Kids with star running back posters taped to their bedroom walls won’t believe this, but Mike Anderson and Tatum Bell are having a better season than Shaun Alexander.
Media types voting for league MVP may be leaning toward Alexander, who enters the weekend leading all NFL rushers. But the star running back for the 9-2 Seattle Seahawks is more than a 100-yard rushing game short of matching the season production of the Broncos’ tailback tandem of Anderson and Bell.
“As a one back, you get the glory; you get the fame,” said Anderson, who is 13th in the league with 813 yards rushing, but the lead man in the NFL’s top running back attack. “You get the hype; people talk about things like what you’re saying. Pro Bowl visits.”
It’s just not necessarily what’s best for the team. Look around, and the Broncos are hardly the only team to have reached the conclusion that when it comes to sustaining a ground game, two are better than one.
The Steelers, Dolphins, Cowboys and Chiefs, until Priest Holmes suffered a season-ending injury, are among those who give their “other” backs roughly 10 carries a game. The Falcons are another, now that backup T.J. Duckett is healthy enough to spell Warrick Dunn.
Several other teams, such as the Bears and Jaguars, were forced to go with a committee after their primary backs – Thomas Jones and Fred Taylor – got dinged up. And they were pleased with the results.
“For the last couple years, I felt this has turned into a two-back league,” said Merril Hoge, a former Pittsburgh Steelers running back and NFL TV analyst. “There’s very few teams that don’t have some kind of platoon. There’s a couple of reasons for this.
“One, just how brutal that position is. The durability of a guy to be able to withstand 25, 30 carries is a tough task. And what some teams have found is a different style of back to be that substitute or complement. You look at Denver, Mike Anderson is not like Tatum Bell. Tatum Bell does things differently. So defensively, it presents a greater burden.”
Remove the scrambling quarterback from the equation – or the Michael Vick factor, to put it another way – and no single running back, whether Alexander, LaDainian Tomlinson or Edgerrin James, can match the combined 1,453 rushing yards of the Broncos’ Anderson and Bell.
Add the 151 yards the third running back, Ron Dayne, has gained primarily in two games, and the Broncos’ committee is on pace for 2,138 yards. That’s Canton quality, folks. Eric Dickerson holds the single-season record with 2,105 yards.
“I think sometimes that if Mike had all my carries, he’d be probably leading the league in rushing,” Bell said. “If I had his carries, I’d be leading the league in rushing. That’s how I’ve been looking at it. It doesn’t work like that, but I don’t want to be causing any controversy or any problems. We have too many good backs to give it to one back. The committee? It’s a plan that’s doing good for us.”
In honor of the rushing committee, it’s time to pause for a breath. By now, fan club members of Alexander and Tomlinson are none too pleased. They could defiantly state the primary reason Anderson and Bell have formed a committee is neither could successfully produce in a one-back system.
Anderson could for a while, but he’s 32 years old. He needs a breather. Bell is in his second season, but injuries have forced him to miss at least two games each year. Broncos coach Mike Shanahan didn’t use a committee when he had running backs named Terrell Davis and Clinton Portis.
“You have to look at the people we had,” Shanahan said. “Terrell Davis speaks for himself. And Clinton Portis is the type of guy who every time he touched the ball could go the distance. Mike is a guy we knew could carry the load, but we didn’t want to overwork him. Here’s a guy that’s 32 years old and very productive, but you don’t want to wear him down so he’ll still have plenty of life for the second half of the season.”
An argument against the committee could be made in Kansas City, where the Broncos (9-2) will play today in a potentially pivotal AFC West game. Beginning last year and for the first seven games of this season, the Chiefs (7-4) were the standard for the running back committee. In Holmes and Larry Johnson, the Chiefs had two running backs with 1,500-yard potential.
But when Holmes went out for the season and Johnson went on a tear, the committee concept suffered a blow. Holmes and Johnson combined to average 121.4 yards in the Chiefs’ first seven games. In the next four games, Johnson has averaged 142.3 yards.
Doesn’t this say that one running back, when given enough carries to sharpen his sensory motors, is better than two backs shuffling in and out?
“No, not really. I’d still like to have Priest Holmes,” Chiefs coach Dick Vermeil said. “There are certain things we do better with Priest Holmes than we do with Larry Johnson. Larry Johnson is a fine player. But I like the security of having two good football players at that position.”
Keep in mind, even in the most committed committees, the backs are split between primary and secondary. Since suffering a rib injury in the season opener, Anderson has averaged 16.6 carries a game. Bell averages 9.6 carries in the games he has played.
“I played the position enough to know you can’t be great with 10 carries,” said Hoge, who almost single-handedly beat the Broncos in a 1989 divisional playoff game. “You can have a great game here and there, but to get in a rhythm and be consistently among the best, you need 20 carries a game.
“You look at any platoon system, there’s always going to be that one dominant guy working with another guy. I don’t see that changing.”
Staff writer Mike Klis can be reached at 303-820-5440 or mklis@denverpost.com.
Two be or not two be
How the NFL’s top eight running back committees
compare with the top eight individual rushers:
Committee (running backs) Yards
| 1. | Broncos (Anderson, Bell, Dayne) | 1,604 |
| 2. | Falcons (Dunn, Duckett) | 1,431 |
| 3. | Chiefs (Johnson, Holmes) | 1,419 |
| 4. | Steelers (Parker, Bettis, Staley, Haynes) | 1,192 |
| 5. | Jaguars (Taylor, Jones) | 1,122 |
| 6. | Dolphins (Brown, Williams) | 1,108 |
| 7. | Saints (Smith, McAlister, Stecker) | 1,021 |
| 8. | Cowboys (Jones, Barber, Thompson) | 996 |
Individual rushers Yards
| 1. | Shaun Alexander | Seahawks | 1,339 |
| 2. | Edgerrin James | Colts | 1,240 |
| 3. | Tiki Barber | Giants | 1,118 |
| 4. | Warrick Dunn | Falcons | 1,094 |
| 5. | LaDainian Tomlinson | Chargers | 1,086 |
| 6. | Larry Johnson | Chiefs | 968 |
| 6. | Rudi Johnson | Bengals | 968 |
| 8. | Willis McGahee | Bills | 948 |
