Foster

If Benson is the one that falls, I don't want him. He's been beat to shit for four years and then you throw him in this offense...I don't see him ahving a long career as it is, but in this offense even shorter.
We can get what we need for this offense in a guy like Shelton, especially with Goings and a smaller back (Harris for now) to tandem with. This, of course, assuming Davis is not ready and Foster on the IR after 2 games.

 

That's Benson's one actual problem, though - he's not that special. You can put his production as an asset, call him tough, call him strong, but in the end he won't be special IMO. Guys who are special are solid and create - which I don't see in him. But I've gone over that. I see a dropoff between the Auburn guys and Benson - where I don't see a huge difference between Benson and Shelton, who I have a full round later. I think Arrington and Harris will probably be productive in this league, and Houston might if he gets in the right situation and keeps himself healthy. Those guys are good.

actually, we should have a number of "good" backs, not one great one. The backs in this offense get incredible amounts of wear, and hopefully
I dunno - maybe one first rounder wouldn't keep us from getting depth as Foster (potentially) moves on and Davis inevitably hangs it up. But either way I don't see the "big back" as a slot that must be a top 15 pick when hopefully that player would split time to keep the offense progressive and keep all backs relatively healthy.

 

Well, we might be able to get 4 years out of Benson in this habitually 30-35 carry load (which more often than not all falls on one back). He's labeled as a tough guy who'll play through an injury, but yeah it's a concern.

 

Again, in your opinion, which happens to be in the small minority. Scouts have varying opinions on how good he actually is, but all of them agree that Benson is special. Or at least none of them have ever been quoted as saying that he's not, while many have been quoted as saying that he is. The wear and tear issue is a valid concern, but you're about the only person with any legitimacy I've seen to suggest that Benson isn't special. And there are actually two ways to look at that. You can say that Benson has already put on too many miles, or you can say he's proven that he can handle the heavy workload we require while the other backs have not. I think it's fairly significant that Benson had the highest ypc average of his stellar career as a senior, so while he has a lot of mileage, he hasn't shown any wear so far.

I wouldn't even go so far as to say that our backs are good. I appreciated Goings' effort as much as the next guy, but he's certainly below average. A 3.8 ypc average isn't going to cut it. Then Foster hasn't really proven anything, and Davis looks done. I do think that our offense can get by with enough decent guys, but an upgrade at running back would probably help our team more than just about any other position.

 

>>Again, in your opinion

again, thanks for clarifying an irrelevant point. We could all go do that to every last post in here, it's implied. That you think that Benson's great and that I think he's not special? It's been done. We both have the concept down.


>>I wouldn't even go so far as to say that our backs are good.

I didn't. Foster has the potential to be there, but he has to actually show it more than two plays. You have to hope that whatever we add would be "good". Hopefully that's enough, but it'll take a lot more liberal substitution than we've been doing.

 

If you look around the league, the feature back is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Most teams are developing one-two punches at RB and many are able to take the best atributes of two guys and equal or better the attributes of a feature back with mid-late round guys.
RB is a high dollar position and in this era of the salary cap, going later is cheaper. It used to be that only RB's and QB's dominated the top ten in the draft, but since contracts have gotten so huge...other non-glamour positions have moved up the food chain.

 

This is total B.S. There were 18 one thousand yard rushers last season (right in line with historical standards), only one of which split time with another running back. Many of the running backs who didn't crack 1,000 yards missed it because of injury or ineffectiveness, not because they were sharing the load. Some teams have gone to using multiple backs because they don't have a feature-quality back, perhaps because the draft has been so weak at that position for several years now, but that's always the goal of a team - to have one guy capable of handling things himself.

 

regardless, it needs to be a thing of the past on our team or come playoff time we'll have wagon with the wheels falling off, unless said wagon is just coming back from an injury suffered earlier in the season. i do believe that was the plan last year until everyone got hurt and we had to ride goings so hard.

 

Three out of the last ten Super Bowl champions had two backs sharing the load, so it certainly can be done that way, but seven of the ten relied entirely on one guy. Half of them had RBs with more than 300 carries, topped by Terrell Davis' 392 in 1998.

 

I'd like to think we learned from late 2003's loss of Davis at times, but we carried 2 real backs all the same into 2004. We lucked out getting decent carries out of Hoover for a game, then Goings, but the end result is that one back probably wouldn't be able to handle the 400+ carries that one back would need to sustain in this offense. I want to say that Davis was on pace for ~30 carries over the league record mid-season, despite missing the better part of the Indy game.