[BostonCard]

So wouldn't the median yards per carry be a better measure than the mean yards per carry?  It would do a better mob of measuring consistency in the running game, although of course it would not focus on big running plays.  To the extent that our running game is thought to be part of a ball-control, clock eating strategy, consistency would be more important to measure than big plays.

Yes, the median is less susceptible to outliers than the mean.  However, the mean is readily available; calculating the median would require compiling each individual play and extracting the median from that, since nobody readily calculates it.  Moreover, since runs are discrete, chances are that our median will be 4 yards for most years, so the median would hide a lot of variability.

All summary statistics require a sacrifice of information in order to tell "the story" concisely.  Thus, no single stat can tell the whole story, and all stats require context.  That's why I appreciate the narratives that WIM and CTCard provide to give a fuller meaning to the statistics.

[BostonCard]

So wouldn't the median yards per carry be a better measure than the mean yards per carry?  It would do a better mob of measuring consistency in the running game, although of course it would not focus on big running plays.  To the extent that our running game is thought to be part of a ball-control, clock eating strategy, consistency would be more important to measure than big plays.

Yes, the median is less susceptible to outliers than the mean.  However, the mean is readily available; calculating the median would require compiling each individual play and extracting the median from that, since nobody readily calculates it.  Moreover, since runs are discrete, chances are that our median will be 4 yards for most years, so the median would hide a lot of variability.

All summary statistics require a sacrifice of information in order to tell "the story" concisely.  Thus, no single stat can tell the whole story, and all stats require context.  That's why I appreciate the narratives that WIM and CTCard provide to give a fuller meaning to the statistics.