Corey Dillon
- RB
- ,
- 50
- 225 lbs
- 6' 1"
- N/A
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NFL.com
·Jul 11, 2015 · 5:48 PM EDT
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Since Tom Brady's Week 5 return, the Pats have a 55-percent pass, 45-percent run balance. In only one game, the Week 6 win over Cincinnati, did the Patriots throw the ball on 60 percent of their snaps.
Compare that with 2015, when, including the playoffs, the Pats had nine games with at least a 60 percent pass/40 percent run disparity. And in five of those games, they had splits of at least 70 percent pass/30 percent run. The one-dimensional offense was great...until Denver neutralized it and the Pats did not have another dimension to visit.
This year, LeGarrette Blount is on pace for 322 carries, which would rank as the third-most in a single season by any Patriots running back, topped only by Curtis Martin in 1995 (368 carries) and Corey Dillon in 2004 (345 carries). Dion Lewis' return could decrease Blount's individual workload, but there is no reason to believe the team's rushing averages — 29.8 attempts per game — will change.
The 2015 Patriots offense, prolific as it was, had less balance than any New England offense in the Belichick-Brady era. The Pats threw on 62 percent of their offensive snaps and ran on 38 percent, the story said. Blount hasn't lost fantasy value since Brady's return this year and perhaps this is a way of helping prolong Brady's career in the long term. In the short term, Brady is dealing with a knee injury so it doesn't seem likely the team breaks away from the current split.
The Jeremy Hill offseason hype is rolling hard and fast. Cincinnati Bengals offensive coordinator Hue Jackson hopes the second-year running back jumps on the train and embraces the hype.
"We can't run from it because they're going to say it," Jackson told ESPN.com's Coley Harvey. "Now you've got to go live up to it. There should be no pressure in that. All it is to go out and work. To me, if a guy wants to be great, he's got to relish that. He's got to want that and then go exceed it.
"That would be my challenge to (Hill). I expect him to exceed whatever the expectation is about him."
Hill's play down the stretch was phenomenal. He led the NFL in rushing yards and yards per carry in the second half of the 2014 season.
Around The NFL's Chris Wesseling is one of many who singled out Hill for a big 2015 campaign, going so far as to say the young back, "has a chance to rival Corey Dillon and James Brooks as the best backs in franchise history if he can avoid serious injury."
To Hill's credit, he says he's not trying to get caught up in the hype. The backfield of Hill and Giovani Bernard gives the Bengals a dangerous one-two punch, but it's Hill who has now emerged as the fantasy back to own. We rank Hill 11th among our RBs. He should get the early down work while Bernard is a pass-catching, change of pace back. Hill is available in the middle of the second in fantasy drafts and would make a pretty good RB2 if you decided to go RB-RB with your top-two picks. But having a back like Hill around early second also means you can address WR or even TE first.
After Bengals RB Giovanni Bernard was selected, special assistant to the head coach/running backs coach Hue Jackson summed up his value like this: “We’re looking for a guy who would fit what we do, who can catch it and run with it. But you also have to be able to pass protect and be multifaceted, and the young man has that skill set."
Look further into what Jackson said, and find a clue as to what the Bengals now value. Gone are the days of coveting a back whose value lies almost solely as a rusher—Cedric Benson, Rudi Johnson, Corey Dillon—and in is an era where backs must excel in the passing game as well, whether it be receiving or protecting the quarterback.
And that’s not to say a back like Bernard isn’t capable of carrying the rushing load, if called upon.
“Having evaluated him and watched every game he played this year and had a chance to work him out, and having spent a lot of time with him,” Jackson said of Bernard, “he has that skill set where I think he could play and be an every down player.”
We don't believe this will happen in 2013, at least not at the start of the season. BenJarvus Green-Ellis is a solid runner and he's going to get his 200-250 carries. Bernard will definitely eat into BJGE's workload, however.
Bernard Scott, the first Bengals rookie running back to have a 100-yard game since Corey Dillon, idolized another great back closer to home in Vernon, Texas. And he hopes when the Bengals open their season in 18 days in the Hall of Fame Game against Emmitt Smith’s Cowboys that he’ll finally be able to meet the game’s all-time leading rusher the day after his enshrinement in Canton.
“He wasn’t that big and he wasn’t that fast, but he ran with a lot of heart,” Scott says. “Plus, the Cowboys were my team. I still follow them.”
Scott, of course, backs up another Texas guy in Cedric Benson heading into his second season and depending how Benson’s meeting with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell goes Thursday, Scott could get a shot at another 100-yard game. ProFootballTalk.com has reported the two will meet to discuss Benson’s May assault charge stemming from an incident in a Texas bar and while Goodell has suspended players before their cases get heard in court, the Bengals sound optimistic that Benson won’t get docked games because he ended up defending himself.
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