rushing EPA per attempt.

Ekeler averages slightly less than 0 EPA per attempt, meaning he normally lowers the Chargers's expected points, although by a very small amount. He is still above average in this metric, which is encouraging because he has been below average in every other metric. This metric shows very little correlation with average annual value. Of the 11 RB's making over $10 million, 7 of them had negative rushing EPAs per attempt, with the only 4 that had positive values being Aaron Jones, Nick Chubb, Christian McCaffrey, and Tony Pollard.

Those who are familiar with Austin Ekeler's game understand that he is well renowned for being an elite pass catcher. All of the metrics that I have gone in depth about so far have been strictly rushing-based, and I feel like excluding any receiving data would not do justice to Austin Ekeler's skillset.

The metric that I feel that is best to capture his success in the passing game is Receiving EPA. Receiving yards, targets, receptions, receiving TDs, and yards after catch are very dependent on the scheme used by each RB's offense and the aggressiveness of each RB's Quarterback. EPA will do the best job in capturing the production of the RBs in the passing game. Here is where Austin Ekeler ranks in terms of Receiving EPA per target:

I would assume that most people would think Ekeler would be in the top 3-5 of all RBs in terms of this metric, due to his reputation in the passing game, but Austin Ekeler is 20th out of 52 RBs. Of the 19 RB's that have a greater value, 6 of them are making more than Ekeler, and 13 of them are making less. This means that there are 13 RBs who do better in what is regarded as Ekeler's best part of his game who are getting paid less. This points to the fact that Ekeler is not getting too cheaply paid based on his production in the passing game.

*By the way, the RB all the way on the left with a far lower EPA than all other RB's is D'Onta Foreman*

The final metric I will use in this article is Total EPA per attempt and target. This metric adds up each RB's rushing and receiving EPAs and divides it by the sum of attempts and targets for each RB. Here is how Austin Ekeler compared to the other RB's:

This is the most encouraging graph for Austin Ekeler so far, as he ranks 13th out of 52 RBs in the total EPA per attempt and target. Simply, this can be taken that Ekeler was the 13th best all-around RB in the league in 2022. Of the 12 RBs who have a better EPA value than Ekeler, 4 of them are paid more than Ekeler (Christian McCaffrey, Nick Chubb, Tony Pollard, and Aaron Jones - again). Other RB's that did better than Ekeler in terms of total epa are Rashaad Penny, Breece Hall, J.K. Dobbins, Tyler Algeier, Caleb Huntley, James Cook, Chuba Hubbard, and Gus Edwards. All of those RB's I just listed make under $4 million a year, with several of them being rookies or second-years last season.

Now I will come to the conclusion on the whole contract matter with Austin Ekeler:

Firstly, if these graphs showed anything, outside of in-depth Austin Ekeler analysis, is that there are so many great RBs in the league that make less than $4 million a year. Every single graph has a bunch of RBs that consistently grade better than average who make next to nothing compared to the highly paid RBs in the league.

Secondly, going off of that same logic, these graphs show that teams should not pay RB's a lot of money at all, due to their being a lot of cheaply paid and better producing RBs, but also because frequently most of the RBs getting paid upwards of $10 million a year do below average in every metric. The only exceptions we have seen from this graphs on when it is okay to pay a RB a lot are Christian McCaffrey, Aaron Jones, Nick Chubb, and Tony Pollard. RBs like Joe Mixon, Dalvin Cook, Ezekiel Elliott, Alvin Kamara, etc. are way overpaid relative to the production they had last season. Ezekiel Elliott is still a free agent as I am writing this, and Dalvin Cook has had constant rumors about getting released before the season.

When looking specifically at whether Austin Ekeler should get paid, it is quite clear what the data and myself recommend, which is that he should not get paid any more than what he is currently paid. I am content with him getting paid $6.25 million a year, lesser so for the possible $8 million this season, but it would be a horrible mistake for any team to give him any more than that amount.

Recapping all of the data and graphs shown in the article, Austin Ekeler ranked below average in average yards per attempt, percentage of plays against 8 defenders in the box, rushing yards over expected per attempt, and percentage of rushes over expectation. He did above average in all three EPA metrics, but still did not do good enough to warrant a contract of a significant amount. All of his data from this past season is very underwhelming considering there seems to be this belief that he had an incredible season, which I strangely enough believe is the result of heavy Fantasy Football bias.

I am interested to see what the Los Angeles Chargers choose to do after this season, as I expect them to let his contract expire. If I were a Chargers fan, I would be more than happy with this outcome and would look forward to seeing how RBs like Isaiah Spiller or a rookie RB would do in the same system for way less money.