Facts & Stats for Fantasy Football Draft Day

Matt Forte has rushed for at least 100 yards in 3 of his 4 career games against Detroit. Against all other teams, Forte has reached 100 rushing yards just twice in 28 games.

Forte also struggled punching the ball into the endzone. In 33 goal-to-go situations last season, Forte scored just 3 touchdowns which was the worst percentage (9%) in the NFL.

The best percentages belonged to Michael Turner (58.3%) and Tim Hightower (53.3%) who were the only players to score on over half of their goal-to-go rushing attempts. TD vulture Willis McGahee was third at 47.4%.

In the Colts’ last 45 games (including playoffs) Joseph Addai has had a grand total of one 100-yard rushing game.

Addai also has just one 30+ yard run in his career (861 rushing attempts) which is as many as Donald Brown has but Brown also has 783 fewer rushing attempts.

Last season Drew Brees led the NFL with a QB rating of 109.6. However, he struggled against teams that have a 3-4 defense as his rating was just 73.3 for those games. This year the Saints will play twice as many games against 3-4 teams (6) as they did last year.

Since the NFL was formed in 1922, there have been 370 instances in which a player ran for at least 1100 yards in a single season. But only once has a player reached 1100 yards on fewer than 200 carries: Jamaal Charles did it in 2009 on just 190 carries.

However, one of the reasons why Charles will be splitting carries this season with Thomas Jones instead of being “2010’s Chris Johnson” is because of Jones’ ability to protect the ball. Jones has lost just one fumble in his last 1151 touches.

Adrian Peterson has lost 13 fumbles in 998 career touches.

497…What does that number represent? That’s the number of players that had more tackles than Dwight Freeney’s 24 last season. But of course no one complains whenever you spin your way to 13.5 sacks as well.

Just for comparison, if London Fletcher decided to retire after Week 2 last season, he would have still had more tackles in ’09 (27 through Week 2) than Freeney had the whole year (24).

Tony Gonzalez has had at least 750 receiving yards in 11 straight years. However, Gonzalez is now 34 and only two tight ends in the last half-century have had at least 750 receiving yards in a season at 34 or older.

Sleeper Alert: Even though he wasn’t ranked among the top 10 at his position, no tight end had a stronger finish to the season than Jermichael Finley. Over his last 8 games (including playoffs), Finley had 44 receptions for 575 yards and 4 TDs.

In NFL history there have been 54 rookies to rush for at least 1000 yards in a season but only eight 21 year old rookies who have rushed for at least 1000 yards. That’s not good news for those of you expecting 21 year old Jahvid Best to be offensive ROY and attain that total.

While you shouldn’t ignore Jerome Harrison’s 561 rushing yards over the last three games, you also shouldn’t ignore his 106 rushing attempts during that stretch. That was the most rushing attempts by a player over a three-game stretch in NFL history so don’t expect to see another streak like that anytime soon.

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