Indianapolis was the most disappointing team in Week 1. How does a team with that personnel not come out and simply run the ball down the throats of an overmatched Jacksonville defense? A top-5 running team against a bottom-5 run defense – how do they not connect those dots?
Instead, they came out and were in shotgun on every play for their first two drives (and for the vast majority of the afternoon). Each of the first two drives started with a couple of passes.
There was talk of a one-two punch of Marlon Mack and Jonathan Taylor – it got called a “one-one punch” by an assistant coach at one time – but it never materialized. There was never an attempt to establish the running game.
Weird. And about the last thing I expected.
I wonder if there are physical issues with Philip Rivers that will limit how often they try to line up as a traditional run-oriented offense. That is, is he like last-year Peyton Manning, in that his mobility is so lousy that he’s not capable of lining up under center and getting to a running back to hand the ball off?
On the plus side, if Rivers spends a lot of time in the shotgun, he’ll be complete a lot of passes to running backs. I don’t know if it’s the plays their calling or how he goes through his progressions, but he seems to check the ball down to the underneath running back a lot more than other quarterbacks.
In the Jacksonville game, Rivers went 17 for 17 throwing to running backs, for 142 yards. When he was with the Chargers, he completed a ton of passes to running backs like Darren Sproles, Danny Woodhead and Austin Ekeler.
Mack hardly caught any passes the last two years, and Taylor wasn’t used much as a pass catcher at Wisconsin, but Rivers went 9 for 9 passing to those guys in the opener. And he completed all 8 of his passes to Nyheim Hines (pictured), who’s more of an Ekeler-Woodhead type running back.
If you’re in a PPR league, both Hines and Taylor are looking like possible top-15 backs (given that scoring format). Hines might catch 80 passes. Taylor should lead them in rushing (they’ll get him dialed in, and he’ll be their main goal-line runner), and with it looking like he might catch 50-plus balls, he might wind up being a top-5 running back at the end of the year.
Old habits die hard. In all but two of Rivers’ last 12 seasons with the Chargers, his running backs ranked in the top 4 in receiving production. (That using PPR scoring.)
| RIVERS: TEAM RUNNING BACK RECEIVING | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | No | Yds | Avg | TD | PPR | Rk |
| 2006 | 76 | 638 | 8.4 | 3 | 157.8 | 14 |
| 2007 | 83 | 550 | 6.6 | 4 | 162.0 | 9 |
| 2008 | 106 | 1030 | 9.7 | 8 | 257.0 | 2 |
| 2009 | 97 | 932 | 9.6 | 7 | 232.2 | 1 |
| 2010 | 128 | 1026 | 8.0 | 3 | 248.6 | 1 |
| 2011 | 123 | 977 | 7.9 | 3 | 238.7 | 2 |
| 2012 | 123 | 837 | 6.8 | 1 | 212.7 | 3 |
| 2013 | 112 | 847 | 7.6 | 7 | 238.7 | 4 |
| 2014 | 83 | 624 | 7.5 | 1 | 151.4 | 16 |
| 2015 | 134 | 1147 | 8.6 | 6 | 284.7 | 2 |
| 2016 | 74 | 693 | 9.4 | 3 | 161.3 | 14 |
| 2017 | 93 | 816 | 8.8 | 7 | 216.6 | 4 |
| 2018 | 107 | 1050 | 9.8 | 7 | 254.0 | 2 |
| 2019 | 148 | 1357 | 9.2 | 10 | 343.7 | 1 |
| 2020 | 17 | 142 | 8.4 | 0 | 31.2 | -- |
—Ian Allan