Let's continue the discussion of Shaun Alexander and the Curse of 370 Carries. Before we do, I should note that yes, the Seattle offensive line played badly against Detroit, and this was a big reason why Alexander had a bad day -- and why Hasselbeck was sacked five times. As Mike Sando points out, Hasselbeck was never sacked five times in a game last year. His last game with five sacks came in September 2004 against the Bucs -- whose line was coached, of course, by Rod Marinelli.

Anyway, at the Seattle book signing for Pro Football Prospectus 2006, Zachary Geballe (a.k.a. Sportszilla) brought up an interesting point about Alexander and 370 carries. The knock on Alexander in the past was that he avoids contact and runs out of bounds too much. The negative implication of this is that he's a wuss. Here's the thing Geballe noted: 20 years ago, people made this same complaint about Eric Dickerson, who is the only running back to carry the ball 370 times season after season without breaking down. Does Alexander, in fact, get out of bounds more than other running backs? If so, this may be a positive thing, making it less likely that he will succumb to the Curse of 370 Carries.

(By the way, anyone who thinks Shaun Alexander is a wuss is an idiot. Every running back in the NFL is hit over and over again all year, out of bounds or no out of bounds. They're all pretty tough individuals compared to the rest of us.)

I went into the 2005 regular season play-by-play and counted the number of rushing attempts where a running back was listed as "pushed ob" or "ran ob." This includes plays cancelled by penalties, which aren't counted in the actual total carries. Here are your leaders:

37-S.Alexander 27
21-L.Tomlinson 24
39-S.Jackson 20
26-C.Portis 19
21-W.McGahee 17
20-T.Jones 15
32-E.James 14
28-C.Dillon 14
30-M.Moore 14
21-T.Barber 13

So Alexander did end a run out of bounds more often than any running back (the actual number one was Michael Vick, with 33 runs that ended out of bounds). He also had a higher percentage of runs end out of bounds than most other running backs. Here are the numbers for the 10 running backs who had more than 300 carries last year:

37-S.Alexander: 27 of 370 (7%)
32-E.James: 14 of 360 (4%)
21-T.Barber: 13 of 357 (4%)
26-C.Portis: 19 of 356 (5%)
21-L.Tomlinson: 24 of 339 (7%)
32-R.Johnson: 7 of 337 (2%)
27-L.Johnson: 10 of 336 (3%)
21-W.McGahee: 17 of 325 (5%)
20-T.Jones: 15 of 314 (5%)
34-R.Droughns: 5 of 309 (2%)

This leads to two other questions that I'll need to explore in the future. First, is this constant from year to year? Was Alexander the leader in this stat in 2003 and 2004 also? Second, what does this stat look like for past 370-carry running backs? Did Tomlinson not decline in 2003 because he got out of bounds on a lot of his runs in 2002?

Post by Aaron Schatz