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When the New York Giants take on the Carolina Panthers on Sunday, both Saquon Barkley and Christian McCaffrey will be watching from the sidelines.
Both are vital cogs in their teams, yet as the Giants look to get their second win of the season and the Panthers look to arrest their slide after three straight losses, they will be missing in action.
Barkley, McCaffrey and the running back conundrum
There is no doubting the talent that both Saquon Barkley and Christian McCaffrey possess and it must be difficult for teams to resist the urge to build around them. But the current situation confronting both teams is a cautionary tale on why it is not the cleverest idea to build an offense with a running back as its centerpiece.
Both Saquon Barkley and Christian McCaffrey were first-round picks and were supposed to be mainstays of the offense. But the issue is that running backs are in a demanding position. The number of tackles they often have to break through to progress beyond the line of scrimmage takes a toll on the body.
Saquon Barkley and Christian McCaffrey have been used too much in the running game by their teams as they look to uplift the entire offense. The more touches running backs get, the more punishment they endure.
An ideal team should always have a corps of running backs who can interchange during the game so that one running back is not overloaded with the number of carries. Additionally, no team should put the offensive load onto the running back and use them sparingly on specially-designed plays.
In 2019, Christian McCaffrey and Saquon Barkley ranked first and second for the number of touches they took in the NFL, with 403 and 352, respectively. Since then, their productivity has been down as they have played a combined eight games out of the last available 41.
It is a prime example of what overdependence and overuse of running backs can do. If a team looks to get most of their offensive output from the running backs, inevitably, it will come back to bite them as their bodies wear out and give up on them. The intelligent thing is building a complete offense with various schemes and not depending on one player to bail you out, especially not a running back.
