With Thomas Jones, Jamaal Charles no longer a first-round pick
It looked as though Chiefs running back Jamaal Charles was in for a HUGE season in 2010.
When given the opportunity last year, Charles flourished. In the final eight games, Charles rushed for 968 yards, which would have put him on a full-season pace just shy of 2,000 yards in a season when Tennessee's Chris Johnson became only the sixth player in NFL history to rush for over 2,000 yards.
Furthermore, Charles had 658 rushing yards in his final four games compared to 497 for Johnson.
The unbridled enthusiasm I had for Charles (I took him ninth overall in our early 2010 fantasy football mock draft) has been greatly diminished as the Chiefs have signed running back Thomas Jones to a two-year contract.
Jones, who was released by the Jets, ranked third in the NFL in rushing last year and set career-highs in rushing yards (1,402) and touchdowns (14) despite being 31 years old.
That said, Charles is still expected to be the featured back in the offense.
“I don’t believe we’ve seen the best from Jamaal,” [coach Todd] Haley said, per Adam Teicher of the Kansas City Star. “... Jamaal has his focus set on being seen as one of the better players in the league, so he’s got a lot of drive in that direction. I’m not going to set a bar on Jamaal because each time we did that last year he kind of broke through that bar and raised it. We’re going to continue to push him hard and coach him and see how good he can be.”
Charles finished 2009 with four straight games with 20+ carries. With Jones in town, that will change in 2010. In addition, Jones will likely take the goalline carries away from Charles as well.
Jones should get around 5-10 carries per game, in which case Charles would likely get around 15 per game. And I can easily envision a scenario where the split is 50-50 in the second half.
If the Chiefs are struggling through the first half (say 2-6), I wouldn't be surprised to see the Chiefs gave more carries (i.e., wear and tear) to Jones to help save Charles for the future. We've seen how quickly running backs can hit the wall with the physical punishment they take on a weekly basis.
In either case, let's say that he would have received 20 carries per game without Jones and 15 carries with him. With his career average of 5.7 yards per carry, that is roughly 28.5 yards less per game for Charles. That equates to 456 less rushing yards over the course of a 16-game season.
When I do another mock draft later in the year, Charles will no longer be a first-round pick.
