I think Hillis has a good shot of getting 1k from scrimmage, or hopefully close enough to keep him in consideration for touching the ball next year. I don't think Charles will hold up for the entire season with a heavy workload. Hillis will have 10 games after the bye to show what he capable of, they need to run him on more besides the inside zone, it makes the offense predictable when he is in. For all the yards Charles has, he hasn't helped the team win, with 2 rushing tds on 500+ yards, 3 fumbles, yet Hillis gets criticized for the one fumble on the goal line where he was trying to stretch out to make it. Draughn is hyped up because he got a large chunk of yards when the Chiefs were behind running against a prevent d. Even Chiefs fans are worried about the workload Charles has, they are saying he will wind up like Larry Johnson.
As for ,Woodhead, he looks to be screwed, its not about the o-line, its about the play calling. They don't seem to care about him getting yards running, they are merely running him to keep the passing game honest, its all draws up the middle, as long as he gets 2 to 3 yards they seem fine with it. If you go back and watch his 2010 season they ran a variety of plays, my favorite was a play that looked similar to the stretch play, they would be in shotgun and Woodhead would wind up with the direct snap and follows his blockers to the outside. Where are these plays at now? He truly is what what the fantasy site called him before the season a "passing back".
I see all of great running plays called for Ridley and even Bolden, on plays where Ridley gets 20 I could easily see Woodhead getting twice that. I am wondering what happened for putting players in the doghouse for fumbling, with 2 fumbles in the past 2 games.
His only hope is to make the most of his receptions, but he is often ignored often being wide open underneath even when the other receivers are covered. If Bellicheck really wanted to reduce the value of Welker, which is what is speculated why Edelman was used in the slot and Welker phased out the first game but then the injury to Edelman and Hernandez forced them to, but they still have Woodhead to run underneath stuff, and he filled in nicely in 2010 when Welker was recovering from his acl/mcl. However, Brady stated something like Welker being the heart and soul of the offense, so I respect him for targeting Welker as frequently as possible. However, with the absence of Kevin Faulk, there should be another outlet reciever used, as Welker has being doing better on deeper routes, the espn stats say he has caught a pass every single time he was targeted. Lloyd, not so much. With Hernandez gone they can use Woodhead to fill the void in the passing game. They did it in the first half of the Superbowl with Gronk not 100 percent, and he had 4 catches for over 40 yards, and they just stopped using him in the second half.
The ridiculous thing about Welker was the media highlighting the role of Percy Harvin the other day, talking about how he gets most of his yards after the catch and most of his catches are at the line of scrimmage, and that he is basically like a runningback, basically drooling over his versatility and play making ability etc. Welker has been doing this for years, and could have been taking handoffs as well.
Welker's consistency over the years has probably led to the increase of White receivers getting a chance. That is what we need from a White runningback, if Hillis would have posted back to back 1k seasons then things might be a little different. Now his best hope is to be in a Brandon Jacobs or Michael Bush type role, with the possibility for him to get one more 1k season. Michael Bush at the age of 28 almost had 1,000 rushing last year, heading into his 7th game he had 138 yards rushing, not much more than Hillis, had he averaged higher than 3.8 ypc he would have broken the 1k mark, he did have 1300 yards from scrimmage, mostly coming in the final 10 game stretch.
Hopefully we can catch a break with Gerhart, Peterson says his ankle is fine but I am not so sure about that. I think something similar happened last year which led to his knee injury, his body was out of balance.
Hopefullly one of our college guys gets a legit shot at the NFL. Don't know how they will twist the 40 time thing, 4 out of the top 10 rushers right now run 4.65 or slower, one with a 4.58 and another one with 4.5. So only 3 with sub 4.5 speed.
