4️⃣1️⃣ & 1️⃣4️⃣ currently sit top-3 in #Saints career touchdowns 🔥 @A_kamara6 x @markingramII pic.twitter.com/c9DjvE27GX
— New Orleans Saints (@Saints) July 12, 2022
Marques Colston played his last NFL game in 2015, ending an iconic 10-year run with the New Orleans Saints. Since then, he has reigned as the Saints’ touchdown leader (and the best NFL player to never make a Pro Bowl) with 72 career touchdown receptions. Now, after only five seasons, former Offensive Rookie of the Year Alvin Kamara is only 5 all-purpose touchdowns away from taking the crown as the all-time touchdown leader in New Orleans.
With 68 touchdowns scored as a runner, receiver, and even as a kick returner, Kamara is averaging nearly a touchdown every game of his career with only 73 regular season games played. That is exactly half as many games as Colston played throughout his career (146). Kamara is very good at football.
His talent is not limited to local recognition and franchise records, though. Players, coaches, and executives across the NFL were polled by ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler to create top-10 lists for different position groups, and Kamara clocked in at No. 5 among the running backs. The praise for Kamara unsurprisingly centers around his versatility, uncanny balance ability and the general difficulty that comes with game-planning against him. Here’s what Fowler heard about Kamara from around the league:
“You can put a really good safety on him, and he’ll still come back to the sideline and say, ‘Uh, we’ve got a problem,'” a veteran AFC coach said.
“Two-phase, three-down back. Contact balance is rare. What he does in the passing game separates him,” an NFC exec said. But after four straight seasons of 80 or more catches, Kamara slipped to 47 catches last year.
“He’s a nightmare for us,” a high-ranking NFL personnel evaluator said. “Not having Brees getting him the ball in the short area like he used to, behind a great offensive line all those years, has affected him a bit. And he’ll probably lose a step eventually. But there are a lot of top backs we’d rather face than him.”
Questions about Kamara’s availability will be plentiful this offseason. He awaits a court hearing in August connected an offseason arrest following an alleged altercation while at the Pro Bowl. He is, without a doubt, one of the most valuable players on the roster in New Orleans. They stand to potentially compete without him for at least six games. But if that is the case he’ll have his impact in both the run and passing game. Fielding a top-5 NFL running back for 11 games will still benefit the Saints as they look to get back to the playoffs in 2022.
