The Vikings began this season with Alexander Mattison as their bell-cow back. Over the first month of the season, Mattison was getting about 80% or so of the carries, with Ty Chandler getting the rest, which was less than a handful per game. Then the Vikings acquired Cam Akers from the Rams, and Akers took over the RB2 spot from Chandler, and over the next month or so got about a third of the carries, with Mattison getting the rest. Then, beginning in mid-November after Akers was lost for the season with an Achilles injury, there was some back-and-forth between Mattison and Chandler each game as to who got more carries. One week it was Mattison, the next it was Chandler. Then in the Bengals game week 15, when Mattison was injured, Chandler had a monster game- 23 carries for 123 yards and a TD rushing, and 3 receptions for 25 yards on 4 targets receiving. After that, and with Mattison back healthy, Chandler became the lead back- effectively switching roles with Mattison from the beginning of the season.
It was a bit surprising (at least to me) that Mattison was given the role of bell-cow back to start the season, given that Ty Chandler had shown a lot of promise in training camp and in preseason. But that was not the case as Chandler was given just a token role early on. Kevin O’Connell had made it a focal point of his offseason plan to improve the running game- although not necessarily running the ball more- and the addition of top blocking tight-end Josh Oliver was a move in that direction
But Alexander Mattison had an up and down beginning of the season, so when Cam Akers became available, the Vikings were quick to pick him up and slide him into the RB2 spot- and giving him more carries than they did Chandler. For whatever reason, the Vikings weren’t willing to give Chandler a larger role earlier on, and it was only after injuries to both Cam Akers and Mattison that Chandler had the opportunity to really prove himself against the Bengals. And he did.
At the end of the season, Chandler had a 4.5 yards per carry average, while Mattison averaged 3.9. But there is also a lot of nuance and detail that doesn’t come out in average yards per carry. After all, in an extreme example, a back can have one run go for 80 yards and 19 go for zero yards, and still sport a decent 4.0 yards per carry.
When you look at the difference between Mattison and Chandler, one significant difference is the percentage of carries that went for lost yardage. Mattison had a total of 180 carries this season, and 25 of them went for negative yardage. That’s a 13.9% rate. Chandler had a total of 102 carries, but only 6 went for negative yardage. That rate is less than half of Mattison’s at 5.9%. If you add in rushes that went for no gain, the overall run-stuff rate for Mattison was 21.1% this season, while for Chandler it was 13.7%. Overall, Mattison had 38 stuffed runs on 180 carries while Chandler had 14 on 102 carries. When it comes to staying ahead of the chains- or at least not falling back as far- the run stuff rate can have quite an impact on drive success and more/less favorable conditions for the passing game.
Overall, when you add up the circumstances for each rushing attempt and the result, including fumbles and touchdowns, which the Expected Points Added or EPA metric attempts to quantify, Alexander Mattison had a total rushing EPA for the season of -25.01, while Ty Chandler had a rushing EPA of +6.47. Positive is better. Breaking it down per rushing attempt
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