The Fin Spot

Injured Ronnie Brown

How do we get Ronnie to last the whole season? We need a better rotation. Is that to unreasonable of a request? Hilliard did alright and so did Cobbs. Ricky did very well too. The only unknown is Sheets. I think if we had a better rotation Ronnie could make it the whole season no problem.

I’m a big stats guy so I did some math

Ronnie was on the field for 318 snaps in 2009 (Not counting the last game he played when he got injured). Which means he was on the field 64% of the time. About 75% of those plays Ronnie was either running the ball or running a route,(The other 25% were play in which Ronnie was either run blocking or pass blocking) but more than half of those plays were running plays.

You can compare that to Ray Rice (who was one of the best running backs of 09′) who was on the field for 74% of the time. About 81% of those plays Rice was either running the ball or running routes, BUT only 40% of those plays had him running the ball.

I think if we can cut back on Ronnies overall snaps and plays that have him running the ball there is no reason why he can’t make it through the season. I found something else quite interesting while doing all of this:

Brown was on the field consistently between 60%-70% of the time. Adversely Rice would alternate from game to game. In some games he would be on the field 30% of the time and in other games he would be out there for 80% of the time. They did the same thing with Jones-Drew in Jacksonville.

I think we have a good enough HB corps to pull this off as well.