Yesterday, Demarco Murray ran for 167 yards on 29 carries with a touchdown. For the season he now has 2 touchdowns to go along with 285 yards on 51 carries. A quick look at the math shows a robust 5.6 average on those carries. The 285 yards leads the NFL right now, and unless LeSean Mccoy can run for 215 yards tonight, Demarco Murray will lead the league tomorrow.
Demarco Murray has always been a strong runner, but can we trust the numbers he’s putting up right now? The 5.6 average is blistering, but it’s not totally out of line from Murray’s career average of 5.0. If you ignore the 4.1 average from his injury plagued 2012 campaign, that number jumps to 5.3.
Demarco Murray
Don't call it a comeback. Demarco Murray has been here for years.
|
SEASON |
GP |
ATT |
YDS |
AVG |
LNG |
TD |
|
2011 |
13 |
164 |
897 |
5.5 |
91 |
2 |
|
2012 |
10 |
161 |
663 |
4.1 |
48 |
4 |
|
2013 |
14 |
217 |
1,121 |
5.2 |
43 |
9 |
|
2014 |
2 |
51 |
285 |
5.6 |
22 |
2 |
His yardage this season has come against the Titans and the 49ers. Perhaps the run defense for those two teams is soft? Well... Week one the TItans held Jamaal Charles to 19 yards on 7 carries. Week two the 49ers held Matt Forte to 21 yards on 12 carries. You might recognize those names as players who were off the board in the first 5 picks of your league. Forte ran for 82 yards in his opener against the 2-0 Buffalo Bills. We can’t look at Charles’ second game because of his unfortunate early injury.
Demarco Murray’s talent and the Cowboy’s offensive line certainly seem capable of keeping up these kind of numbers, but they will likely come down to earth soon. Each week Tony Romo gets a little closer to “Ready”. Having essentially missed all of training camp and the preseason, he has been playing catch-up to the rest of the offense. As his back pain decreases and his rust shakes off, you can expect the cowboys to throw the ball more. Additionally, Murray has also never played an entire season without missing at least 2 games due to injury. Would an increased workload cause him to miss more games this season than usual?
Which leads us to the final variable in all of this? Once Romo is 100%, Will the Cowboys go back to being the pass-happy squad they’ve been for the past several seasons? Despite Murray’s effectiveness during his career, the Cowboys are a passing team. The new OC Scott Linehan is a passing coordinator. Garrett loves passing more than he loves his own mother. I don’t know what the Cowboys are going to do. The running numbers from the first two games are incredible, and were against solid run defenses. As a good friend of mine once said: “It’s not rocket scientist”. Demarco Murray is fantastic on the ground. But Demarco has been great on the ground for years, and it hasn’t stopped the Cowboys from being a pass heavy ball club. The defense isn’t going to hold up very often, but San Francisco pretty much destroyed the Cowboys in week one and Murray still ran for over 100 yards. It all comes down to play calling and game design.
The weight of evidence suggests a possible1500 yard season for Murray if he stays healthy. But maddening, frustratingly you can almost assume that 29 carries is the most he’ll see in a game this year, and that his carries will dip to 20 or lower per game once Romo is running at full power. Perhaps the Cowboys will play 50/50 pass-to-run this season, but that’s been a thought for several years, and it hasn’t yet happened. For now, enjoy the show, and try not to think about the fact that his back-up Lance Dunbar has only 27 yards on 11 carries.