Arrrgghh - sorry for the double-posting. Mods, can someone delete the first post?
Txs,
The Saints success is mostly attributable to Drew Brees and Sean Payton. I think Bush is incidental to their success.
As for them being unable to rush, Deuce McAllister has carried the ball 111 times at 4.4 yards per clip. Clearly, it is possible to be a productive back in New Orleans. Reggie Bush, OTOH, had averaged a dismal 2.5 yards per carry on his 80 attempts.
I would say that Bush’s carries are what have hurt the Saints rushing attack, not the offensive line. If 60 of Bush’s 80 had gone to McAllister, he’d be on pace for a 1500 yard season. But since >40% of the carries are going to Bush, their ground attack is struggling.
And it is, and was, a fair criticism. On the other hand, Sanders did in fact break long runs to arguably make up for it; Bush has not.
Bullocks. Duece McAllister, running behind the exact same line, is getting 4.4 yards per carry. They are 3rd in the league in passing because they are 4th in the league in pass attempts, and because Brees has been great. Many of those attempts are swing passes to Bush, who is doing nothing with them – 6.8 yards per catch is poor for a RB (most average more like 8 or 9)
More Bullocks. You’re saying the Saints EXPECTED him to have the lowest yards-per in the league? They EXPECTED more turnovers than TDs? If so, they are utter morons for taking him.
The Saints had no reason to believe they would not run the ball well; they ran the ball OK last year (with a stiff like Antowain Smith, no less) and the year before. They run the ball well this year … except when they give it to #25.
Except that, as already noted, Deuce McAllister, running behind exactly the same line as Reggie Bush, is averaging a crisp 4.4 ypc on his 111 carries, versus 2.6 ypc for Bush’s 81. Is the Saint’s front five only poor at run-blocking when Bush is in the backfield, and then suddenly solid when McAllister comes in? It doesn’t particularly matter to me that he’s catching a lot of short swing passes; Keith Byars did a lot of that, too, as have any number of other lesser lights, and none of them went even close to #2 overall.
And I’m not sure the comparisons to Barry Sanders are even close to reasonable. Barry got away with turning one yard gains into five yard losses because he broke long touchdown runs frequently enough that no one cared. Even as a rookie, playing on a mediocre 1989 Lions team for whom Bob Gagliano played quarterback, Sanders averaged 5.2 yards per carry. The idea that Reggie Bush can get away with losing yards so frequently because he breaks long runs will start to have some traction on the day that Reggie Bush starts breaking long runs.
Honestly, it seems to me almost inarguable that he’s underperformed expectations so far. Analysts were obliterating the Texans front office for passing on Bush, using the argument that he would dominate the league immediately. Today, running behind an offensive line that is certainly worse than that of the Saints, and may be the worst in all of football, Wali Lundy is averaging 4.2 ypc, with long runs of 35 and 29; Bush’s longest run of the year has been 18 yards. Sure, the Saints’ passing game has been much improved this year, but that’s not because Reggie Bush is out there catching three trillion six yard swing passes; it’s because they replaced possibly the worst long-term QB in my memory with a passer who can actually throw the ball to his own players, and found a really good rookie wideout to go with the pretty good one they already had.
Here’s a good thread on anothe message board debating the pros and cons of Bush’s role in the New Orleans offense. I hope furt peruses that thread, because while I think he’s got some points, he seems to be missing a lot, too.
The Cliff Notes – it’s true that Bush, right now, lacks the gap discipline and patience to succeed as an NFL rusher. However, opposing defenses are still treating Bush as though he’s uber-dangerous and over-commiting to stopping him. Until opposing D’s stop selling out, other Saints offensive players are benefiting greatly from Bush’s presence.
Strangely, running for USC behind a near-NFL quality line against overmatched competition, Bush developed a slew of bad RB habits and was able to get away with them. People talk about his dancing, and that is a problem … but a bigger one is looking for college-size holes to run through. They are few and far between in the NFL … so Bush is continually passing up sure yards in an attempt to dance his way to big gains. Either he’ll relearn the position over time, or his RB career will continue to flounder.
One positive, though – Bush is already a competent pass blocker (which was unexpected), and he’s only getting better.
Disagree … Bush has a huge role in the fortunes of the passing game. Drew Brees himself has a bigger one, I grant you. But Bush’s draws so many defenders to his side when he goes in motion that finding open receivers becomes childsplay for Brees.
Some OL stats for anyone interested. . .
http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/ol.php
It is true that the OL of NO is pretty poor, but it’s also hard to argue with the fact that Deuce is outrushign Bush by 1.8 yards per carry.
I think its way too early to write him off, or call him a disappointment, though. WAY too early.
This is generally true, but not invariably the case. There is a sizeable class of successful pro RBs that needed to break bad habits and relearn the position in the NFL – Charles White, Ricky Williams, Thomas Jones, Tiki Barber, and – to a much lesser extent – Ron Dayne are some that immediately come to mind.
Admittedly, there is also an larger class of RBs that came into the league that just never caught on.
Well, AFAICT, the only thing I’m missing seem to be his decoy value. He has been a good decoy, but as people on that thread point out, 1) that only works until people figure out that you aren’t that good and 2) top-level RBs succeed even when teams are geared up to stop them (and even with worse QBs).
As to the belief that he’ll learn and get better, that’s not really something arguable; maybe he will, maybe he won’t. The thesis of the thread is the first sentence of the OP: “As of right now, this season, he sucks.” My hunch is that he never will adjust, but absent some sort of study, that’s nothing but opinion.
This thread has had one great boon – I googled “Reggie Bush”+“Eric Metcalf” to see if anyone else made the same comparison if I did, and darned if I didn’t find out that one of the (IMHO) best sportswriters in America, Jason Whitlock, has a new home at AOL, where he said the same thing. He makes a great point in saying that Bush is “two inches too tall (5-11) and/or 20 pounds too light (203).” (The Saints actually list him at 6’0")
Little guys like Warrick Dunn, Brian Westbrook, Emmitt Smith and Barry Sanders, are small enough that defenders literally couldn’t see them at times. If you’re 6 feet tall, you’re not a scatback, and you need some meat on your bones.
Whitlock is also right in how Bush should be used. First off, he should be running back all kicks and punts. Put him in the backfield occasionally, but from scrimmage he should be primarily a slot reciever. You can even do some Urban Meyer: motion him into the backfield and run from that with McAllister as a lead blocker.
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White only ever had one good season. Dayne has hung around, but has never become a good back, and at this point likely never will.
I tend to see Barber as more in the “didn’t get the opportunity” class, but we’ll let Ellis Dee rule on that.
Jones definitely fits. I guess Williams, too, though it was as much a maturity issue as “adjusting his game.”
But all those show is that they’re taking a lot of negative runs – it does not indicate why … i.e. whether or not a +3 was there for the taking, but the HB turned it into a -1.
The only stat that matters to Saints fans right now is 6-2. I say again Bush was a solid pick, and I’m glad we got him. He’s already contributing all of the intangibles you could ask for, and he’ll put up decent numbers in due time. WAY to early to call him a bust.
Tiki Barber came into the league in 97 when the Giants were in flux at RB. Rodney Hampton was basically done, so most carries were split between Tiki, Charles Way and Tyrone Wheatley. Tiki’s 3.8 YPC tied Wheatley’s and was fairly far behind Way’s 4.6, so you could draw a parallel if you squinted…Reggie Bush is nowhere near a 3.8 average.
The next year, Tiki was demoted to a pure 3rd down back role, getting less than half the carries he saw as a rookie. (Gary Brown was the feature back, and Charles Way was the primary backup.) Only managing 52 carries all year, his average dropped down to the alarmingly low 3.2. And yet, that pathetic average was still significantly better than Bush’s 2.5.
Of course Tiki eventually turned into a monster, but it took 4-5 years for that to happen, and it involved a shitload of work by Tiki to get his body into shape. Reggie doesn’t have the body type to do what Tiki did; he’s much too tall. (Brian Westbrook should have been using Tiki’s offseason program for years now.)
But then again, a “poor man’s Tiki Barber” is a far cry from the concensus #1 overall Gale Sayers-type back he was billed as. His hype would lead one to expect Ladainian Tomlinson superhuman type production. I would note that Tomlinson – another #2 overall pick with a lot of hype – had a 3.6 YPC average his rookie year, over a full yard better than Bush.
As for Ron Dayne, his rookie year was pretty much his best effort, so you probably don’t want to invoke him in discussions of Bush. If this is Bush’s best effort, the Saints got screwed.
And he eventually quit fumbling the ball so much.
As exhaustive as I knew you would be, ED. The only thing I’d add is that Tiki was a third-round pick; those are guys who allowed time to grow into a role. #1s are paid to be stars right away.
Really not getting all this Bush hating going on. He’s a rookie. A high draft pick, but still a rookie. The Saints aren’t bitching about his performance. The team is tied for second best record in the NFC. He’s done what has been asked of him, and he’ll grow into his role. Calling him a bust this soon is pointless, and unfair.
Williams had a similar problem to Bush in looking for the huge college holes. In his rookie season, many Saints fans (I am one of that number) were wondering why Williams was always running sweeps, because he was regularly getting strung out and dropped for little to no yardage. He was not seeing the 18-inch pro holes, and just bouncing everything outside.
Dayne had this same issue, but also lacked NFL speed. He could have gotten by moving piles a la Natrone Means, but he couldn’t find the holes. Under Mike Shanahan’s tutelage, Dayne has improved markedely … from abysmal to adequate.
Ye gods, man…you want to hold him up to Barry Sanders? He’ll NEVER get to that status. A better comparison MIGHT be Gayle Sayers.
Not comparing accomplishments–I want Bush to study how Sanders ran, how he picked the holes, and how he hit them. Tall or not, Bush is and always will be a “small” back. He ain’t gonna run over people. He does have blazing speed and agility. I think he can impove his game by learning from another “small” back.
If the Barry Sanders comparison offends you status-wise, I don’t see how Sayers is much better, anyway. It’s not like Sayers was some second-rate schmuck. That’s only like two, three steps down the ladder.
I’m kind of torn about this, myself. On the one hand I do enjoy gloating over all the people who argued with me when I said Mario Williams was, all things considered, the right pick for the Texans if they thought he was worth it. On the other hand, declaring that Mo Drew and Joseph Addai are going to have better careers… well, I think that might be one of those statements that, down the line, one tries to forget that one made.
The thing is, there can be no serious argument that Reggie Bush, through 8 games, is not a monumental bust. Just like furt said, he sucks so far. Sucks. It’s almost inconceivable that halfway through the season, he’s made exactly one big play for his team, and zero middlish size plays. Nobody, even the people like me who pointed up Bush’s part-time role and the quality of his teammates in college as evidence that he wasn’t a sure thing, would have believed it after that Fresno State game. No runs over twenty yards, no scores on offense, sub 3.00 YPC; how can you defend that kind of production from a #2 overall pick at tailback? The comparisons to other backs don’t work for me for a couple of reasons – first of all, none of them was as bad as Bush has. Second, most of them were on awful teams, which explains a lot of a back’s success. But as several people have noted, he’s on a good offense and McAllister’s having a very good year (of course, even that’s a bit unfair since none of the other guys were drafted onto teams that already had one of the five best backs in the league). And third, Bush is supposed to be a home run hitter. I think his numbers would sit a lot better with people if he had actually hit some home runs. Some adjustment to the NFL game is to be expected; for an elite player’s explosiveness to vanish altogether is not. It’s like, if you draft a quarterback #1 overall, you have to expect that he’s going to have some growing pains learning the offense, but you sure as hell don’t expect him to show up in camp incapable of throwing the ball more than 20 yards downfield.
I’m really not so sure that I would be willing to make any bets about his upside, though. We all saw him play twenty thousand times in college, and he was no gimmick. He can do things very few guys can do. I know it’s hard to explain how, if he’s that good, he’s been so awful, but I just can’t see how he’s not that good. Setting aside the fact that he started most of his carries in the secondary, and that he was surrounded by studs, you still have the fact that he made cuts and turned corners that other running backs just can’t do. He was probably the best offensive college football player I’ve ever seen, and it’s going to take more than 80 shitty carries for me to shake some of those images out of my head. Maybe the overly-cutesy way they’re using him is affecting him, maybe he’s having a tough time adjusting to something about the blocking schemes, maybe he doesn’t like the track, I don’t know, but I think he’s going to start ripping off 30+ yard plays on a fairly consistent basis, in which case the numbers would look a lot better almost immediately.