kungfoodude

He isn't some unicorn player. He is the same thing Ladainian Tomlinson, Marshall Faulk or any of these other high caliber dual threat feature backs were. That doesn't change that he is a HOF talent, however. The thing that you are failing to see is that RB's don't win games based on being great, especially in the modern NFL. It isn't a requirement to have an elite or HOF caliber RB to win a Super Bowl. The post you are responding to is absolutely correct. There is a reason why most of these recent Super Bowl champions don't have large sums of money tied up at RB. What you do largely see in those teams is them having elite or HOF caliber QB's in the overwhelming majority of those games. That isn't an accident.

At $8-12 mil/year he would still be consistently in the top 5-6 at RB in terms of pay. Even without the signing bonus hit on the cap, not many teams are going to want that much money tied up in a RB. That is precisely why very, very few teams in the NFL have that kind of money tied up in a RB. If you notice, almost none of them are good teams. As fans, it's easy to see CMC's greatness and why any team should want him. But if you look at it from a front office perspective, it's easy to see why it is an extremely poor allocation of resources. But, yes, we CAN afford to trade him. I would caution that he has never been worth less in a trade than this moment in his career. He is coming off an injury plagued season and in the first year of a very large contract.

It's very stoppable if we don't improve this OL. That's an element that can effectively stop both CMC AND an elite QB.

It is feasible, it just isn't very reasonable.

He has only been a starter in the NFL in one out of three stops since his return from injury. It was here and he largely proved that he was a backup caliber QB.

I agree. I think the workload is probably the culprit for his injury issues. We will see what happens in the long term. Let's hope we are either wrong or he is an outlier.

Especially when they just traded for one last offseason.

Well, if we trade for Watson it is almost certain. CMC's contract is a poison pill to us and the team we would hypothetically trade him to. The odds of him going anywhere this offseason are slim to none.

This isn't the NBA. You aren't going to get a significant portion of asses in seats by having a star player if you aren't winning. The thing that gets people showing up to games is WINNING. We haven't had a star player yet that could make people show up if the team stinks. Hell, we had a far bigger star in Cam Newton and even he couldn't do that.

But the thing that would make them much more productive, CMC or not, is to have an elite QB. And the reason their entire game plan was to stop CMC is that they had no fear at all of our parade of broken or awful QB's. It's easy to focus on a RB when you have a busted OL and QB's who can't throw deep consistently. If we fix our QB issues and/or OL issues, it's actually CMC who will probably benefit the most. And, hopefully, we don't fall prey to the same idiocy that Rivera did and have him taking 90+% of our carries. Bring Davis back or find another guy that we can have split carries with him or at least alleviate the load so we aren't worrying about his health and mileage as much.

Most franchises don't want a $8-12/mil a year RB on their team. It is a bad allocation of resources unless you are stacked elsewhere, which the Texans are definitely not. It also doesn't help their very poor cap situation. I think there is a reason they are rumored to be wanting "young" players. I imagine what they mean is guys on rookie deals, which CMC is not. It doesn't make a lot of sense for us to eat that kind of dead cap hit either. I suppose if they absolutely want him in a Watson trade scenario, you can't exactly say no. I just don't see that as something that is very likely to happen.

How many of those 1000/1000 seasons have resulted in a Super Bowl title? Him being a HOF caliber talent doesn't change the fact that his value is relatively low. Furthermore, how many wins did those performances result in? He can't carry a team. He's a RB and this isn't the 1980's.

FWIW, to make this point a little more clear..... Robby Anderson has 9 40+ yd TD's in 315 touches. Curtis Samuel has 1 40+ yard TD's in 257 touches. DJ Moore has 5 40+ yard TD's in 208 touches. So, your extremely goofy criteria doesn't hold up well to the reality of the situation.

Yeah, I don't think people have looked at OTC and seen what kind of cap nightmare trading him would be.

I don't think you really have any concept of player evaluation nor positional value in the modern NFL.

We should know after 2021. If he suffers through another injury plagued season, I think you have your answer. If he can come back and play a full slate(or at least 14 games), it was just a blip on the radar of what we have to hope is a long career.

Yeah, I would love to be able to move CMC's contract but that probably can't happen for another offseason or two with the dead cap hit it entails. We are essentially talking about what Houston is staring down the barrel of, a massive contract that was just signed and taking the maximum amount of dead cap hit possible for that contract.

I am not sure what answer you expected to this question but it is 5 times in 1014 touches(this includes the playoffs). 2017: 0 TD's of 40+ yds. 2018: 1 TD's of 40+ yds. 2019: 4 TD's of 40+ yds. 2020: 0 TD's of 40+ yds. DJ Moore, Robby Anderson and Curtis Samuel also all have the ability to score anytime they touch the ball.

This is maybe one of the worst analogies I have read on the Huddle.

RB has the shortest average career span in the NFL. It's not a matter of "don't draft this guy because of high mileage." It's a matter of don't sign huge contract extensions for a position with a very short career span. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't attempt to draft good RB's but you probably shouldn't pay top tier money(the track record of those players in the past 10 years has been pretty terrible) and you shouldn't plan on 7-10 years of top level production. That just doesn't really happen very often. I was very against signing CMC to the deal we did at the time because of a multitude of factors. Also including the move away from feature backs in the NFL(lessening the overall value of the position), the ease of finding productive backs in free agency or the draft and the dramatic shift over the past 15+ years to the league being much more passing based/QB centric. It has nothing to do with him not being an elite player, which he absolutely is. It's just the value of having an elite player at RB is far lower than at QB, WR, DE, OT, etc. As for the more comprehensive data on "college and NFL mileage." I think that is something we would have to compile. It's possible to do and include things like average career length, injury history, etc. It would take some significant time if the pool or sample size is larger than maybe 5 years.

True, he isn't taking quite the beating of a guy like Henry or Elliott. Still, he takes a lot of beating. That's why RB's have such a short shelf life, the repeated beatings take their toll.

Zero certainty but I don't think you see our current front office giving away #1 RB money in the league. And I don't think you see any NFL team in the current climate giving CMC the contract we did. Remember, we set the market for guys like Cook and Kamara to get the deals they did(which were still smaller).

He also had 731 touches in three years in college. That is only behind Hunt(855 in 4 years), Chubb(789 in 4 years), and Cook(766 in three years). Remember, that mileage matters too. That is why I say EXTREMELY high mileage. Notice that the other high usage three year back on my list is also an injury plagued guy. Guys like Zeke and Henry will absolutely start breaking down(Elliott already is). It's just tough to keep taking that kind of pounding in the NFL. Not everyone can be Frank Gore or Adrian Peterson. Those guys are outliers for a reason.

You also don't need a RB of his caliber to be successful in the NFL. Bonnafon isn't a legit option because he hasn't been able to seriously take a large role even when CMC was down all season. He is a 3rd string RB and really no more than that. Yeah, if we traded him prior to June 1st he would leave us with a HUGE dead cap charge.