Poor QB play makes star runners like Gurley, Peterson fashionable once more

 

It wasn’t long ago there was talk of running back being a devalued position in the NFL.
It is, after all, a passing-centric league. Productive runners are nice to have, the thinking in recent years has gone, but they weren’t worth big money in free agency or a high first-round draft pick.
That thinking might be due for a re-evaluation. Adrian Peterson is back in the Minnesota Vikings’ lineup and putting up numbers worthy of the most valuable player conversation. Rookie Todd Gurley is justifying the St. Louis Rams’ selection of him with the 10th-overall choice in this year’s draft.
Runners are back in style. And the trend could continue with several talented college prospects coming down the line.


“That’s absolutely the way people have looked at it, and the reason is poor quarterback play,” said Terrell Davis, the former centerpiece runner for the Denver Broncos who now is an analyst for the NFL Network. “There aren’t enough good quarterbacks to go around and you can no longer say you’ll just put your money into the quarterback and build your team that way. It’s slim pickings.
“So now you say you’ll get a stud running back and get a running game going and solidify your team that way if you don’t have the quarterback.”
The running back renaissance is being led by Peterson and Gurley. Peterson, 30, returned after missing nearly a full season for disciplinary issues and has run for a league-leading 1,006 yards through 10 games for the Vikings. He and second-year quarterback Teddy Bridgewater have the Vikings solidly in the NFC playoff mix with a record of 7-3.
Gurley has also been a special player, with 775 rushing yards in eight games for the Rams after the team brought him along slowly early in the season as he returned from a knee injury. Gurley is fourth in the league in total rushing yards and his 96.9 rushing yards per game are second in the NFL to Peterson’s 100.6.

“When you talk about a guy who checks every box of everything you want in a back, he’s that guy,” Davis said by phone Wednesday. “He has the mind to go with it. You see guys who have all the physical attributes but it doesn’t connect mentally with them. With him, it all connects. He understands what the end game is and that’s to be a great back over time. And for a guy his size, he’s really fluid. You don’t realize how big he is until you stand next to him.”
Alas, Gurley has too little help in a St. Louis offense that ranks seventh in the league in rushing but last in passing and 31st overall. The Rams traded for quarterback Nick Foles in the offseason but benched him prior to last Sunday’s loss at Baltimore, a game in which Gurley ran for a touchdown but was limited to 66 rushing yards and lost a fumble.

The expectations for him have been raised considerably these days. But he has been what the Rams hoped for — and perhaps more — when they made him the first running back drafted in the opening round league-wide since 2012.
Of the 13 NFL runners to top 1,000 rushing yards last season, only one of them — Seattle’s Marshawn Lynch — originally entered the league as a first-round draft selection. And indeed, there remains a convincing argument to be made that useful runners can be obtained on the cheap, relatively speaking, in the NFL. Thomas Rawls, an undrafted rookie from Central Michigan, had a 209-yard rushing performance for the Seahawks last weekend while filling in for Lynch and had two other games earlier this season with more than 100 yards.
[From the offseason: How much do running backs like DeMarco Murray still matter?]
But the flip side is that the Dallas Cowboys, even with their powerful offensive line, have been unable to replace DeMarco Murray after permitting him to exit via free agency in the offseason. Darren McFadden is averaging 3.9 yards per carry and the Dallas running game was unable to keep the team winning while quarterback Tony Romo and wide receiver Dez Bryant were hurt.
Gurley’s success as a first-rounder bodes well for the future NFL draft stock of LSU’s Leonard Fournette, a highly celebrated sophomore running back who is not eligible for the 2016 draft. Running backs Ezekiel Elliott (Ohio State), C.J. Prosise (Notre Dame) and Derrick Henry (Alabama), all currently rank among the top 30 prospects for Washington Post draft analyst John Harris. The recent struggles of even highly-touted quarterback prospects — like the draft class of 2012 — have also fueled the draft value of exceptional running backs.

“It’s almost by default,” Davis said. “If you don’t have a quarterback and you don’t have the running game, you don’t have much. I don’t watch a lot of college football, but I’m yet to hear of any college quarterbacks being touted [for the upcoming NFL draft] like you had last year.”
But the current game still favors those who throw and catch passes. Davis, among the semifinalists announced Tuesday for next year’s Pro Football Hall of Fame class, said the NFL’s safety-related restrictions on hitting in practices have hindered many teams from developing running games on which they feel they can rely.
“There’s a limited time you have to work on the running game,” he said. “That has definitely impacted it. If I’m an offensive coordinator or an offensive line coach, I need to see my linemen with their knuckles on the ground. You need to work on it. You can get better in the passing game in the offseason. You can get better in the passing game not hitting in practice. You can’t get better in the running game that way. So coaches don’t trust it.”

Many young running backs also are entering the league unprepared for the NFL version of the sport, Davis said, because of the spread offenses and read-option approaches widely favored at lower levels.
“Backs are not growing up in the I-formation,” Davis said. “They’re not getting behind a fullback. They’re growing up in the read-option. That, to me, caused backs to be one-dimensional and unable to function in an NFL offense. I coached some high school football and I was shocked about what players hadn’t learned because they’d grown up in the read-option. I’d talk about certain things to them and it was like I was speaking a different language. So finally I gave in. I went with what they knew. It’s very efficient and it’s easy to install and execute the read-option stuff.”

But perhaps, Davis said, the NFL exploits of young runners such as Gurley might have a trickle-down effect.
“Maybe over time, kids will see what’s happening in the pro game and want to have it that way with the running game,” he said. “That’s the only way it might go back that direction a little bit.”