DaBruinz

Over the past 50 years, no running back outside of Sam Cunningham (1973,1975-1979) Jim Nance (1966-1970), and Tony Collins (1981-1984) has started more than 3 consecutive years for the Pats.

Curtis Martin might have done it if he hadn't jumped ship with Parcells. Robert Edwards might have done it if he hadn't blown his knee out in the Rookie Beach Flag Football game.

But its pretty amazing that the Patriots haven't had a true "franchise" type back since the early 80's in Tony Collins.

Ryan

That is pretty interesting. I noticed that the Pats haven't had too many 1,000 yard rushers in their history when I was looking through Pro-football-reference the other day (out of boredom), but didn't pick up on this fact.

Jimke

This is why the running back choices for the 50th Anniversary Team were
no brainers. The Patriots had other good running backs like Craig James
and Andy Johnson but all their careers were short lived due to injury. As
you mentioned, Curtis Martin was the only possible HOF candidate.

blackglass3

Will Maroney count if he starts vs the Bills? Has Maroney started our first game in 07 or 08? All I can really remember about those games are the ACL and Brady to Moss FTW!!/Spygate.

RayClay

We had a running guard franchise for about ten years that made meatloaf running backs look like Porterhouse steaks.

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Warren94

Getting back to the subject at hand.. Didn't collins share carries with Craig James and Tatupu?

Fanfrom1960

I think that running backs are considered more or less interchangeable parts to Belichick, but I didn't know that in all previous Pats history, RB was never a position of longevity. Even all timers Cunningham and Nance didn't start that many years.

Wretch

I remember Tatupu more as a full back and special teams player. Collins in my mind was more of a Kevin Faulk type player with great hands, James was the workhorse, until he started getting hurt.

All told the RB tradition of the Pats has been less than glorious, but how many teams have great positional traditions. Chicago with the middle line backer going back to Butkus, Singletary, and now Urlacher. The Raiders had a good receiver tradition going back to Balitnikoff through Brown. The Steelers have had good LB corps traditionally. SF and Dallas were about QBs with Montana, Young and Garcia in his prime was really goodat SF. Stauback, White, Aikman, and Romo now for the Dallas. The Redskins were known for the OL.

Who else am I missing?

Hey Bro if you think a thread is useless don't respond to it and let it die. Commenting on how useless YOU think it is just asking to start a flame war. Let the whole board judge the merits of a posting by responding with related and cogent responses and not have to sort through 3 pages of insults to read posts of substance.

I may agree or disagree with you or DaBruinz on any number of topics but scrolling through traded insults degrades enjoyment the board for all of the posters that are coming here to discuss football, specifically Patriots football.

AzPatsFan

Seems to me Antowain was around for more than three years...

PatsFanSince74

What the heck, let's put some stats into the midst of the mudslinging. I thought that the OP's "tidbit" was indeed "interesting."

So, I thought I'd compare the top rushers for the Pats with the top rushers for the other franchises that began operations in the same year as the Pats (1960) and that have survived, on the assumption that comparisons with franchises that began later would be unfair by virtue of the shorter time frame available for those franchises and that comparisons to franchises that operated in the 1940's and 1950's would be hard to interpret because the game was very different in those days. Also, I just didn't have time to analyze all 32 active franchises.

The results are interesting.

I looked at the top ten franchise rushers for the Bills, Broncos, Chargers, Chiefs, Cowboys, Jets and Oilers/Titans and compared their stats with the top ten rushers for the Pats (Curtis Martin's yards were divided between the Pats and Jests based on his time with each team).

Here's what we find:

The Average total yards gained for the other seven teams by their top ten rushers is 46,437.6 yards. The total yards gained for the Pats by their top ten rushers is 37,974 yards. So, the ten best rushers for the Pats rushed for nearly 10,000 fewer yards in total than did the average for the other teams. The top was the Cowboys, let by Smith and Dorsett, with over 61,000 yards. The low was 40,192 by the Chiefs. So, the total yards by the Pats top ten rushers is lower than the lowest of the other compared franchises.

The average number of TD's scored for those other teams by their top ten rushers was 349.5; Cowboys high at 476, Oilers/Titans low at 311. The top ten rushers in Pats franchise history scored a total of 278 TD's, once again lower than any of the other teams.

The average number of rushing attempts for those other teams by their top ten rushers was 11,088; Cowboys high at 14,554, Chargers low at 9,463. The Pats top ten rushers made 9,578 attempts.

The average Yards/Attempt for those other teams by their top 10 rushers was 4.19; Chargers high at 4.31, Jets low at 4.04. For the Pats, the average was 3.96.

Since we all know that "there are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics," we have to be careful what we conclude from this. However, the numbers suggest that the Pats best rushers tend to rush less often (lower total attempts) and less productively (lower yards/attempt and lower total yards) than have the rushers of nearly all the other teams that began operating at the same time.

However, since the proof is in the pudding (or, in this case, in the Trophy Case), I hasten to add that, of those teams, only the Cowboys (8) and Broncos (6) have been to more SB's than the Pats (5) and that only the Cowboys (5) have won more Lombardi's than the Pats (3).

So, my final conclusion is that football in the NFL is a multi-faceted game and that franchise success can not be explained by any one factor over time.

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