Just Say No to Nos. 1 Backs

Peter King continues his strange crusade against taking running backs with high draft choices, and, the player's union must love this, paying big money for the positional players.

His latest screed is to warn that Arkansas' Darren McFadden may have been instrumental in upsetting LSU and "looked like a future star in the NFL," but teams should not use a high first-round draft pick on him.

King tries to backup his argument by citing that "Of the top 50 running backs in the NFL entering this weekend (ranked by rushing yards), 30 were not first-round picks." In other words, 20 of the top 50 were first round picks. Since there are 32 teams, most have a feature back that was selected in the first round. Rarely do teams have TWO backs that were both #1 selections. The second back is either complementary or a third down specialist. Why expend a #1 pick on such a player. More importantly, teams can't devote that much cap space to two feature backs. Still, these back up backs, if you will, still get carries and rushing yards so of course when you take the top 50 RBs in rushing yards you are going to include a disproportionate number of non-feature backs. King overlooks the point of whether teams would rather rely on backs #30-50 more than they rely on backs ranked #1-29. What do you think?

King then goes on to look at the running back situation among the top 5 teams in the league to further bolster his point. "In my team rankings this week, I've got New England, Indianapolis, Dallas, Green Bay and Pittsburgh as my top five. The Patriots (11-0) have a running game by committee. Tony Dungy of the 9-2 Colts has given CFL refugee Kenton Keith 9.0 carries a game." How convenient that King doesn't mention that BOTH New England and Indy - the two best teams in the entire league - have running backs taken in the first round (Maroney and Addai). Yes, teams will give the Kenton Keith's some carries, but does anyone besides King seriously think a team would rely on Keith for 25 touches/game? And if the Pats have a running back by committee then, by King's reasoning, Belichick is a dope for expending a #1 pick on Maroney.

Similarly, King tries to downplay the rounds in which Dallas' duo of J. Jones and M. Barber were drafted by using their overall selection. Jones was the "43rd player picked." In other words, an early second rounder (top 1/3 of the 2nd round). Barber was "109th." In other words, early fourth rounder. It would be interesting to see how many RBs were taken ahead of Barber.

I simply don't understand why King continues to try to make this argument while nearly every week praising such high first round RB selections as Adrian Peterson and Marshawn Lynch.


SI.com - Writers - Monday Morning QB (cont.) - Darren McFadden