Let me start off by stating just how amazing Marshawn Lynch has been over the past five years. He has been a top five RB for four straight years. He has the most broken tackles with his elusive moves and may be the most difficult back to tackle in the whole NFL. Add in a Super Bowl ring as well, and you have one of the best RBs of our generation. They don’t call him “Beast Mode” for nothing.
But, before you go ahead and take him in the first round in your upcoming Fantasy Football pool, you may want to read a little further. Lynch has had more carries than any other RB in the NFL over the past three seasons, plus a grueling post season run as well.
In 2013 he had 301 carries in the regular season plus another 65 in the post season. In 2012 he carried the rock for another 315 carries plus 36 in the playoffs. In 2011 he had another 285. That’s over 1000 carries in three seasons. He just turned 28 years old. That’s not old, but a true sign of a potential slide at the RB position is shown more in workload than by date of birth. There have been 27 RB’s who have ever had as many carries including playoffs, and 22 of them have faced a regression the following year. Take a look at previous runners that led the league in carries that began to curtail. Michael Turner, MJD, Ray Rice, Steven Jackson and Arian Foster are a few RBs that regressed after a heavy workload. Every single one of them either got hit with a major injury or had their stats take a perennial nose-dive. Thus far, Lynch has been able to avoid the injury bug, but with his intense bruising style of play and continual workload it’s just a matter of time till it catches up to him.
Looking at Lynch’s final six games of the season you will notice that he cracked the 72 yard mark just once, and also just once did he get over 4.0 yards-per-carry over that stretch. In 2012 Lynch averaged 5.0 ypc in the season, followed by 4.9 in the playoffs. In 2013 those numbers dipped to 4.2 and 4.4 respectively.
Add all of this to the fact that the Seahawks may want to make sure they have their main man healthy come January, they may keep him a little more rested during the regular season, especially if it looks like a playoff spot seems secured by mid-season. I fully expect to see Percy Harvin healthy for a full season this year, which may open up the passing game a little more than last year as well. Which leads to my final reason, which is the soon-to-be phenom Christine Michael.
Michael is a stud RB who has a huge future as a top tier back. He only carried the ball 18 times last season, but I fully expect him to be more involved in the offence. Pete Carroll said “he’s got explosive talent and we just want to get him to fit in,” and “he’s going to get a ton of work.” At the combine, the Texas A&M star had the best vertical leap (43 inches) amongst RBs, the best cone drill time (6.69 seconds), and fastest shuttle time (4.02 seconds). He was second in broad jump and third in bench press(27 reps of 225 pounds). Only one RB weighing over 210 pounds had a faster 40-yard dash time than Michael’s 4.43 seconds.
Louis Riddick of ESPN tweeted last month “when Christine Michael gets his chance regular season ’14, provided he’s healthy, he’ll show he’s the most gifted RB drafted in past 5 yrs.” Expect another big year from Lynch, just not in the same stratosphere he has been running at the past five years. Unless he can get an extra edge from his Skittles, expect him to be ranked around 10-12 overall for RB when it’s all said and done.
Kevin Bradley NFL Specialist [email protected] www.lastwordonsports.com
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