Shaun Alexander carried the ball 370 times in the 2005 regular season, and another 60 times in the postseason. In the Seattle chapter of Pro Football Prospectus 2006, I looked into our theory that running backs generally break down after 370 carries, and expanded it to 370 carries in the regular season OR 390 carries including the postseason.

So of course, Alexander signs a huge contract and then comes out and is the least valuable player in football his first week according to our PAR (Points Above Replacement) stats from the Quick Reads column. So I wanted to know: is this a sign that Alexander has broken down due to last year's workload?

I went back to all the running backs who went over 370 carries or 390 (postseason included) since 1997, to see how they did in the first week of the following season. Was a bad Week 1 a sign that the player had broken down?

• Curtis Martin 2005: 20 carries, 57 yards, -2.7 PAR vs. Kansas City. This was just one of a lot of bad first-week rushing performances last year. Travis Henry, Tatum Bell, and Kevan Barlow were all below -4.0 PAR rushing in Week 1.
• Corey Dillon 2005: 23 carries, 63 yards, 1.2 PAR vs. Oakland.
• Jamal Lewis 2004: 20 carries, 57 yards, -1.0 PAR vs. Cleveland. The Browns had one of the worst run defenses in the league that year, 28th in DVOA, so this was even lower once we had enough info to do opponent adjustments.
• Ahman Green 2004: 33 carries, 119 yards, 2.0 PAR vs. Carolina. Just to show that not everybody who has a bad Week 1 ends up with a bad season, Rudi Johnson had -3.1 PAR that week and ended up sixth in the league with 1,454 rushing yards.
• Ricky Williams 2003: 17 carries, 69 yards, -2.2 PAR vs. Houston. This was the infamous Miami loss that got tons of people tossed from their suicide pools, and definitely a warning that something was wrong with Ricky.
• LaDainian Tomlinson 2003: 13 carries, 34 yards, -2.1 PAR vs. Kansas City. Was this a sign that LT was worn down from 372 carries in 2002? Actually, it wasn't. Tomlinson is one of the few players to actually improve the year after breaking 370 carries -- despite starting the season with this terrible game against one of the league's worst run defenses.
• Eddie George 2001: 18 carries, 49 yards, -2.6 PAR vs. Cincinnati. A bad game, but seven other running backs had worse games in Week 1 of 2001. The worst of all was Stephen Davis: 14 carries, 35 yards, three fumbles, -10.0 PAR. Once again, this was a fluke game, not a sign of things to come. Davis finished the season third in the league with 1,432 total yards.
• Edgerrin James 2001: 28 carries, 135 yards, 4.3 PAR vs. the Jets. That was the best rushing performance of the week, but Edge's problem wasn't decline after 387 carries in 2000, it was a catastrophic injury in Week 7.
• Eddie George 2000: 17 carries, 37 yards, -1.6 PAR vs. Buffalo.
• Jamal Anderson 1999: 16 carries, 50 yards, -0.1 PAR vs. Minnesota.
• Curtis Martin 1999: 19 carries, 85 yards, -2.0 PAR vs. New England.
• Terrell Davis 1999: 19 carries, 61 yards, -0.9 PAR vs. Miami.
• Terrell Davis 1998: 22 carries, 75 yards, 2.8 PAR vs. New England. Davis holds the all-time record with 481 carries in 1997, including the postseason. A year later, suffice it to say, he did not decline. Two years later is a different story.
• Dorsey Levens 1998: 25 carries, 59 yards, -1.6 PAR vs. Detroit.

Average, not including Alexander: 22 carries, 73 yards, -0.5 PAR.

That doesn't look good for Alexander. All of the players who were coming off heavy-workload seasons and had bad Week 1 games ended up with major decline seasons, injuries, or both. Most of the "fluke" bad games in Week 1 come from players who were not overworked the year before. There's one huge exception: LaDainian Tomlinson in 2003. But he was 24 years old with just one season in the NFL. Alexander is 29 and has gone over 325 carries for three straight years.

Postscript: From the comments, I can see I didn't make it clear: I'm not passing judgment here. You can't pass judgment based on one game. I'm simply presenting information because I was curious about the past history of 370-carry backs in Week 1.

Post by Aaron Schatz