With the Minnesota Vikings' heartbreaking overtime loss to New Orleans last Sunday came the end of the season for running back Adrian Peterson. And it was a strange year for Peterson. In 2008, he turned in a phenomenal campaign, rushing for a league-best 1,760 yards, averaging 4.8 yards per carry and running for at least 100 yards 10 times.
But 2009 was a different story. Peterson compiled 1,383 yards on the ground, still an impressive figure. But shockingly, ""All Day"" only eclipsed the 100-yard mark twice in the regular season. Four times Peterson was held under 60 rushing yards in a game, and twice he was held under 40.
Anyone who followed the Vikings saw a completely different back in 2009. Instead of being counted on to do the heavy lifting each and every game of the season, Peterson often had trouble establishing himself as a weapon on the ground. As the season continued, Minnesota began to depend on quarterback Brett Favre and its passing game to move the football. The highlights of Peterson roaring through the line, breaking tackles and exploding for huge chunks of yards soon seemed like a thing of the past.
This sudden, steep decline of Peterson is the latest sign of a developing trend in the NFL: the fading use of the workhorse running back. In the late '90s and the early part of the 2000s, the league witnessed marquee running backs like Barry Sanders and Robert Smith begin to retire much earlier than other positions because of how many hits they took each and every game. With the athletes on defense only becoming faster and stronger, the workhorse running back who carries the ball 25 times a game will soon be a thing of the past, and there is overwhelming statistical evidence to back this up.
Looking at the very near past, let's inspect the top three rushing attempt leaders in 2008: Michael Turner, Peterson and Clinton Portis. Peterson's sharp regression has already been discussed, but what about Turner? Becoming a full-time back for the first time in his career, Turner carried the ball a league-high 376 times in 2008. Flash forward to 2009 and Turner suffers an ankle injury, and despite attempting to return to the lineup multiple times, remains ineffective.
Portis carried the ball 342 times in 2008, third most in the league. This season Portis suffered a concussion during the middle of the season, would never return to the lineup, and is now likely finished in Washington.
Even the next player on the carries list in 2008 suffered a setback in 2009. Matt Forte finished only his second season in the NFL with the fourth most rushing attempts in 2008. After finishing the season 11th-best in rushing yards in 2008, Forte dropped all the way to 22nd in 2009.
In the cases of Sanders and Smith, the two backs were still effective up until retirement. Now all it takes is one year of a heavy workload for a running back to deteriorate his production. The most startling facet of this is that it's happening to young and inexperienced players. Peterson just wrapped up his third season, Forte his second. Turner is a little older than the two, but did not become a feature back until the 2008 season.
As a Jets fan, I closely watched Thomas Jones and Shonn Greene split carries through the postseason. Jones, despite being a much more accomplished back than Greene, a rookie third-round draft pick, simply could not match the explosiveness shown by Greene, who entered the playoffs with only 108 NFL rushing attempts under his belt. The difference between Greene and Jones in the playoffs was night and day.
So what does this mean for the NFL? It signifies the beginning of a real two-back system, where only teams with two effective backs who can split carries basically right down the middle will be able to sustain rushing attacks with the same personnel for a number of years.
We are already seeing some teams using this strategy, with no one better adept than the Dallas Cowboys. Dallas has one of the hardest running ball-carriers in the league in Marion Barber. But the Cowboys limited the back to 214 carries, allowing youngster Felix Jones to shoulder a hunk of the load. And when Dallas needed Barber during crunch time to help run out the clock and ice the game, how many times have we seen Barber come through?
Even premier backs like Barber must be kept fresh to stay effective for years to come.
Along with the Cowboys, New Orleans used backs such as Pierre Thomas and Reggie Bush, Baltimore used Willis McGahee with Ray Rice, Miami supplemented Ronnie Brown with Ricky Williams before Brown was injured, and Carolina used the two-headed monster of DeAngelo Williams and Jonathan Stewart. What do all these teams have in common? They finished in the top seven in rushing in 2009.
No human is meant to take hits as hard as running backs do, and when running backs are getting hit 25-30 times a game, with the type of athletes defenses throw out there today, they're going to wear down rapidly. No matter how good a back is, he must be preserved throughout each game and each season to remain successful. It will soon only be two- and three-headed rushing attacks to flourish in the NFL, not the workhorse.
Can players like Adrian Peterson survive in the modern NFL? Tell Scott at kellogg2@wisc.edu.
