We have already established that receivers have their peak on average around age 27, and rushers a bit earlier at 26. But how do Hall of Famers compare to this? Won't they have a much longer career and a much longer peak?
Wide Receivers
First let's take a look at the receivers. I selected HoF receivers who's career lasted at least past 2000, so they are relevant to the data we already had. These 4 receivers are:
- Marvin Harrison (1996-2008)
- Randy Moss (1998-2012)
- Terrell Owens (1996-2010)
- Tim Brown (1988-2004)
We then chart the full careers of these 4 guys against the performance of the top-100 receivers over that period. That gives the following graph:
Obviously there is a large variance in the data compared to the averages; that is the nature of averages. We see for instance:
- Marvin Harrison had his peak season at age 30. He had one more great season at 34 and then went down. Roughly his peak years were from age 26-30 though.
- Randy Moss had great years from 23-26, and then one more good year at 30 before going down
- Terrell Owens had his peak from 27-30, and then a resurgence ay age 34
- Tim Brown (who is essentially from an earlier age) had his best years from 27-35. That is quite different from more recent data.
Having said that, if you see the group of the receivers, they roughly comply with the curve of the averages, and they don't necessarily disprove it. I consider that elite and HoF receivers don't substantially deviate from what we have seen.
We we consider only the rushing data (to specifically compare that skill set), we get:
Here we see:
- Marvin Harrison (1996-2008)
- Randy Moss (1998-2012)
- Terrell Owens (1996-2010)
- Tim Brown (1988-2004)
We then chart the full careers of these 4 guys against the performance of the top-100 receivers over that period. That gives the following graph:
Obviously there is a large variance in the data compared to the averages; that is the nature of averages. We see for instance:
- Marvin Harrison had his peak season at age 30. He had one more great season at 34 and then went down. Roughly his peak years were from age 26-30 though.
- Randy Moss had great years from 23-26, and then one more good year at 30 before going down
- Terrell Owens had his peak from 27-30, and then a resurgence ay age 34
- Tim Brown (who is essentially from an earlier age) had his best years from 27-35. That is quite different from more recent data.
Having said that, if you see the group of the receivers, they roughly comply with the curve of the averages, and they don't necessarily disprove it. I consider that elite and HoF receivers don't substantially deviate from what we have seen.
Running Backs
For Running Backs I selected:
- Curtis Martin (1995-2005)
- Emmitt Smith (1990-2004)
- Jerome Bettis (1993-2005)
- LaDainian Tomlinson (2001-2011)
- Marshall Faulk (1994-2005)
Technically Terrell Davis (1996-2001) almost qualified, but instead I used Ricky Williams, as he had an interesting career with a big gap, and it was interesting to compare his data too.
Here we see:
- Curtis Martin had an amazing 10 straight seasons of rushing from age 22-31, topping it off with a career high 1697 at age 31. That last season sticks out so much it's celarly visible as an anomaly in the chart.
- Emmitt Smith had his peak season at 26, and then gradually declined before having one last 900 yd rushing season at age 35
- Jerome Bettis had his peak season at age 25; after age 29 he continued, but he didn't have any further 1000 yard seasons rushing.
- LaDainian Tomlinson had his peak at age 27 and then declined.
- Marshall Faulk had his peak from age 25-28 and then declined
- Ricky Williams had his peak at 25, then retired, came back, was suspended, and then had a second career from 31-34. That part however does not really stick out from the chart.
The one obvious peak is Curtis Martin's age 31 season. Otherwise however, again the Hall of Famers confirm the general trend.
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