Looking at the Jets backfield, it will be interesting to see how the rotation shakes out. There's Breece Hall, but there are also two viable candidates to serve as the No. 2: Braelon Allen and Isaiah Davis (pictured).
New York's new head coach and offensive coordinator came over from the Lions, who've employed a pretty successful one-two punch at running back the last two seasons. Not that such a division of labor is necessarily coming to New York's backfield, but it will be important to determine who that second running back is. In case he sees a healthy workload, and in case Breece misses time due to injury.
Allen was selected in the fourth round last year, and he got early run last season as a change-of-pace. That included scoring 2 TDs in a Week 2 win at Tennessee. He averaged 4.8 yards per attempt the first month of the season. Davis mostly played special teams the first half of the season, receiving just 4 carries.
But if we put more weight into what happened toward the end of the season, fifth-rounder Davis looks better.
First table shows Allen's numbers the last six games of the season -- rushing attempts, yards, yards per carry, receptions and receiving yards, and touchdowns. Second table shows the same numbers in those games for Davis.
| ALLEN, LAST SIX GAMES | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Opp | Att | Run | Avg | No | Rec | TD |
| Sea. | 5 | 11 | 2.2 | 2 | 16 | 0 |
| at Mia. | 11 | 43 | 3.9 | 4 | 38 | 0 |
| at Jac. | 2 | 5 | 2.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| LAR | 2 | 5 | 2.5 | 1 | 5 | 0 |
| at Buf. | 6 | 26 | 4.3 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mia. | 4 | 15 | 3.8 | 2 | 8 | 0 |
| Average | 5.0 | 17.5 | 3.5 | 1.5 | 11.2 | 0 |
Most notably, Allen's 30 carries totaled 105 yards, which is 3.5 per attempt. Davis carried 26 times for 156 yards in those games -- 6.0 yards per attempt.
| DAVIS, LAST SIX GAMES | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Opp | Att | Run | Avg | No | Rec | TD |
| Sea. | 1 | 4 | 4.0 | 3 | 28 | 1 |
| at Mia. | 10 | 40 | 4.0 | 3 | 27 | 0 |
| at Jac. | 5 | 24 | 4.8 | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| LAR | 3 | 12 | 4.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| at Buf. | 3 | 35 | 11.7 | 1 | 8 | 0 |
| Mia. | 4 | 41 | 10.3 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Average | 4.3 | 26.0 | 6.0 | 1.3 | 11.0 | 0.2 |
All of this needs to be qualified. It's a small sample set, by two players drafted and put on the field by the previous decision-makers. Aaron Glenn and his OC, Tanner Engstrand, won't need to have any loyalty to any of these guys.
Bottom line is that no one should be latching onto Allen as the correct No. 2 to Breece Hall just because he was drafted earlier and did more earlier in the season. If the new staff is looking at what happened in the latter part of the year, the case can be made that Davis is the more deserving No. 2.
--Andy Richardson