Rookie Prospecting Through Data: Tyler Badie

This series of articles will cover the process I use to prospect and filter through each year’s rookie class, with each piece outlining a new player. I like using data to initialize my prospect profiles because it’s easy to examine many players quickly. Another reason is that there are no biases, it is strictly transposing stats from SRCFB and PlayerProfiler to my database. This lets me get a clear view of the player’s overall profile without any outside opinions or flashy highlights swaying my opinions. Once I collect the players and their stats I put them into groupings and then ultimately rank them. The next player of this series is a guy that still feels too low in the market but has a ton to like about him.

Tyler Badie, RB Missouri

When prospecting running backs I use these metrics and thresholds to determine which players I like and don’t like. I also look at weight and BMI to help get a sense of the size/build of the player. For weight I want my RB to be at 205 lbs. or higher; this is based on studying historical hit rates of RBs at various weights. It is not super important, but it is a data point and it is useful to know the weights of players. For BMI, I want my RB to be at 30.0 or more. I find BMI to be slightly more important than weight. Now that we know what we are searching for, let’s look at how Tyler Badie stacks up.

Analytical Profile

As you can see in the above tweet, Badie hits every production mark that I look at. It is not often that a player hits all five production marks (there have been 14 since 2013), so a profile like this is a great place to start.  It is important for a player from a smaller school to not only hit but crush these marks and Badie does exactly that in three of the five categories. Badie smashes my scrimmage yards per game threshold, this means he was successful in gaining yards from a volume standpoint. However, it does not tell us in which way he was primarily getting those yards, which we need to know later. He hits the career YPC also, people like to devalue this stat in the NFL but in my research, college yards per carry translates well to the NFL. If you can’t be efficient in college there is no way you’ll be efficient in the NFL. Tyler Badie was clearly efficient in college. Of the 39 RBs at the combine, only 10 hit my 6.0 YPC threshold, so Badie is already among the few there.

Badie also has a great touchdown share, especially for a guy of his size. This shows his team had a lot of trust in him on the goal-line and he was also able to deliver in his opportunities. Badie also appeared to be the team’s main RB and capable of scoring from outside the 20 as well. He would not be able to amass over 70% of the team rush touchdowns if this was not the case.

In fantasy, we want RBs that catch passes and score TDs, these are the game-breaking guys that give you RB1 overall potential. Tyler Badie earning a massive 20% reception share paired with his over 70% touchdown share shows us that he is capable of this league-winning upside. Seeing this combination of such elite rush TD share and reception share is very rare. I have not seen a combination of this magnitude since starting my database, which has data since 2013. Badie is a special, multi-faceted player in the run and pass game.

Lastly, Badie hits the most important metric, yards per team play. This is the most important piece of evidence to show that Tyler was an active member of the offense and one of the best players on his team. When you are the best player, the opposing team knows you are the best player, and you can still produce these numbers in college. Chances are, you will be a good NFL player if given the opportunity. Which is the key for these prospects.

Tyler Badie is currently not projected to be drafted in the first three rounds of the NFL Draft. However, this is not a death sentence. I would love to see him drafted in round four or round five. But if he isn’t it is still ok. We saw it in Elijah Mitchell and Khalil Herbert last season. For both of them, the start got injured and they outplayed the second string in practice. Thus earning them playing time on game day and they were both very productive. That is all it can take, one injury.  

Conclusion

Badie weighed in at the combine at 5’08” and 197 lbs. This gives him a BMI of 30.0 and puts him under the workhorse size tier. Badie is a bit smaller than I would like but he still has a great BMI and could make a quick impact as a receiver who then earns more time if he flashes enough. He is also close enough to earn partial credit as a workhorse in my model and for me to not be worried by it.

Badie is a player that should be cemented in the top twelve of your rookie RB rankings. He is currently my RB8 as a pre-draft prospect because I am assuming he will be drafted on Day 3. If that does not happen, and he goes earlier, Badie could move up to RB5 for me in this class. Although, it depends on where the other rookie backs go too. He has a fantastic production profile, he has almost workhorse size, and he has shown elite skill as a receiver. Tyler Badie excites me as few prospects do, and he should be very cheap. I highly recommend targeting him in your rookie drafts this off-season.

Here are the links to my other rookie prospecting articles if you are interested in seeing what I have to say about them: Tyler Allgeier, RB BYU, Jerome Ford, RB Cincinnati, Kevin Harris, RB South Carolina, Rachaad White, RB Arizona State.

Also, check out @NickPenticoff’s prospect threads. Using both film and analytics when prospecting is the best way to fully understand these players.

Wow, you read all the way through! Thank you, I really appreciate you using your time to enjoy my content. If you would like to talk to me about my article or ask me any generic dynasty or trade questions. You can find me on Twitter @ChrisMiles1017, DFF Draft Director. Shoot me a DM, they are always open. Come join the #DFFArmy where I provide #Dynasty, #Redraft, and #Analytics content for @DFF_Dynasty. Thank you so much!

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