Tony Pollard has averaged only 4.0 and 4.2 yards per carry the last two years, and I wonder if he’s quite the same runner as early in his career. I remember him coming off the bench behind Ezekiel Elliott, looking like one of the fastest backs in the league.
In particular, I remember Pollard turning on the jets for a 58-yard touchdown against the Saints in a Thursday night game in 2021. The previous week, he took a kickoff 100 yards for a touchdown against the Raiders on Thanksgiving.
Pollard the next season scored 5 TDs from 30-plus yards.
With the stats in front of me, I see he averaged at least 5.2 yards per carry in three of his first four seasons. Now he’s averaged 4.1 for a couple of years.
He’s either wearing down or aging, it seems, or he’s simply getting too beat up from carrying a larger workload. He’s moved up into more of a featured role the last two seasons, averaging 15.5 carries for 63 yards in 33 games.
The question becomes whether Pollard, at 28, can get back to being explosive? Or was that just a young man doing young man things?
I poked around with the numbers on this, looking for backs comparable to Pollard – guys who went over 5 yards per carry in three of their first four seasons, then had a drop. Let’s look at years 7 and 8 for those guys. But not enough running backs fit that profile. Just Wendell Tyler, I think, who in the mid-‘80s (playing a vaguely similar sport) dropped to 4.1 in both his fifth and sixth seasons, then went to the 49ers and averaged 4.9, 5.1 and 5.1 in his next three. He still had it.
But I will instead pivot and look at the issue of yards per carry and age. Are older running backs simply not as likely to be fast enough to break the long runs necessary to average 5 yards per attempt? In the 32-team era, I see 131 seasons where a running back with at least 100 carries averaged at least 5 yards per carry.
If we break those seasons out by age, I see 107 running backs who were under 28 years old. I see only 11 such seasons for running backs older than 28. That looks convincing.
But at the same time, there are a lot more running backs in the league who are under 28, so not surprising to see more of those seasons coming out of the bigger group.
Let’s instead pose the question this way. If we know (or believe) that a running back is going to carry the ball at least 100 times this year, what are the odds of him averaging at least 5 yards per carry?
Since 2002, there have been 90 seasons by running backs 28 years old, and 13 of those guys averaged at least 5 yards per carry. That’s a hit rate of over 14 percent, and that’s the 2nd-highest number for ages 23 and up. The 3rd-highest figure belongs to the 30-year-olds.
So the key question is probably whether the Titans believe Pollard is still their guy? If they’re going to stick with him as their starter, I would think the numbers and production and explosiveness probably be pretty similar.
I’m not suggesting it goes down that way. To me, Pollard looks like a below-average starting running back and Tyjae Spears looks like a below-average No. 2. That makes the Titans look like one of the teams that probably will be selecting a running back in the third or fourth round in a draft that’s deep at the position.
Ideally, the Titans will mix in another body, scale back Pollard’s carries, and maybe he can move that average back up closer to 5.
| AVERAGING 5 YARDS PER CARRY | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Age | No | Total | Pct |
| 21 | 8 | 34 | 23.5% |
| 22 | 18 | 88 | 20.5% |
| 23 | 16 | 134 | 11.9% |
| 24 | 25 | 152 | 16.4% |
| 25 | 18 | 142 | 12.7% |
| 26 | 12 | 117 | 10.3% |
| 27 | 10 | 116 | 8.6% |
| 28 | 13 | 90 | 14.4% |
| 29 | 2 | 72 | 2.8% |
| 30 | 6 | 42 | 14.3% |
| 31 | 3 | 34 | 8.8% |
| 32 | 0 | 22 | 0.0% |
| 33 | 0 | 9 | 0.0% |
| 34 | 0 | 3 | 0.0% |
| 35 | 0 | 3 | 0.0% |
| 36 | 0 | 1 | 0.0% |
| 37 | 0 | 1 | 0.0% |
| Total | 131 | 1060 | 12.4% |
—Ian Allan