Bellcow RB’s
So we all know the RB position has greatly evolved since the 90’s-2010s where the league was full of backs taking massive amounts of carries and not splitting workload. Even with today’s 17 game seasons we aren’t seeing running backs getting close to the workload of the backs from these times. Also back then it was normal for linebackers to be 250+ lb freaks in order to punish the RBs as much as possible. I don’t think it’s out of the question to say the guys aren’t being hit as hard on average today either.
We had guys like Curtis Martin, Emmitt smith, Jerome Bettis, Edgerrin James, Ladanian Tomlinson Marshall Faulk etc. all with 10+ year careers and heavy workloads.
This got me thinking, why aren’t we seeing that translate to longer careers for this position today? Just because the league is so predicated on speed and that gets lost first?
Is the RB by committee actually a better approach or has the NFL regressed this position with these scheme changes?
Do we think even with how the game has evolved we could possibly see this old formula come back to being effective? Or are there just not as many guys willing to take on this task? We see it can still be effective with the likes of Derrick Henry, interesting to note that his high workload has also translated to a longer career like the earlier time period I was mentioning.