If it’s felt like everything has been hard for Alvin Kamara on rushing downs in recent years, you’d be right. It’s not enough for the porous New Orleans Saints offensive line to struggle in front of him. Kamara’s play callers have let him down, too, with predictable play designs clueing defenders in to their intentions.
Thanks to charting shared by Steve Palazzolo, head of football product at Pro Football Focus, we can see that just one running back has run against more boxes with eight or more defenders lined up than Kamara since 2021: Derrick Henry, who twice led the league in rushing yards with four seasons as the NFL’s leader in carries. Kamara hasn’t seen that kind of volume, but teams have still had a good idea of what’s happening when he touches the football.
This is a big indictment of Pete Carmichael (and Sean Payton). Kamara was once renowned for his versatility on both rushing and passing downs, and in a variety of formations. But all 11 defenders on the field and all 70,000 fans inside the Caesars Superdome could tell when the Saints were about to run Kamara up the middle and into the teeth of the defense, even when the numbers advantage wasn’t in his blockers’ favor.
Since 2021, Henry led the NFL with 373 carries against defenses with eight or more men in the box. Kamara was second with 226. Then you had Najee Harris and Christian McCaffrey (221), as well as Josh Jacobs and Nick Chubb (208). Carmichael has let Kamara down the last two years as his play caller, but Payton got lazy and uncreative with his run designs in 2021, too. He drew up the bad blueprint Carmichael tried to build off of.
Hopefully Klint Kubiak can succeed where they failed. The Saints brought him in to revitalize their run game, and the wide zone-heavy scheme he’s installed could be good for Kamara (as well as the other Saints running backs). Getting Kamara out in space with blockers ahead of him, as opposed to running into a defensive tackle’s face at the line of scrimmage, might be a better use of his abilities.
Obviously you can’t run outside zone on every play. There will be times when the Saints need a tough yard up the middle. But if Kubiak can just get Kamara into more favorable looks, it could make a huge difference. Right now Kamara has the team’s highest salary cap hit for 2024 at $18.5 million. Getting a better return on that investment by setting him up to win, not to fail, helps everyone.
