The 2012 OROY and Washington’s most productive player from the 2012 draft
Alfred Morris was just a sixth round pick. During his rookie season, he happened to play alongside the eventual offensive rookie of the year. Since then, RG3 has continued to dominate headlines, while Morris continues to plug away without garnering a fraction of the attention. For example, did you know that Morris has now hit the 1,000-yard mark for the third straight season? He’s also rushed for 7 touchdowns each year in his career.
Do you know how many other players have rushed for 1,000 yards and seven scores in each of their first three seasons? Seven: Earl Campbell, Ottis Anderson, Eric Dickerson, Barry Sanders, LaDainian Tomlinson, Adrian Peterson, and Chris Johnson. That’s five Hall of Fame caliber running backs and Anderson/Johnson, a duo that has combined for nearly 19,000 rushing yards and still counting.
Morris has rushed for 3,919 yards and 27 touchdowns in his career, with one game left in his third season. In addition to the six of the seven players above (Anderson had 26 rushing touchdowns through three years), only five other players have hit those marks through three years: Clinton Portis, Terrell Davis, Emmitt Smith, Edgerrin James, and Walter Payton.
In other words, Morris’ production through three years puts him in in the inner circle of elite running back performance. Of the thirteen running backs mentioned in this post, ten were first round picks. The eleventh was Portis, a player who fell to the second round solely due to concerns about his size and durability. None of the other players were drafted in the second, third, fourth, or fifth rounds; the other two were Morris and Davis, both six round picks under Mike Shanahan.
Morris has been the bell cow for Washington: the team’s number two running back has averaged about 200 rushing yards per season, a pretty stark departure from the current trend of running back by committee. Still, it seems as though Morris never quite gets his due among NFL observers. He has averaged 4.54 yards per carry; I’m not a big fan of that metric, but it’s certainly a good number for those who like that stat. No, the reason Morris tends to be ignored is because he’s a one-dimensional player. And in today’s pass-heavy NFL, that’s a pretty big black mark on the resume.
There have been 144 players who entered the league between 1950 and 2012 and who rushed for at least 2,000 yards in their first three seasons. Of those, only five had a higher percentage of their yards from scrimmage come on the ground than Morris.
Of those five players, one was a fullback with just 2,158 rushing yards through three years, one began his career in 1950, and a third was Stevan Ridley (I’m not quite sure what to do with him). The fourth and fifth were a Hall of Famer and George Rogers, a Hall of Fame caliber player and Heisman Trophy winner who had his career cut short by injuries.
And that brings us to #6 on the list in Morris. The Washington back doesn’t quite have the raw talent of a Campbell or Rogers, and is too one-dimensional to stand out in today’s game. But given all the mess in Washington, it’s worth pointing out the quiet production of a player who has gone under-appreciated.
