Roster Breakdown: The Running Backs

Edition #556

Good morning! ☕

I'm envious of all those fans preparing for their teams to play some knockout football this weekend. I still remember the excitement around that 2010 team, it was the year I truly felt we were heading to the promised land. Little did I know that 14 years later we'd be sitting here without even coming close to replicating that drive to the AFC Championship.

😂 Taylor Lewan really dislikes Keith Carter. They butted heads in Tennessee and it looks as though Lewan is still carrying some hard feelings. Outside of Nathaniel Hackett, I think Carter has quickly become one of the most disliked coaches on this staff. Many thought he'd be lucky to keep his job but Robert Saleh believes he was dealt a bad hand. When you get a mulligan from the GM and the GM gets a mulligan from the owner, I guess it's hard to hold your staff accountable. Accountability rolls downhill after all.

🤔 Luke Getsy was fired by the Chicago Bears yesterday. Getsy was with the Packers from 2014-2021 and acted as QB coach to Aaron Rodgers from 2019-2021. Rodgers has described him as a close personal friend. It may not have worked out with the Bears, but Getsy is really highly regarded. I'd take him as the QB coach with extra responsibilities tomorrow. Jets need more voices in that offensive room IMO.

🔴 The Jets were completely absent from the NFLPA's All-Pro team, which is voted on by players. No Quinnen, no Sauce. I'm a little surprised by those omissions.

🎞️ According to multiple reports Aaron Rodgers won't appear on the Pat McAfee show for the rest of the season. Apparently, that's a decision made by McAfee, but the reasoning is unclear. I'm pretty happy about it, that show offered a chance for distraction and Aaron himself said anything that's not built to winning needs to disappear.

Former Jets coach Pete Carroll will step down as the Seattle Seahawks head coach and stay with the team as a special advisor. This was a bit of a shocker yesterday, and despite Pete looking in his mid-50s, he’s now 72 and maybe the strain of running a professional sports team is starting to wear on him. He’s had a fine career after the Jets let him go back in 1994.

When you evaluate the running back position you have to take a lot into consideration. The offensive line is one thing, the playcalling another.

The Jets experienced a lot of turnover on the offensive line and suffered through predictable playcalling. Everyone and their grannies knew the Jets were running an HB dive on first down 75% of the time (I’m exaggerating for emphasis, don’t hold me. to those numbers).

The Jets finished 22nd in the league with 96.9 rushing yards per game, but were 14th in the league with 4.2 yards per rushing attempt. They did a lot of good and a lot of bad, a lot of the good was based on individual talent rather than a well-devised scheme or imaginative playcalling.

Around week 8, Nathaniel Hackett realised that he had Breece Hall. It was at that point that Breece was targeted more than 5 times in the passing game, up to that point he had 16 targets through 7 weeks. He finished the season with 76 targets and 591 yards, with 4 receiving touchdowns to go with his 5 rushing touchdowns.

Part of it was based on the Jets bringing him back slowly from his torn ACL. Part of it was pure incompetence by an offensive coordinator who needs a Hall of Fame QB to make his system even respectable.

For as good as Breece Hall is, the Jets made one of the biggest blunders of the off-season in signing Dalvin Cook to a $7 million deal. Joe Douglas talked about it being hindsight and them believing that they were getting a Pro Bowl back, but that’s the epitome of what you don’t do in the NFL, pay for past production when advanced statistics showed the decline trend. Those numbers, those stats were readily available, we shared them here on TJW, and it showed that Cook’s 2022 season should have warned suiters off spending big on him. The Jets ignored the flags and signed him anyway.

Cook had 15 receptions for 78 yards, 67 rushed for 214 yards and 0 touchdowns. He also took snaps away from Michael Carter who ended up getting traded and Israel Abanikanda, who didn’t see his first rushing attempt until week 11.

I’m not sure you can take anything away from Abanikanda’s rookie season. We heard he struggled to learn protections, which surprised me a little but that shouldn’t be a problem next season. It’s important to remember that Israel is only 21, he was a young rookie and has plenty of time to develop.

Could the Jets have gone into the season with just those three guys? Absolutely. They also could have signed someone like Devin Singletary, every advanced metric showed that he would have been the better signing. He ended up signing a 1-year deal worth $2.7 million in Houston, he rushed for 897 yards and caught 30 passes too. We didn’t need an expensive insurance policy, we just needed an insurance policy. That’s an example of the Jets chasing a name instead of opting for the smarter choice.

So where does that leave us heading into 2024?

Breece Hall - $2,458,573
Israel Abanikanda - $999,095
Dalvin Cook - Released
Michael Carter - Traded ($201,840 dead money hit in 2024)
Xazavian Valladay - Exclusive Rights FA

So there is some work to do here. While you can’t sign a washed-up $7 million insurance policy, you also can’t go into the season with Breece and Abanikanda.

RB is a sneaky position of need in the draft, not an immediate high-pick need, but you can often find good RBs in the 4th round onwards.

But if not the draft, there are plenty of options in free agency.

Singletary would make some sense, Gus Edwards would be an interesting option as a power short-yardage back, but after a 13 TD season, you’re not getting him on the cheap. I’m a big fan of Swift, but again he’s going to command more money than the Jets will probably want to pay. But there are enough names to make negotiation a little easier.