the actual best and toughest run of the day was from white,,,i didnt see anything special from sony at all,he got what the defense gave him.. he had about 5 dif runs where he was 6 yards down the field before he was ever touched,and within those first 6 yards he just basically ran a straight line in a wide open hole... i saw no elusive juke moves or run anybody over...i think any back on most rosters wouldve had similiar results as sony on that day. the touchdown on that sweep he was just about untouched,massive hole.
im reading about all these yards after contact,what counts as contact exactly?? somebody grazing your thigh with a fingernail??? i also read he had 17 carries of 3 yards or less... im hoping once sony gets his full legs under him that he is a elusive and at times bruiser.. i just didnt see it that game
It's mostly running through arm tackles and making guys miss. Michel's not Jay Ajayi, but suggesting that he was getting big chunks of yardage because he was running around untouched and unchallenged and going down on first meaningful contact simply isn't accurate.
As far as running a straight line through a wide open hole, I'm pretty sure I have some of the same carries in mind, and on a lot of them his ability to accelerate through the hole had more to do with the burst he was showing and his ability to run through weak arm tackles as the holes themselves. Nobody here is claiming that Michel is out there running over tacklers and breaking their wills like the most physical RBs, but if it seemed like he was effortlessly moving through open holes to the point that you weren't even registering that contact was made, it was largely because he was shrugging off a level of contact that our other RBs typically can't shrug off. And given that this isn't Michel's primary skillset, that was very encouraging. Hopefully he can replicate and improve upon it.
Also, is this the White run that you're referring to?:
If so, I think it's important to watch closely, because it wasn't as you characterized it. It was an outstanding run, for sure, but calling it the toughest run of the day implies that he fought through contact at some point, when in reality he was untouched throughout. Thuney, Cannon and Gronk all had great blocks to make it possible for White to get that far upfield before cutting back, then Dorsett and Mason had great blocks as well to give him all that space to cut back into. And lastly, Gordon's block on the back side--when he had no real reason to expect the play was going that way--deserves a special call-out. It was a combination of great blocking and great vision by White, which are two of his best skills. He made one guy miss (Robert Quinn), and that's basically the recipe for success: you make one guy miss and have good blocking on the rest. Michel wasn't the only one benefiting from the blocking on Sunday.
That play is a perfect example of my earlier characterization of White: he's a very good player who's exceptional at what he does well, but absorbing contact and fighting through contact is not and never will be one of those things. It's just not in his skill-set, he almost always goes down on contact. But he does enough other things so well that he's a valuable player regardless. So none of this is to take credit away from White, he's a good player and that play highlights everything he does well, props to him.
the touchdown on that sweep he was just about untouched,massive hole.
Sure, let's look at that play:
Sure, there was some really good blocking on that play. There are a couple that are especially worth highlighting. One is Dwayne Allen, he's in motion shortly before the snap and pretty much immediately annihilates the Dolphins' RDE. This frees up Trent Brown to become the lead blocker and go remove Xavien Howard from the play down near the end zone. Thuney and Mason also do a great job getting upfield, where they and Patterson create enough of a mess at the second level that it impedes the LBs' ability to flow to the play.
But this is also predicated on the RB being fast and decisive enough that as soon as some daylight opens up, he can get to the pylon fast enough that the rest of the defense, and Kiko Alonso (#47) in particular can't get back into the play. Because Alonso is their best defensive player and is notoriously exceptional in these situations, he almost makes it back into the play anyway. If James White is running instead on this play, Alonso probably makes that tackle. And just for good measure, this play had some margin for error. Even if Alonso gets there a fraction of a second earlier, I'm skeptical that he could've brought Michel down. And even if Brown had failed to get to Howard, there's no way Howard's stopping Michel at the goal line with the head of steam he had. This was a play that went so well that 2 different guys could have failed to execute their assignments so well and in either case it's still a TD. Margin for error is important.
Rather than dismissing that as Michel 'just taking what the defense is giving him', we really need to give him due credit for running with such burst and decisiveness that he leaves one of the best open-field LBs in the league grasping at air. Once he saw his lane to the end zone, he got upfield faster than we're accustomed to seeing from Patriots RBs, and relied on his athleticism to get him to the endzone untouched. To the extent that that looked like a routine, easy play, it was largely because he made it look that way.
i also read he had 17 carries of 3 yards or less...
If you go back and watch his carries, on the vast majority of his carries for short gains or losses, he was either hit in the backfield or he picked up the first down (which makes the carry a success no matter how few yards it went for). Not to mention that just in general that's pretty much how RB yardage works. Even the RBs with unusually high YPCs aren't out there reliably getting 5+ yards per carry, it doesn't work that way. Most carries go for 3 yards or less, and the good RBs are the ones whose standard carry goes for 3 instead of 2, and who also break more for 10+ than most. My mark of a good RB is that he can always get what's there and can consistently get a yard or two extra. That extra 1-2 yards is the difference between favorable and unfavorable down-and-distance, and it's what moves the chain. I don't care that he had a bunch of 1-3 yard runs if they're runs where there was no hole or where he was getting hit in the backfield. The ground game is a team effort, and the best you can ask of a RB is that he consistently does his part and maybe a bit more.
And by that metric, Michel had a great day. I'm not going to knock him for failing to get 3 yards on plays where he was hit in the backfield. You can go back and watch all of his carries here:
There are only a few where he fails to get 3 yards, fails to get the first down, and isn't hit in the backfield. 3:12 is probably his 'worst' carry of the day by that standard, in that he goes down pretty much immediately after contact with only a 2 yard gain, but that was the exception for the day and not at all the norm. He also went down on first contact at 2:32's carry, and at 4:16 he was trying to run outside but Miami's LDE got a jump on Cannon and forced Michel to the sideline for a shorter gain than he otherwise might have had. But if those are your bad plays then you had a great day at his volume.
To be clear, I don't think anyone here is crowning Michel or anything. It was one game against a defense that apparently forgot how to tackle, he's got to do that many more times before anyone can talk about him like he's arrived. But it's a mistake to write this performance off as anything less than a genuinely very good game on his part.
