Philadelphia Eagles: Would giving Miles Sanders 20 carries be so bad?

In the NFL, if a running back can average four yards-per-carry over a full season, it’s considered pretty good.

Mind you, that’s not a particularly hard bar to clear, as 38 qualifying running backs accomplished the feat in 2020, but as a general rule, if a running back can pick up just four yards every time they are tasked with rushing the ball, it can keep an offense ticking like a fine swiss watch.

Don’t believe me? Well, think about it this way: In the NFL, teams have a completely different set of plays pinned in their playbook for third-and-2 versus third-and-10. With fewer yards to pick up on any given down, be that second, third, or even fourth, it allows for more creativity in terms of movement and a savvy coach can “scheme open” a free man, even if said player only picks up a few yards on said play.

Remember the speed option Jalen Hurts used to score his second rushing touchdown of the game in the Philadelphia Eagles‘ Thursday Night Football bout versus the Tampa Bay Buccaneers? Yeah, that play doesn’t work if it’s third-and-10 instead of third-and-2.

But why, you may ask, am I talking about average yards-per-carry in an article about Miles Sanders? Easy: Miles Sanders is averaging 4.7 yards-per-carry so far this season, which is tied for the 17th-highest total in the NFL.

If you gave Sanders an average of 20 carries per game, extrapolated over a full 17 game season, that mark would produce 1,590 total rushing yards, which would be the second-most rushing yards recorded by a player in Eagles franchise history behind Shady McCoy‘s 1,607-yard season in 2013.

So why don’t the Philadelphia Eagles just… do that? Why doesn’t Nick Sirianni and company give Miles Sanders 20 carries per game and see what kind of magic he can commit to tape? I mean, it certainly couldn’t be worse than the team’s current run-pass ratio.

The Philadelphia Eagles need to embrace being a running team.

Is Miles Sanders the Philadelphia Eagles’ best offensive player?

No.

Even at the tender age of 33, that honor still probably goes to future Hall of Famer Jason Kelce. But is Sanders quite possibly the team’s second-best offensive player?

I think there is a very good case to be made for that.

Sanders is fast, elusive, and strong. He’s incredibly shifty in open space, has the power needed to stiff-arm a would-be tackler out of his way, and, most importantly of all, has the home run hitting speed needed to bust open a 50-plus yard run at a moment’s notice.

Fun fact: Sanders has six carries of 50 or more yards on his career through only 33 games of action, which is pretty darn good if you ask me.

When the Eagles’ offensive line is fully stocked, Sanders can burst through pre-made holes in the team’s zone-blocking scheme, but the really fantastic thing about the former second-round pick out of Penn State’s game is that even when his blocking is sub-par, or Jalen Hurts has to run for his life on seemingly every single flippin’ play like he did versus the Bucs, he can remain an effective rusher due to his elusive east-west rushing style.

Need proof? Look no further than the aforementioned Week 6 bout versus Tampa Bay on Thursday Night Football. When the chips were down, and Nick Sirianni needed some big plays, he turned to Sanders, who touched the ball five times on the team’s final offensive drive, including four runs for 39 yards.

Why didn’t this happen earlier? Why did Sanders average a carry a quarter in the first half and then suddenly burst to life at the end of the game? Mind you, I get being a bit hesitant about running the ball against the Buccaneers’ front, as Todd Bowles squad allowed less than 60 rushing yards per game over the first five contests of the season but clearly, that didn’t slow down Sanders, likely because his style of play is more space-based than front-seven focused.

Hmm, so you’re telling me the Eagles could get Sanders the ball in space and allow him to make plays on his own? That sort of sounds like a… like a screen pass, aka Sirianni’s favorite play. Boy, you’d think Sanders would be Sirianni’s go-to offensive weapon instead of an afterthought.

The very best part of Sanders’ game that makes him so darn special but, at the same time, potentially frustrating for a signal-caller is that he isn’t a Frank Gore-style power rusher who can pick up a set amount of yards like clockwork. He has more than a couple of games on his resume where more than 50 percent of his yards were picked up on a single play, and there have been times where he gets iced out of the offense in favor of a more predictable back like Jordan Howard, but then he busts out a 74-yard run, and suddenly, he’s a hero once more and a fantasy football darling.

If you only give Sanders 9.5 rushing attempts per game, his current average on the season, he might still rip off a few gems, but he’s just as likely to pick up five yards on two attempts in the first half of Thursday Night Football and watch the middle chunk of the game from the sidelines as a result.

20 rushing attempts, though an arbitrary number, is a large enough sample size to even out those ebbs and flows and get Sanders right into that 90-100 yards per game range, assuming he keeps his 4.7 yarder-per-attempt average over a full game and season.

Conventional wisdom would suggest that having a strong running game would be the best friend of a young quarterback. It limits the amount of time the ball is in a quarterback’s hands, provides offensive parody that keeps a defensive coordinator guessing, and most importantly of all, shrinks the field on the “money downs.” When said young quarterback is also a threat to run the ball, which Jalen Hurts certainly is, as he ranks third league-wide in average yards-per-carry, that creates a very exciting opportunity for a run-pass option where as many as three different players have the option to touch the ball depending on how the defense is orientated. If the Philadelphia Eagles want to give Hurts a fair shake and maybe actually win a few games over the next few months, it would be imperative that they actually give Miles Sanders enough carries to do what he does and give the team a defined offensive identity. As a game manager with a solid running game, Hurts can make this offense work; Nick Sirianni just needs to optimize his situation.