The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. But more importantly, if your line is slow, lumbering and mediocre, at best, in moving and making holes, your left with pass pass pass (sack, sack, INT, incomplete, sack, short gain, etc. and repeat as necessary). Or, you attempt to use bulk when finesse doesn't work. Dance in the backfield and you get no gain or loss of two. '
And, finally, we have not seen any real lightning in the RB core so if you can't break tackles or push the pile, you gotta be elite elusive. None of our backs are Troy Davis who was able to run inside and effectively outside some despite a lackluster O line. I will be quite happy if we put a RB out there who can make the big plays and get first downs consistantly. I have always looked at a RB's stats with this simple . Assuming a runner has 40 or so carries to get him a decent sample number of plays, then throw out the two longest and two shortest carries and compute his average per carry. That will give a better indication of his 'typical' gain.
We haven't seen enough of our RBs catching passes out of the backfield to really assess their capabilities either as our QBs and or O line, hasn't been able set up and make these plays. I love the good old fashioned screen pass but it seems nobody really knows how to call them situationally or properly executed them in so long, you have to go back to Callahan (and that is too painful) to see many. We've had far too many third and longs facing almost certain blitz and so on. Those plays are high risk and more often than not end badly. The run game needs to keep us in 3rd and short and medium. Our QB play will need to be better than we've seen in half a dozen years as well. Houdini will have to work his Qb magic to save us as well.