Fantasy Football: What can TRAP and high-value touches tell us about Derrick Henry for 2020?

Standing 6-foot-3 and running a 4.54 40 at 247 pounds, Derrick Henry is a physical outlier at the running back position. He's also a statistical outlier, and it makes evaluating his 2020 prospects a challenge.

Back in July, I introduced a stat called "TRAP" — "Trivial Rush Attempt Percentage." If you read Stealing Signals at all this year, you're familiar with it. The short breakdown is that receptions and touches inside the 10-yard line are deemed high-value touches for running backs, because while just under a quarter of all running back touches from 2014-2018 were those types of touches, they accounted for 58% of all running back PPR Fantasy points. The other three-quarters of touches were trivial rush attempts — carries outside the prime area for scoring touchdowns — AKA "between the 20s" rushes.

Across the five seasons leading into 2019, a player's high-value touches correlated more strongly with his PPR Fantasy points than his total touches did. That means we can look at the ratio of a player's total touches that are high-value and low-value to better understand which players have the potential for strong Fantasy workloads and which have touch totals that are hollower. That is a player's TRAP — the percentage of his total touches that were low-value, trivial rush attempts. A higher percentage indicates a worse touch profile.

2019 TRAP results

In 2019, high-value touches accounted for a slightly larger percentage of total touches among the league's backs, and the league average TRAP fell to 73.9%. That makes sense, as we saw some historic receiving seasons from running backs in 2019, most notably from Christian McCaffrey and Austin Ekeler.

Here are the 27 backs who finished with at least 200 touches in 2019, with a look at their total touches, high-value touches, TRAP and the amount of PPR points they scored per high-value touch"

Player	PPR FP	Touches	HVT	TRAP	PPR/HVT
Christian McCaffrey	471.2	403	148	63.3%	3.2
Aaron Jones	318.8	285	68	76.1%	4.7
Ezekiel Elliott	315.7	355	85	76.1%	3.7
Austin Ekeler	313	224	103	54.0%	3.0
Derrick Henry	300.5	321	42	86.9%	7.2
Dalvin Cook	297.7	303	85	71.9%	3.5
Leonard Fournette	261.3	341	99	71.0%	2.6
Nick Chubb	261.1	333	68	79.6%	3.8
Alvin Kamara	250.65	252	95	62.3%	2.6
Mark Ingram	246	227	52	77.1%	4.7
Saquon Barkley	244.1	269	68	74.7%	3.6
Chris Carson	240.9	315	57	81.9%	4.2
Joe Mixon	225.5	313	60	80.8%	3.8
Todd Gurley	223.4	254	60	76.4%	3.7
Miles Sanders	220.6	228	64	71.9%	3.4
Le'Veon Bell	217	312	75	76.0%	2.9
Kenyan Drake	216.2	221	63	71.5%	3.4
Devonta Freeman	201.6	243	62	74.5%	3.3
Phillip Lindsay	197.7	259	47	81.9%	4.2
Josh Jacobs	193.6	262	41	84.4%	4.7
Melvin Gordon	186.8	204	62	69.6%	3.0
Marlon Mack	181.3	261	31	88.1%	5.8
David Montgomery	174.4	267	48	82.0%	3.6
Ronald Jones	170.3	203	41	79.8%	4.2
Carlos Hyde	157.2	255	26	89.8%	6.0
Adrian Peterson	151	228	28	87.7%	5.4
Sony Michel	148.4	258	39	84.9%	3.8

One thing that should stand out immediately is backs with higher TRAPs tended to perform worse relative to their total touches, while those who racked up high-value touches tended to perform better. Another thing that should stand out is Derrick Henry's TRAP, as the only one over 80% among the league's top 10 Fantasy backs.

What does the future hold for Henry?

Henry finished as RB5 in PPR leagues in 2019, and in doing so became the first player since 2012 to finish in the top five at the position in PPR scoring while catching fewer than 30 passes. Because of how I like to analyze running backs, he's become something of a fascination for me, and I've been itching to dig into him more.

In particular, I wanted to look into two things: 1) Can he repeat or perhaps even build on his 2019 performance? 2) Can his TRAP change in a meaningful way, particularly in terms of catching more passes?

To get at both of these questions, I wanted to look at players who had produced similar seasons to Henry's 2019. I often don't like to go too far back with running back comps, because the way running backs are used has changed substantially in the past decade. But Henry is a perfect example of a throwback to an earlier era, as is his usage, so for him those comps are much more appropriate.

I added the PPR points per high-value touch column to the table above, because it represents a type of efficiency I was curious about in sustainability terms. Throughout Henry's young career, he's never been one to rack up high-value touches, and he's maintained a TRAP above 80% each season. But in 2019, he produced far more PPR points per high-value touch than in any year prior.

Player	Year	PPR FP	Touches	HVT	TRAP	PPR/HVT
Derrick Henry	2016	105.7	123	24	80.5%	4.4
Derrick Henry	2017	135	187	25	86.6%	5.4
Derrick Henry	2018	203.5	230	37	83.9%	5.5
Derrick Henry	2019	300.5	321	42	86.9%	7.2

Per the RotoViz Screener, there were 157 running back seasons from 2000-2018 of 250 or more PPR points. Just three times did a running back produce that many points with fewer high-value touches than Henry's 42 in 2019.

But history is not without positive comps for Henry's particular type of Fantasy production. Among the top-10 seasons in PPR/HVT in this sample, we find not one but two players showing up with consecutive seasons of this type of production.

Player	Season	PPR	Touches	HVT	TRAP	PPR/HVT
Adrian Peterson	2007	258	257	24	90.7%	10.8
DeAngelo Williams	2008	306.9	294	41	86.1%	7.5
Alfred Morris	2012	258	346	35	89.9%	7.4
Shaun Alexander	2005	378.8	385	53	86.2%	7.1
Adrian Peterson	2008	269.5	384	43	88.8%	6.3
Michael Turner	2008	282	382	45	88.2%	6.3
Jamal Lewis	2003	343.1	414	55	86.7%	6.2
Ezekiel Elliott	2016	327.5	353	55	84.4%	6.0
Shaun Alexander	2004	329.6	376	56	85.1%	5.9
Marshawn Lynch	2012	273.6	338	47	86.1%	5.8
Chris Johnson	2009	398.9	408	72	82.4%	5.5
Clinton Portis	2002	322.2	306	59	80.7%	5.5
Robert Smith	2000	282.9	331	52	84.3%	5.4
Larry Johnson	2005	368.3	369	68	81.6%	5.4
Ahman Green	2003	395	405	73	82.0%	5.4
Arian Foster	2014	277.55	298	52	82.6%	5.3
C.J. Spiller	2012	261.3	250	50	80.0%	5.2
Clinton Portis	2003	314.5	328	61	81.4%	5.2
Adrian Peterson	2012	351.4	388	69	82.2%	5.1
Jamaal Charles	2010	286.5	275	58	78.9%	4.9

Adrian Peterson backed up up his hyper-efficient rookie year with another highly-efficient second season, again without racking up many high-value touches. He led the league in rushing yards per game each season.

Prime Shaun Alexander backed up a big 2004 with an even bigger 2005 season while posting even fewer high-value touches. He went from fourth in rushing yards per game in 2004 to leading the league in 2005, and led the league in total touchdowns each season.

Henry led the league in 2019 in rushing attempts and yards, and finished one back from Christian McCaffrey and Aaron Jones for total touchdowns.

But Peterson and Alexander aren't the only names on the above list. Here's how the ensuing season for each of those players looked:

Player	Season	N+1 PPR	N+1 Touches	N+1 HVT	N+1 TRAP	N+1 PPR/HVT
Adrian Peterson	2007	269.5	384	43	88.8%	6.3
DeAngelo Williams	2008	209.9	245	43	82.4%	4.9
Alfred Morris	2012	186.3	285	24	91.6%	7.8
Shaun Alexander	2005	148.4	264	23	91.3%	6.5
Adrian Peterson	2008	332.9	357	85	76.2%	3.9
Michael Turner	2008	155.6	183	19	89.6%	8.2
Jamal Lewis	2003	164.1	245	27	89.0%	6.1
Ezekiel Elliott	2016	203.2	268	46	82.8%	4.4
Shaun Alexander	2004	378.8	385	53	86.2%	7.1
Marshawn Lynch	2012	277.3	337	73	78.3%	3.8
Chris Johnson	2009	276.9	360	68	81.1%	4.1
Clinton Portis	2002	314.5	328	61	81.4%	5.2
Robert Smith	2000	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
Larry Johnson	2005	374.9	457	86	81.2%	4.4
Ahman Green	2003	236.8	299	57	80.9%	4.2
Arian Foster	2014	79	85	26	69.4%	3.0
C.J. Spiller	2012	156.8	235	38	83.8%	4.1
Clinton Portis	2003	241.75	383	63	83.6%	3.8
Adrian Peterson	2012	238.7	308	49	84.1%	4.9
Jamaal Charles	2010	20.2	17	5	70.6%	4.0

Several had a hard time posting the same number of touches, and efficiency dipped for many, results that are to be expected for running backs. We also see that the majority didn't see significantly altered touch mixes, and still maintained a TRAP over 80%.

Where do we take Henry in 2020?

Henry is a physical outlier.

While Henry was and remains a poster boy for a player with a huge touch total that doesn't feature many high-value touches (i.e. a TRAP back), the specific player he is shouldn't get lost in deep looks into the numbers.

But while that's something I'll be keeping in mind throughout the 2020 offseason, there are still reasons to wonder whether his spike in 2019 efficiency — something we didn't see from him across the 2016-2018 seasons, at least not to this degree — can carry over into 2020. We'll also have to keep in mind that running backs by their nature tend to get hurt at a high rate, and that it's difficult to sustain any type of high-end production from one year to the next at such a volatile position.

Henry will be one of the toughest players for me to rank in 2020, because his lack of high-value touches and reliance on elite efficiency in 2019 indicate this could easily go down as a career year. And why wouldn't it? It's hard to imagine things going more right for him, given the high rate of long touchdowns week in and week out.

But there's also reason for optimism. He'll be the locked-in lead back again in Tennessee, his TRAP was actually a career high in 2019 (and could very well improve a few percentage points as a result) and there are examples in the not-too-distant past — from the early part of Adrian Peterson's career to the prime of Shaun Alexander's — that indicate it wouldn't be unprecedented if he sustained a solid amount of his particular type of efficiency.

I'd love to see Henry as a second-round pick in 2020, not someone to invest in within the top-10 picks. That doesn't seem particularly likely to happen, given what he just accomplished in 2019. So will he be worth a first-round selection? He'd have to be an outlier. But maybe that's exactly what he is.