Can Slaton be a Feature Back?

[Roy P]

I see Slaton as a 7 - 15 carries per game type RB. Who falls in that catagory from last season?

Name-------------Carries----CPG----Rushing Yards
Fred Taylor--------223------14.9-----1202
Marion Barber-----204------12.8------975
Chester Taylor-----157------11.2------844
Laurence Maroney--185------14.2------835
Maurice Jones-Drew-167----11.1------768
Selvin Young-------140------9.3-------729
DeAngelo Williams---144------9--------717
Jerious Norwood----103------6.9------613
Julius Jones--------164-----10.2------588
Reggie Bush-------157-----13.1------581

[dadmg]

Originally Posted by Roy P

I see Slaton as a 7 - 15 carries per game type RB.

Originally Posted by Keith

I'm optimistic that in this system Slaton can someday be a feature back, with 15-20 touches per game rushing and receiving, assuming he can see the field as a blocker.

Myself, I'd like to see him in the 15-18 carries range (240-288 per season). Then again, if I was a head coach, I would generally prefer to keep my lead back in that range if I could help it. If I had a top-level back and a mediocre backup, I might let him go a bit more but once you get around 350 (roughly 22 carries per game) you're tempting fate. Higher than that and you're really playing with fire, especially if you have a playoff team (which will extend his workload further). I've done quite a bit of charting on workloads and very few backs since the NFL switched to a 16 game schedule have proven to be able to consistently run in that range without trouble.

[NickO]

Looks like the days of the single workhorse back are dwindling. Ahman's showed me nothing so far, I wouldn't be hurt to see him gone.

I LOVED the Brown acquisition. I've admired him even since he tore my horns a new one in the Big XII championship...and that was a zone blocking scheme he ran in at Colorado. His injury problems are less of a concern to me now that Slaton's around for a little more depth.

[painekiller]

I would like to see Slaton get 10-15 touches a game. Bring him in to make the other team respond to him. One chop block and he has the ability to go to the house.

[Vinny]

I see him as a Chris Brown type of change of pace back....but not a feature back. He will split out to the slot and will be used like Reggie Bush more than he will be used as a feature back methinks.

[HPF Bob]

Feature backs are typically 25-30 carry/game type players. To call someone a feature back and then say you hope he gets 15 touches is contradictory. Feature backs are guys you give the rock to over and over again whether you are ahead or behind to wear down the defense (think LJ, Tomlinson, Peterson).

Slaton is not that sort of guy although he was used heavily by West Virginia, often in a zone read offense with Pat White where White read the defense and either handed it to Slaton or ran with it himself. It was clear that Slaton got banged up doing that in college and he needs a lighter workload in the pros so he won't wear down.

As for picking up the blitz, all backs need to know how to do this but they also need to know how to swing out for the outlet pass or run a sprint draw. Those are two other ways you can beat the blitz and those are the sort of plays I think Slaton can excel in. He needs just a little daylight to turn a big play but he needs to be fresh.

Let one of the other backs do the heavy lifting on first and second down. Slaton should be used sort of like Allen Pinkett was with the old Oilers.

[nunusguy]

Honestly, between Green, Brown, & Taylor how can we not have atleast one of them remain healthy and have a relatively productive year ?
I dunno, but does Slaton not compare favorably to first-rounders Chris Johnson & Felix Jones except that he's not as fast as the super-fast Johnson (Jones isn't either) ?

[Warren]

Like Bob said, Slaton hasn't had to do a lot of running in traffic. A lot of the time at West Virginia he was either pitched the ball on the edge or he ran through gaps in the defense created by the vertical spread of the offensive personnel. IMO, the key trait that an NFL feature back must have is the ability to get yards after contact, because pro RBs don't get big holes where they can go untouched very often. And a RB can get yards after contact in any number of ways -- breaking tackles with power, bouncing off defenders, juking defenders so they don't get a clean shot, etc. Slaton needs to prove he can do that. Just like with zoning-blocking OLs, the Texans' offensive braintrust should know what to look for in RBs, so we'll see.

[Keith]

Originally Posted by HPF Bob

Feature backs are typically 25-30 carry/game type players. To call someone a feature back and then say you hope he gets 15 touches is contradictory. Feature backs are guys you give the rock to over and over again whether you are ahead or behind to wear down the defense (think LJ, Tomlinson, Peterson).

There was not a single running back averaging 25-30 carries/game last year. Times they are a changin'.

Tomlinson, for example, has been a touches bell cow since he joined the league. He was 4th in the league last year with 315 carries, 10 behind league leader Clinton Portis. That's 19.7 carries/gm. Include LT's 60 catches (which is pretty high for a RB), and his average touches/gm jumps to 23.4 per game. For his career, LT still only averages 21.3 carries per game, one of the few backs recently to be able to carry such a heavy load over a long period of time (7 years).

2007 Touches per Game Leaders
1. LaDainian Tomlinson 375
2. Clinton Portis 372
2. Brian Westbrook 372
4. Edgerrin James 348
5. Willie Parker 344

20 touches per game will probably put a player just into the top 10 in the league this year. I think this is a downward trend and is partially why you are seeing so many teams going with 2 RBs nowadays.

For reference, Portis, during his time with the Broncos, averaged 21.9 touches/game over the 2002-03 seasons. Back in those days, guys like LT and Ricky Williams were getting around 27 touches/game. If a featured back then on the Texans gets about 80% of the touches a league leader might get, then I would figure that the team's optimal scenario would be to find a RB that would get around 19 touches/game.

[dadmg]

Originally Posted by HPF Bob

Feature backs are typically 25-30 carry/game type players. To call someone a feature back and then say you hope he gets 15 touches is contradictory.

Keith said almost everything I intended to say, except that, by that definition, there have only been a few feature backs over a full season in the NFL's history. Larry Johnson last year averaged an even 26 carries per game in setting the NFL record for carries as Herm Edwards finished off another back. Jamal Anderson's 410 in 1998 was an average of 25.6. He blew out his knee for the first time the next year and never recovered. Finally, Eddie George scored 403 (25.18) carries for Jeff Fisher in 2000. He never managed more than 3.4 ypc again in his career.

In the late 90s, early 2000s, there were a few others that came close. Terrell Davis in his greatest year, 1998, got 392 carries (24.5) but never played anywhere close to full-time again (his high carry seasons of 97 and 98 were compounded by SB runs that pushed his knees far beyond what they were capable of). Edgerrin James ran 387 times in 2000 (24.18) a year after leading the league with 369; the next season he tore his ACL in game 6. Ricky Williams was a toy Norv Turner couldn't resist driving him for 383 carries in 2002 (23.9) and 392 carries in 2003 (24.5) even though his YPC dropped from 4.8 to 3.5 in that span. Norv has a long history of riding his backs into the ground; the fact that he only rushed Tomlinson 315 times (19.6) this season is as good an evidence as any that this super-workhorse trend might be dying off. Also in 2003, Jamal Lewis carried 387 (24.18) times on his way to his 2000 yard season; most of the media blamed his downturn on his offseason prison time but I think that its hard to ignore that 387 carries is a lot for any back, particularly one working on two rebuilt ACLs.

Before that late 90's, early 00's stretch, only a few other players have even come close to 25 carries per game, notably Jim Brown on the old 12 game schedule and Walter Payton and OJ Simpson on the 14 game schedule in the run-heavy 70's. But even they didn't average 25 carries a game once in their career.