Fantasy Football Stat of the Day: Long-TD scorers at RB

(Leading up to the 2021 NFL season, FTN’s Tyler Loechner will dive into the fantasy football numbers to bring you his Fantasy Stat of the Day, five days a week.)

Yesterday, we took a look at the WRs with the longest average TD length in 2020. Today’s Stat of the Day piece will take a look at the rushers with the longest average TDs last year to see which players hit pay dirt from furthest away.

Watching your RB (or rushing QB) chip away for three yards at a time can be painful, but when they break away a long TD run, there’s no better feeling.

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Lamar Jackson had the second-longest average TD length last year; Jonathan Taylor deserves his RB1 status

The chart below shows the top 12 players from last season based on the average distance of their rushing TDs (min. 5 TDs).

Player	Rush TDs	Dist. Of TDs
Miles Sanders	6	27.8
Lamar Jackson	7	22.9
Aaron Jones	9	20.8
Ronald Jones	7	16.1
Derrick Henry	17	15.6
David Montgomery	8	15.4
Ryan Tannehill	7	12.3
Jonathan Taylor	11	12.2
Dalvin Cook	16	11.4
Melvin Gordon	9	10.8
Nick Chubb	12	10.8
Chris Carson	5	10.4

A few notes from this study:

Lamar Jackson still has the QB1 upside. This might seem obvious, but I’ve seen him referred to as in the “QB2-QB5” range. Nah. QB1 is still firmly in his range of outcomes. I’d wager the QB1 finish is more likely than the QB5 finish. His big-play ability is on display in this stat.
Ronald Jones’ placement here is misleading. If we remove his 98-yard TD, he averaged fewer than 3 YPC on his other TDs.
Miles Sanders’ numbers could be even better. Sanders sort of had a 70-yard TD run that isn’t counted in this study. He fumbled after a long run and JJ Arcega-Whiteside ended up recovering for the TD.
Jonathan Taylor deserves his first-round ADP. He had 11 TDs and averaged double-digit yards on those scores. He could make the leap into the top 3 this year.