Faulk has been great for the Pats but even he's not perfect folks; he did cut that crucial route a yard too short in Indy. Fourth and 2, remember that little ditty?
I bet KF gets a one year deal, two max, with no more than $2-3m guaranteed. He's just too old to be more charitable, sorry. Even with no cap, I can't see Daddy Kraft forking over $5m solid to Faulk no matter how loyal and loveable he's been.
And while I loved Fast Fred's work on the field this year, Chester's younger and hasn't been hurt as much. If we're going with a Taylor, I'd take Chester.
Have said it many times, but I'll say it again: RBs don't age in years, they age in touches. Faulk, at 34, has 1,537 touches (rushes + receptions + KR + PR). You want to know why Tomlinson fell off a cliff? Because going into this past year, he had 3167: twice as many as Faulk, which is why he's washed up at 30 and Faulk is still rolling. Adrian Peterson, at 24, has 997, and the fact that Faulk's have occurred over such a drastically longer span of time actually lessens their overall impact on his body. Priest Holmes, for example, played at a high level well into his 30s, largely because he logged just over 2000 touches, and would have had plenty more if not for a freak neck injury from that hit by Merriman.
We need to get over this whole idea that RBs hit a wall past a certain age, because it's shown over and over again that they don't. Guys like Thomas Jones, Priest Holmes, Chester Taylor, Kevin Faulk, Sammy Morris, and Fred Taylor have demonstrated, over and over again, that if a guy's not run into the ground in his 20s, there's no reason that he can't play at a very high level well into his 30s. It's the accumulation of hits that break the RB down, and age has very little to do with it, because the cumulative effect of the hits almost always take him down before age can. Faulk's not young, and eventually his body will give out, but until we see it on the field, I see absolutely no reason why he isn't worth a 2 year contract. The Pats have done an excellent job of keeping his workload down and keeping him fresh, and they're reaping the benefits now.
Kinda reminds me of baseball pitchers, in a way. While a lot of teams are out there looking for the latest 21 year-old flamethrower, figuring that they'll get the most starts out of him, many teams have theorized that those guys have less expected career starts in them than someone who, at 30, has proven that he can withstand the rigors of an MLB season. These are the guys who have proven that their body and mechanics can withstand the rigors of a full MLB season, and those front offices have deduced that this, rather than age, is the factor that actually drives how many starts a player has in him in his career. Age is just a number.
but I really like both of them Chester was excellent in college and has a sweet gig backing up AP.
