Sports Reference Blog

Touches Added to Play Index

Posted by Mike Lynch on November 5, 2014

You often hear about dangerous workloads for NFL running backs and the struggles many have had after particularly taxing seasons. But, particularly in this era, the running game is only part of the equation for backs (though we won't opine on whether or not receptions are less taxing than rushes). Many of them are 3-down players heavily involved in the passing game. With that in mind, we've added "touches" as a searchable statistical category in the Play Index. For our purposes, we have defined "touches" as the sum of rushes, receptions, kick returns & punt returns. While Larry Johnson may famously hold the record for rush attempts in a season with 416, James Wilder has the record for touches with 492 in 1984. The most touches in a game we have in our data (since 1960) is 48 by LaDainian Tomlinson & Wilder.

As I write, the 2014 leader in touches is DeMarco Murray, with 255 through 9 games. That puts him on pace for 453 touches this season, which would be tied with Eddie George for 3rd most in NFL history and 14 more than Emmitt Smith ever had in a season.

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