Apex Insider Blog

With the increasing popularity of dynasty fantasy football leagues, player age has become an even more important variable. While some players can fend off father time for an impressive amount of time (we’re looking at you, Tom Brady), most players tend to have similar timelines. Age can help us make knowledgeable predictions as to when a player will improve or regress. Let’s explore the peak age for an NFL running back.

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

TL;DR:

• This article explores at which ages NFL running backs have their most productive seasons.
• For RB1 (top-12) production, a shockingly high 85% of peak seasons are from players between the ages of 22-28.
• For truly elite (250+ PPR points) production, 67.8% of elite seasons are from players between the ages of 23-26, and 96.6% take place prior to a player turning 29.

Defining A Peak Season

To start this study, we must define a peak season for an NFL running back. Generally, the 12th-highest-scoring running back each season averages about 230 PPR fantasy points. In 2022, Leonard Fournette was the 12th-highest-scoring running back and finished 228.1 PPR fantasy points.

To examine at what age top running backs produce, we’ll include all running backs who finished with at least 230 PPR fantasy points. The list of 246 includes all individual running back seasons to meet the requirements since 2000 and was generated by Pro-Football-Reference.com.

The average age of this cohort is 25.5. Below is a distribution graph of the ages of the peak seasons:

The youngest players to accomplish a peak season were 21: Clinton Portis, Saquon Barkley, Maurice Jones-Drew, Ezekiel Elliott, Reggie Bush, and Jonathan Taylor. The oldest players to accomplish the feat were 32: Ricky Williams, Fred Jackson, and DeAngelo Williams. The peak is from ages 22 to 28, as an incredible 84.96 percent of the seasons fall within this range.

While 9.76 percent of the peak seasons have taken place at age 28, just 5.28 percent have taken place at age 29 – a noticeable drop-off. From there, just 4.47 percent of the seasons happen at age 30. Father time has a big impact, as no running back since 2000 has scored at least 230 fantasy points at the age of 33 or older.

The age distribution of running backs confirms our previous studies that wide receivers have longer careers than running backs.

Filtering For The Elite

From looking at these seasons, it seems that older players were producing more frequently in the early 2000s. Let’s remove all running back seasons that took place prior to 2010 in order to ensure we are analyzing the “modern era”.

In addition, we’ll raise the floor of a peak season, to see how age is impacted. Including all peak seasons since 2010 with at least 250 PPR fantasy points, the sample size of player seasons is 87.

The average age of this group drops significantly to 24.75. Below is a distribution graph of the ages of the elite peak seasons:

The peak of 23 to 26 includes 67.8 percent of the individual seasons. With the previous threshold, 87.4 percent of the seasons took place prior to the age 29 season. With the new peak, 96.6 percent of the seasons take place before the age 29 season. The two most common ages are 24 and 25 years old.

When searching for top-end production, a player is more likely to produce in his prime (typically prior to turning 27). Owners should be looking to sell dynasty assets before they turn 26 years old to be ahead of the curve. This meshes with a previous conclusion that dynasty owners aren’t selling running backs early enough. Over the last decade, nearly twice as many running backs have scored 250+ PPR points at 24 (or 25) than 26 years old.

What Does This Mean For 2023?

We noted last year that Joe Mixon and Derrick Henry were savvy sales.  Henry will be 30 years old at the end of this season and his odds of continuing to produce at a high level become more unlikely as the seasons continue. It may seem like he’s still elite, but look how quickly Todd Gurley fell from grace – and he was also 29 last season. We know that historically, the fall from grace is quick.

Nick Chubb (28 this season), Alvin Kamara (28), Dalvin Cook (28), Ezekiel Elliott (28), and Aaron Jones (29) are getting up there in age and it’s always smart to sell players too early rather than too late. We’ve seen Kamara struggle to produce at his previous expectations and the same can be said for Cook and Elliott. Chubb should be expected to enter the decline phase as well.

Christian McCaffrey (27) and Austin Ekeler (28) are coming off a season in which they were fantasy MVPs. While we shouldn’t be surprised to see another year of elite production, now is a prime selling opportunity.