Not exactly a running joke
Pollard’s ability more dangerous than Elliott’s — and it’s not close
DALLAS — It is remarkable to watch the hoops that people will jump through, the injuries they will risk to avoid stating the rather obvious fact that Tony Pollard is a better runner than Ezekiel Elliott.
When Pollard was a rookie in 2019 (and when it wasn’t necessarily true), the difference between his 5.3 yards per carry and Zeke’s 4.5 that season was explained away along these lines and by quite a few different people:
When Zeke is in the game, the defense puts eight men in the box. When Pollard comes in, the defense focuses on the passing game.
And they would state this as if it were simply true, end of story.
A year ago when Pollard averaged 4.3 to Zeke’s 4.0 and when Pollard got a late-season start against San Francisco and ran for 69 yards and two touchdowns on just 12 carries, it was because the 49ers were injured and prepared to face Elliott. Something like that.
I’m wondering what it will be this week after Elliott was good against the Chargers and Pollard was great.
There were four 100-yard rushers in the NFL Sunday and three of them are basically the legendary runners — top fantasy picks, if you will — in the game. That’s Tennessee’s Derrick Henry, Minnesota’s Dalvin Cook and Baltimore quarterback Lamar Jackson. Henry had 35 carries in the Titans’ overtime win and Cook ran 22 times in defeat at Arizona.
Pollard got all of 13 carries and turned it into 109 yards, his second biggest day as a pro. This should have surprised no one. Take away his first game as a rookie against the Giants when he had 24 yards on 13
carries (weirdly, Zeke wasn’t good in his debut against the Giants, either, in a season where he averaged more than 100 yards per game), and here are Pollard’s totals when he gets at least 12 carries:
• 13 for 103 vs. Miami
• 12 for 131 vs. L.A. Rams
• 14 for 60 vs. Washington
• 12 for 69 vs. San Francisco
• 13 for 109 vs. L.A. Chargers
The 2021 numbers are skewed because we are only two weeks into the season, but the quality of Pollard’s start is undeniable. He’s 17th in the league in rushing on just 16 carries, but his 7.7 average is the best among all running backs with at least three carries.
Zeke is 25th in rushing and averaging 3.9 per carry. Carolina’s Christian McCaffrey is the only back ranked in the top 15 also averaging fewer than four yards per carry. It’s a safe bet that Elliott’s numbers will go up and that he will eventually get so many more chances than Pollard that he will pass him in yards.
But it’s unlikely Zeke will get beyond 4.5 yards per carry where he finished in 2019. And it won’t be a surprise if Pollard stays above 5.0 all season. He’s
quicker. He has a better burst. He can pad his totals with long runs that Elliott really hasn’t been able to accumulate since he burst on the scene as the 2016 rushing champion.
Since Pollard got here in 2019, he has 10 runs of 20 yards or more in 203 carries — about one every 20 rushing attempts. In that same time frame, Zeke has nine in 572 carries — about one every 63 rushing attempts.
None of this is meant to discredit Elliott. He is closing in on 1,700 runs and receptions while just starting his sixth season. That is a heavy, heavy workload, and if there is one thing I give head coach Mike McCarthy credit for, it’s understanding this. I don’t know what guidance, if any, he gives offensive coordinator Kellen Moore when it comes to using his two backs. But McCarthy has said the team will be careful with Elliott’s carries because they need him at the end of the year.
It’s possible the head coach simply believes that. It’s also possibly his way of talking around what seems to be a delicate situation. And that is that the running back with the $1 million cap hit gobbles up yards faster than the one with the $6.8
million cap hit (a figured reduced by converting part of Elliott’s guaranteed $50 million deal to a restructure bonus).
Actually, if defenses should focus on anyone, it’s Pollard. He touched the ball on 16 of his 21 snaps Sunday.
“As long as we’re winning, everything is fine,” Pollard said after Sunday’s 20-17 road victory over the Chargers.
Given all that we have seen, it’s a safe bet the winning won’t continue forever for this club. And maybe this will simply be like 2006 when it was clear all season that Marion Barber was more productive than Julius Jones. Barber scored 10 more touchdowns and averaged almost a yard per carry more than Jones, but Barber never started until the team got into the playoffs.
For now, getting to the playoffs remains the challenge for this team. But the discussion of balance that was all about run vs. pass after Tampa Bay should shift to the balancing act the two running backs necessitate.
Let’s just make sure no one ever wrings their hands about Pollard taking carries away from Zeke . It’s more than fair to wonder about the opposite.