Fantasy Football Stat of the Day: RB yards-after-contact leaders

Tyler Loechner

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(Leading up to the 2021 NFL season, FTN’s Tyler Loechner will dive into the fantasy football numbers to bring you his Fantasy Stat of the Day, five days a week.)

Breaking tackles is important for any skill position in football, but it’s arguably most important for RBs, who often face pressure from the defense as soon as they touch the ball — which almost always occurs behind the line of scrimmage.

We already examined the RBs that are the best at breaking tackles, and today’s Stat of the Day piece will add an extra layer of context by examining the RBs that gained the most averaged yards after initial contact from a defender in 2020.

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Nick Chubb continues to top every 2020 advanced rushing stat metric, and Ronald Jones ranks surprisingly high

The chart below shows last season’s RB leaders sorted by averaged yards gained after initial contact (minimum 100 rush attempts):

Player	Attempts	Total Yds After Contact	Avg. Yds After Contact
Nick Chubb	190	771	4.06
Derrick Henry	378	1453	3.84
Ronald Jones	192	692	3.6
Tony Pollard	101	355	3.51
J.K. Dobbins	134	468	3.49
Aaron Jones	201	700	3.48
Wayne Gallman	147	500	3.4
Gus Edwards	144	478	3.32
Dalvin Cook	312	1023	3.28
Jeffery Wilson	126	407	3.23
Kareem Hunt	198	640	3.23
Miles Sanders	164	526	3.21
Melvin Gordon	215	686	3.19
Devin Singletary	156	497	3.19
David Montgomery	247	762	3.09
Austin Ekeler	116	357	3.08
James Robinson	240	734	3.06
Chris Carson	141	429	3.04
Clyde Edwards-Helaire	181	550	3.04
Alvin Kamara	187	556	2.9

It’s starting to feel like I can’t do an RB-focused Stat of the Day piece without it just turning into a piece about how good of a rushing Nick Chubb is. Breakaways rushers? It’s Chubb. Running into 8-man boxes? Chubb again. Missed tackles forced per rush? Chubb reigns. And now we’re at average yards gained after contact. Chubb is the winner here yet again. There’s not much more that can be said about how great of an RB he is.

The same is true for Derrick Henry, who gained 1,453 yards after contact last season. That means last season’s top five rushers were:

Derrick Henry (total): 2,027
Dalvin Cook: 1,557
Derrick Henry (after contact yards only): 1,453
Jonathan Taylor (1,169)
Aaron Jones (1,104)

Ronald Jones finds himself third on this list, but don’t go out and say it’s all because of his 98-yard TD run. He’d be in the top 10 on this list even if you removed that run. Leonard Fournette may be the starter in Tampa, but it’d be foolish to expect Jones to have no role.