Flash back to just one year ago. The Eagles were absolutely loaded at the running back position after signing reigning rushing champion DeMarco Murray and adding former first-rounder Ryan Mathews. The running game, easily the staple of Chip Kelly’s offense in the 2013 and 2014 season, was expected to be even more dynamic for a team that was considered a sleeper Super Bowl contender.
Then everything went wrong for Kelly’s 2015 squad, and it’s still unknown whether Murray or Kelly deserves most of the blame for the disastrous running game.
Now Murray and Kelly are both gone, and the Eagles’ rushing attack looks vastly different heading into the first year of the Doug Pederson era.
On paper, it looks worse. Much worse. There’s simply no denying that. In fact, despite the continued devaluing of the running back position, it’s not a stretch to call the position the weakest on the Eagles. Rookie head coach Doug Pederson sure has his work cut out for him.
Pederson comes from a Chiefs team that had Jamaal Charles, one of the most underappreciated running backs in NFL history, as well as two very capable backups, Charcandrick West and Spencer Ware. Even with Charles missing the final 11 games of the season with a torn ACL, the Chiefs finished sixth in the NFL in rushing yards, third in yards per carry and first in rushing touchdowns.
The 2016 Eagles obviously don’t have a runner close to the quality of Jamaal Charles. Lead back Ryan Mathews is a capable runner, but he comes with many question marks. He’ll be 29 years old in October. This is his seventh NFL season. The former first-round pick has missed games in five of his six NFL seasons. He’s carried the ball more than 200 times just twice. Last season, a severe concussion caused him to miss three games and when he returned, Mathews went from the leading rusher (in yards per carry) to a player who averaged 3.5 yards per carry in his final four games.
Mathews isn’t just a question mark. He’s a major question mark. At this stage in his career, he shouldn’t be the lead back for any NFL team. He simply can’t stay healthy. And he’s carried the ball more than 15 times in exactly one of his last 16 games.
So if not Mathews, then who? Darren Sproles? Wendall Smallwood? Kenjon Barner?
Every running back on the 2016 Eagles has major red flags.
Sproles is 33 years old. We know what he is at this point. He’s never reached 90 carries in any of his 11 NFL seasons. He’s a great complementary piece, a versatile pass-catching back who can be explosive at times, especially as a punt returner, but is more in the decline phase of his career at this point. He actually made a lot of sense as a trade chip, and NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport said teams were calling the Eagles for Sproles during the draft. But since Sproles is still on the roster during OTAs, it’s safe to assume he isn’t going anywhere at this point. Realistically, the Eagles can’t afford to get rid of him.
Rookie fifth-round pick Wendall Smallwood is the big wild-card of the team’s four running backs. His pre-draft evaluations don’t suggest that he can be the lead back, especially as a rookie, but realistically, the Eagles may need to rely on him more than they expected in 2016. If Mathews goes down at any point with an injury, which should be expected at this stage of his career, is Smallwood the guy the Eagles can feel comfortable handing the ball to on 3rd and 2 from midfield?
The only other option on the team is Kenjon Barner, a former standout at Oregon who has carried just 34 times in his three NFL seasons. Barner has never scored an NFL touchdown, he’s fumbled twice in very limited opportunities and he’s already 27 years old. It’s hard to see the fourth running back on the Eagles’ depth chart emerging as a candidate to handle 15 or 20 carries per game if needed.
When you don’t have a very good quarterback, like Sam Bradford, you want a strong running game to help take the pressure off the quarterback. The Eagles can get by with the options they have for a few games. But as soon as Mathews goes down with an injury, and he unfortunately very likely will, we’re going to learn a lot about this team’s running back pretty quickly. Whether it’s Smallwood, Sproles, Barner or even an undrafted rookie free agent like Byron Marshall, someone is going to have to step up and shoulder the load. At this point, none of us has any idea who that player will be.
