Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

The way you describe play type makes it seem like the coaches were stupid.  If you average 9 yards a carry every time you run a sweep, then just run a sweep every play.  

And does the play-call really matter with Sanders?  If the play calls for him to run through the B-gap, how often did that actually happen? lol

But back to play type....you seem to think lower carry guys' generally-higher ypc numbers are mostly due to that...when it's not (at least not mathematically).  
A lower number of carries often yields a higher ypc average simply due to being a lower sample size and less close to their true ability level.
Same on the other side of the bell curve - tons of guys with not-a-lot-of-carries average 3.2 ypc or 2.7 ypc...not because they were that awful, but because the lower carries is less valid or accurate of their true ability level and their ypc is skewed lower.

If you can't accept that point, there's no need for us to continue.  It's precisely why stat leaders are segmented by number of carries, as it's not "fair" (ie - statistically accurate) to compare a guy with 2,000 carries with a 500-carry guy.  

Sanders, with his 350ish carries, is deemed the best, despite players with more carries (career) for higher ypc.  If that number (or his actual career number) is deemed "enough carries to determine he's the best," then why isn't it a number 100 fewer than that?  200 more?  
If it's arbitrary, then acknowledge it's arbitrary.  

If someone thinks he's the best because they watched him and see the stats and it all adds up to him being the best in their eyes, great.

But when there's guys out there with more carries AND a higher ypc average, well.....people get to suggest one of them was better, right?  

Sorry, I just don't deem play-call type an overriding figure on that, lol.  Not with more volume overall.  
Bush ran the ball inside plenty of times.  White ran the sweep plenty, otherwise they'd have been telegraphing their play-calls to the defense.  Harvin ran plenty of counters, I promise.  Nearly all of his carries were from the backfield and not on motion-jet sweeps.  
Bush didn't average 8.7 ypc on 200 carries with the defense knowing what play was called, no matter how great he was.

stats don't tell the entire story

often times stats are VERY misleading
if you're just going to rank the top 100 players by stats - it's a fine list, but many will find faults

I haven't said anything to the contrary.  But stats DO negate the style of the RB's production, which can be useful.  
And I'd love for people who find faults to actually explain the faults, besides 'I know this to be true because I know it to be true'...which is far too common. 

Barry Sanders was great.  Fun share:  I don't recall watching him play at OKST (I was 8 years old), but I do distinctly remember pretending to be him when I played football with my friends.  I remember telling the girl OKST was the Cowboys, as she was going to play cheerleader and wanted to know the mascot.  
So this isn't an anti-Sanders thing at all.  It's more of an observation about certain guys over time sort of being bronzed into the consensus.  And I just think it's interesting.  Everyone agrees Sanders had the best season, but almost no one would argue he had the best career.  I'm just interested in the sliding scale between those 2 things.  
His peak was "the best" but didn't have the best career, so then should we actually say he's the best?  

Just off-season wonderings and fun discussion.

so, when you're on the playground or the football field - most kids can tell who the best player is.........
got nothing to do with stats - just recognizing talent.  Hence the eyeball.
in determining the best - I don't worry about a sliding scale of two statistics.  I'll go with my eyeballs and what's on tape or film.  It's not difficult to recognize greatness.

The way you describe play type makes it seem like the coaches were stupid.  If you average 9 yards a carry every time you run a sweep, then just run a sweep every play. 

No. A jet sweep is a constraint play.

https://www.smartfootball.com/offense/why-every-team-should-apply-the-constraint-theory-of-offense/comment-page-1

You don't run a jet sweep because it's some completely undefendable wonder play. If it were, then you're right. Coaches would be stupid not to run it more often. But it's not. You run the jet sweep generally for two reasons:

• You see the defense doing something (often something taking them out of position, to stop your base play set) that you think will make them susceptible to a big hitter with a constraint play like a jet sweep. 
• You want to force the defense to do something (i.e. defend sideline to sideline instead of cheating to load the box, for example) in their defensive scheme to make certain other concepts easier to execute, and making the defense be aware of and defend the jet sweep helps you with that.

There's a lot of situational stuff in football. Some plays you have to use to make other plays work better. Jet sweeps can often have very high ypc for a team, but only because the defense is NOT expecting it or defending it well. Once they start defending it, it doesn't work--but that change to the defensive scheme now opens other things up. 

But back to play type....you seem to think lower carry guys' generally-higher ypc numbers are mostly due to that...when it's not (at least not mathematically). 
A lower number of carries often yields a higher ypc average simply due to being a lower sample size and less close to their true ability level.
Same on the other side of the bell curve - tons of guys with not-a-lot-of-carries average 3.2 ypc or 2.7 ypc...not because they were that awful, but because the lower carries is less valid or accurate of their true ability level and their ypc is skewed lower.

If you can't accept that point, there's no need for us to continue.  It's precisely why stat leaders are segmented by number of carries, as it's not "fair" (ie - statistically accurate) to compare a guy with 2,000 carries with a 500-carry guy. 

And you seem to think that carry type doesn't matter. That ypc == talent and the more carries you have, even if they're just plowing into the B gap, the more it will reveal your true talent level. 

I do believe that sample size matters. As you say, it's why stats need a certain sample size to even qualify being included. After all, in 2006 Calvin Johnson had a 100% completion percentage and a 158.8 passer rating. Of course, he only threw one pass that season, because he's a WR. So we shouldn't include him on completion percentage stat lists or passer rating stat lists. 

Sanders, with his 350ish carries, is deemed the best, despite players with more carries (career) for higher ypc.  If that number (or his actual career number) is deemed "enough carries to determine he's the best," then why isn't it a number 100 fewer than that?  200 more? 
If it's arbitrary, then acknowledge it's arbitrary. 

I think the concept that you need a minimum number to qualify isn't arbitrary. It's a matter of statistical analysis where it starts to become apparent that you have enough data points to be outside the "noise" of randomness. 

Let's say the "true" number for a running back is 193 career carries, if we were to be able to truly "know" such a thing. There's a certain degree to which it's arbitrary whether you set the qualifying number as 180, or 200, or 220. Either way you're probably close enough for our purposes (comparing backs). But if you set the number to 50, or 500, I think we'd say that you're effectively out of bounds on that because you'll either include too many players that shouldn't be in the list, or exclude a bunch of players that should. 

I think a single season and ~350 carries has cleared that bar. I think Percy Harvin's career 194 carries is probably enough to clear that bar. We can quibble about what that number is, obviously, but we're not talking about someone with 75 career carries over 3 seasons who mostly worked in garbage time. 

What I disagree with is that ypc should be the primary metric by which we judge RBs. It's only one of many data points. 

I commented on sweeps, not jet sweeps, sorry.  Didn't mean to obfuscate there.

But any running play is called to obviously gain yardage.  If certain plays can be relied on to gain more yardage, then any coach is going to call those plays more often, yes?
So the reason I'm not overly convinced about play call type yielding higher ypc for some RBs who get those play call carries is that if there were a set of specific running plays that magically yielded higher ypc, then those plays would be called more.  Why even call the other plays?  They're shit. 

If Lendale White is better at gaining yardage on a dive play, cool, but the defense knows that, too.  If Reggie Bush is better at gaining yardage on a toss sweep, cool, but the defense knows that, too.  I'm going to have White go wide sometimes to surprise the defense.  I'm going to have Bush go up the middle for the same reason.  We all know this, the cat-and-mouse of things. 

Backups don't tend to have less valid ypc numbers because of play-call tendencies, either.  Teams are still running their normal rushing offense, especially when up big.  They're not suddenly calling their shit run plays.  And backup RBs aren't just getting garbage-time carries.  Most starters actually only get 50-60% of the carries (which may surprise a lot of people).  It is extremely rare for a RB to have over 60% of a team's carries. 

Teams are not calling all different play types 40% of the time they're running the ball.  Sorry.
.
fwiw, Sanders had about 70% of OKST's carries (not counting the QB's sacks)

Dobbins had butter fingers vs Clemson