FanHouse TerrellDavis

Things are looking up in Miami, which is welcome news for an outfit that went 1-15 last season. Randy Mueller and Cam Cameron are out, replaced by Bill Parcells, Jeff Ireland and Tony Sparano; the Dolphins have a franchise left tackle (although some are skeptical); Ricky Williams is again excited to be playing football; Jason Taylor has decided to put off his Hollywood dreamz for another season; and Ronnnie Brown, the team's 2005 first-round pick, expects to be completely healthy by the start of the season.

Brown, who's coming back from a torn ACL, thinks he can return to the form that saw him average 5.1 yards per carry through Week 7 of the '07 season.

Are those expectations too high? Based on other backs returning from ACL injuries, the results are mixed:

[Edgerrin] James averaged 4.4 yards per carry the year before (2000), 3.6 the year after (2002) but 4.1 and 4.6 in '03 and '04. Terry Allen (4.5 year before, 4.0 year after) and Jamal Anderson (4.5, 3.6) also fell off initially but still topped 1,000 yards in their first year back. (Anderson tore his other ACL a year later.)

But Jamal Lewis, who tore his ACL in 2001 training camp, had virtually no fall-off (4.4 in 2000, 4.3 in '02, 5.3 in '03). Ex-UM star Willis McGahee, who sat out his rookie NFL season (2003) after tearing his ACL and two other knee ligaments in the Fiesta Bowl, averaged 4.0 in 2004, the second-best of his career.

In his long, spotty history as a drafter, one thing Mike Shanahan has proved one thing beyond a shadow of a doubt. A running back need not come festooned with a lofty draft position to succeed in the NFL. Terrell Davis, Mike Anderson and Olandis Gary have all proved that it's not how you get there but how you play once you're there. Last year the Bronco rushing attack was led by Selvin Young, who proved useful despite being passed over entirely on draft day.

That doesn't mean Shanahan is totally opposed to using an early pick on a back. Tatum Bell and Clinton Portis were both second rounders and Jeff Legwold of the Rocky Mountain News thinks he should go that route again this year. Young isn't an "every-down" back and neither is Travis Henry, he argues, so the team needs to find that back on the first day of the draft.

Rubbish. I don't agree with the need for an "every-down" back at all. The Steelers, Colts and Giants all won Super Bowls using multiple backs to great effect, regardless of where or if they were drafted, and there's no reason to think that trend is going to change. The Broncos should certainly pick up another set of legs to diversify their offense but their list of needs starts well before a back who plays on every snap from center.

In this week's Monday Morning Quarterback, Peter King writes that he's having a hard time making up his mind about whether former Broncos running back Terrell Davis is worthy of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

King writes that Davis has favorable rushing numbers to Gale Sayers, who also had a short career but made it to the Hall of Fame, but also notes that Sayers was a great return man and Davis wasn't.

But here's the reason I'd have to vote no on Davis: He consistently got too much credit for the work of the Broncos' great offensive line. Those 1990s Broncos were an offensive force, no doubt. One member of that team, John Elway, is already in the Hall of Fame, and a few others, including Shannon Sharpe and Tom Nalen, have a good chance of getting there some day. Davis, in my view, falls just short of those three in terms of total career productivity, and therefore just short of worthiness for the Hall of Fame.

Note: King also writes, "Bylaws prevent me from disclosing my ballot of the final 15." I find it disappointing that the journalists on the Hall of Fame selection committee would agree to bylaws that prevent them from providing information to their readers.

Of all the names on the early list of candidates for induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the one likely to face the liveliest debate is former Broncos running back Terrell Davis. The argument basically breaks down to this: Do you put a guy in the Hall of Fame for four very good seasons?
For Paul Zimmerman of Sports Illustrated, who has a Hall of Fame vote, the answer is yes. He writes today:

I'm sure he'll make it to the final 15, which will get him into the selection meeting at the Super Bowl, and the debate will rage long and hard. Shortness of career will be the main negative, although others are in there who have done far less. ...

In the last two years of the glory part of Davis' career, the Broncos rode his shirttails to a pair of Super Bowl titles, the only ones in their history. You could rightly say he and John Elway are the two most important people in the history of the franchise. I think that's enough of an endorsement. Quality over quantity will be my argument when this whole thing comes up in January.

I disagree. When Davis first got hurt in 1998, I remember thinking that he had done enough -- right then and there -- to get into the Hall of Fame. But I'm less convinced now. Looking back on those Broncos teams of the late 1990s, the real greatness I see is in the offensive line, not the running back. I would gladly vote for at least one of those linemen, Tom Nalen, for the Hall of Fame, But I'm not convinced that Davis belongs, not when the Broncos' running game continued to thrive after he was gone.

Status Check is FanHouse's conversation with fans from the rest of the blogosphere. Every week during the NFL season we'll be focusing on a big rivalry. Today, it's the Broncos, who face the Super Bowl Champ Colts this weekend. The Sports Guru, the guy behind Mile High Report, answers a few questions.

FanHouse: Jay Cutler enters his first full season as Denver's starting quarterback. For the most part, he's played well, but has had a few "what the... ?" moments. Did you have any reservations about Mike Shanahan giving him the reins as a rookie? Any part of his game concern you now?

MHR: Absolutely not!! No doubt he has made some throws that make me want to pull my hair out but you can tell the kid has IT. All young quarterbacks go through the growing pains of becoming a starting quarterback in the NFL and one need look no further than across the field this Sunday for proof. The Broncos were not going anywhere last season, even at 7-4 under Jake Plummer. Jake simply didn't love the game as much as you have to be in the upper echelon.

I think Shanahan realized after the AFC Championship game loss to Pittsburgh that he needed to go another direction because Jake was just aloof enough to up and retire at any moment. Jay, on the other hand, lives and breathes football. He is a student of the game and football is the #1 thing in his life. That just wasn't the case for Plummer, and while that may work in Arizona, It doesn't in the building that Elway built. While there have been growing pains, Cutler has started 8 games and already lead 5 come-from-behind drives in the 4th quarter to win or tie a game. I'll take that kind of success anytime.

I've been hearing a lot of talk lately about how LJ might break the rushing carries record and how, historically, this is almost a guarantee that LJ will not be effective next year. The statistical basis for this argument: the claim that most RBs who eclipse 380 carries were injured the following year.

Am I really the only one that doesn't see the ridiculousness of this argument? The claim is that RB's like Terrell Davis and Jamal Anderson both suffered major injuries after carrying the ball 380+ times. Newflash: most of the RB's on the list as "overworked" also made the playoffs. TD and Jamal Anderson, in fact, ended up making it all the way to the Super Bowl. When you account for postseason carries, their total number of carries is very close to 500. Barring some extraordinary miracle in which the Chiefs make the playoffs, LJ will not even come remotely close to 400 carries.