The Jaguars used the fourth overall pick in the 2017 NFL draft on running back Leonard Fournette. As a rookie, Fournette topped 1,000 yards, and the Jaguars improved from 3-13 to the AFC Championship Game. That has led many people to say that Fournette is proof that drafting a running back high in the first round can dramatically improve a team’s fortunes.
Those people are wrong.
The reality is, while Fournette was fine as a rookie, he was far from the game breaker people made him out to be. And the Jaguars were a good team last year because of their defense, not because of Fournette’s contributions.
How do we know Fournette isn’t the reason the Jaguars were a good team? It starts with the way they played in the three games Fournette missed. Those three games Fournette missed were three of the Jaguars’ best performances of the season: Jacksonville went 3-0 without Fournette, outscoring their opponents 95-14. In the 13 games Fournette played, the Jaguars went 7-6 and outscored their opponents 322-254.
The Jaguars also rushed for an average of 158 yards a game in the three games Fournette missed, compared to 137 yards a game in the 13 games Fournette played. When Fournette was out, the Jaguars were just fine with T.J. Yeldon, Chris Ivory and Corey Grant running the ball.
So where does the perception that Fournette had a great rookie year come from? Part of it is that Fournette had a 90-yard run and a 75-yard run, people saw those highlights and that’s what shaped their opinions of him. But if you take out those two runs, his average drops all the way from 3.9 yards per carry to 3.3 yards per carry. (By way of comparison, if you take out Le’Veon Bell’s top two runs last year, his average drops only from 4.0 to 3.9 yards.)
Fournette’s average of 3.88 yards per carry was two-tenths of a yard below the overall league-wide average of 4.08 yards per carry. Is that because the Jaguars called on him to pick up first downs in a lot of short-yardage situations? Nope. He gained first downs on just 17 percent of his carries. That was the lowest first down percentage of any of the 19 running backs who gained at least 800 yards last year; the NFL average was 21 percent of all rushing attempts producing first downs.
The point of this isn’t to rip Fournette. It’s not that he’s a bad player, just that his value to the Jaguars was overstated. He’s certainly not evidence that spending a high draft pick on a running back is the way to turn around a franchise.