At the season's midway point we've seen the wheat separate from the chaff and we've got a great picture at the real contenders for end of season awards. Going over the two most important offensive positional awards (QB+RB) based on the early statistics we've seen so far, I have my favorites for both of these awards after eight games.
Starting at the QB position, though we've seen a few run focused teams, we've generally seen a significant uptick in passing attempts in the league this season. Across the board, QBs are completing more of those passes as well and coming in at a higher QBR this season; however, the yardage numbers look quite similar to previous seasons, indicating perhaps a greater reliance on shorter routes in the passing game. The epitome of dink and dunk has to be my favorite for QBotY: Ben Slothlisberger. His 2431 yards on 314 attempts is 2nd best in the league (resulting in 7.74 ypa, one of the better averages in the league), not to mention he crushes the competition in one of the voters' favorite categories: TDs:INT, with 16 TDs so far to just 3 INTs. If he keeps finding the endzone at this rate while remaining one of the safest QBs in the league, he'll be taking home his first award of his career.
For RBotY, we've thankfully have user ztarwarz keeping track of an important advanced statistic: RB success rate. This statistic does a great job of providing more context to player performance than either an RB's rushing yard total or their YPC numbers can. Considering only rushers with at least 100 attempts so far, the leader in RB success rate so far should also be considered the favorite for RBotY at the midseason mark: Arizona Outlaws RB Tatsu Nakamura (42.9%). Nakamura also leads the league in what may perhaps be the 2 other most important stats for measuring RB performance: total rushing yards and rushing TDs (815 yards and 10 TDs). However, given last season's bizzare pro bowl results GMs might just give the award to Darrel Williams for having 0.7 more yards per carry, so there's that.
Starting at the QB position, though we've seen a few run focused teams, we've generally seen a significant uptick in passing attempts in the league this season. Across the board, QBs are completing more of those passes as well and coming in at a higher QBR this season; however, the yardage numbers look quite similar to previous seasons, indicating perhaps a greater reliance on shorter routes in the passing game. The epitome of dink and dunk has to be my favorite for QBotY: Ben Slothlisberger. His 2431 yards on 314 attempts is 2nd best in the league (resulting in 7.74 ypa, one of the better averages in the league), not to mention he crushes the competition in one of the voters' favorite categories: TDs:INT, with 16 TDs so far to just 3 INTs. If he keeps finding the endzone at this rate while remaining one of the safest QBs in the league, he'll be taking home his first award of his career.
For RBotY, we've thankfully have user ztarwarz keeping track of an important advanced statistic: RB success rate. This statistic does a great job of providing more context to player performance than either an RB's rushing yard total or their YPC numbers can. Considering only rushers with at least 100 attempts so far, the leader in RB success rate so far should also be considered the favorite for RBotY at the midseason mark: Arizona Outlaws RB Tatsu Nakamura (42.9%). Nakamura also leads the league in what may perhaps be the 2 other most important stats for measuring RB performance: total rushing yards and rushing TDs (815 yards and 10 TDs). However, given last season's bizzare pro bowl results GMs might just give the award to Darrel Williams for having 0.7 more yards per carry, so there's that.
![[Image: xzfGZKP.png]](https://i.imgur.com/xzfGZKP.png)
![[Image: qWest.gif]](https://sig.grumpybumpers.com/host/qWest.gif)
