Breece Hall and Javonte Williams are both coming off torn ACLs, while Rashaad Penny is coming off a broken leg. They suffered those injuries in the first half of last season, so to varying degrees there's hope they'll be ready for Week 1. But it's also clear their teams aren't counting on them.
The Eagles have a couple of holdovers (Kenneth Gainwell, Boston Scott) and acquired D'Andre Swift, so while Penny is the favorite to start, they have other options. The Jets have been considered a favorite to land Dalvin Cook, which wouldn't speak favorably of Hall's availability. And while Williams is talking optimistically for the Broncos, Denver could be starting Samaje Perine or adding another veteran before the start of the season.
I wanted to find some comparable situations from the past decade to make some guesses as to how those backs coming off injury might fare, but it's tricky. All injuries are different, and they come at different times -- a guy who tears his ACL in August shouldn't be compared to one who tears it in December. And backs are at different points in their careers; an ACL injury for a younger guy isn't the same as when a six-year veteran blows out a knee.
So what I did was assemble a list of starting running backs from the past decade who got hurt and wound up playing less than half a season. I went with a minimum of four starts (I wanted to make sure they were definitely starting running backs) but a maximum of seven (with the idea of excluding guys who got hurt late in the season). How many of those guys went on to put strong numbers one year later?
An additional note: I removed guys who didn't play at all the next season, either because they needed that entire year to recover, or retired, or otherwise dropped out of the league -- the likes of Matt Jones, Robert Kelley 0r David Wilson. Some of those were simply lesser backs who weren't expected to be starters going forward anyway, or had chronic injury issues -- no one is saying any of those things about Breece or Javonte.
I came up with 14 previous backs, players with different injuries at different points in their career or the respective seasons, but who fit the profile: starting running backs who went down less than halfway through one season, then came back to play the next year. They're presented in the table below -- Run-Rec-TD stats in the year they got injured, plus number of starts, followed by Run-Rec-TD and fantasy ranking (PPR) in the following season.
Table is ordered by PPR ranking in that next season.
| STARTING RBS COMING OFF SHORT SEASONS, ONE YEAR LATER | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Player | GS | Run-Rec-TD | Run | Rec | TD | Rk |
| 2021 | Christian McCaffrey, Car. | 7 | 442-343-2 | 1139 | 741 | 13 | 2 |
| 2015 | LeVeon Bell, Pitt. | 6 | 556-136-3 | 1268 | 616 | 9 | 3 |
| 2020 | Joe Mixon, Cin. | 6 | 428-138-4 | 1205 | 314 | 16 | 4 |
| 2014 | DeAngelo Williams, Car. | 6 | 219-44-0 | 907 | 367 | 11 | 5 |
| 2016 | Dion Lewis, N.E. | 5 | 283-94-0 | 896 | 214 | 10 | 13 |
| 2015 | Carlos Hyde, S.F. | 7 | 470-53-3 | 988 | 163 | 9 | 18 |
| 2016 | C.J. Anderson, Den. | 7 | 437-128-5 | 1007 | 224 | 4 | 18 |
| 2012 | Maurice Jones-Drew, Jac. | 5 | 414-86-2 | 803 | 314 | 5 | 19 |
| 2015 | Marshawn Lynch, Sea. | 6 | 417-80-3 | 891 | 151 | 7 | 23 |
| 2012 | Chris Ivory, N.O. | 2 | 217-15-2 | 821 | 123 | 7 | 24 |
| 2012 | Rashard Mendenhall, Pitt. | 4 | 182-62-1 | 687 | 134 | 8 | 29 |
| 2017 | Dalvin Cook, Min. | 4 | 354-90-2 | 615 | 305 | 4 | 30 |
| 2020 | Devonta Freeman, NYG | 4 | 172-58-1 | 576 | 190 | 6 | 32 |
| 2013 | Doug Martin, T.B. | 6 | 456-66-1 | 494 | 64 | 2 | 52 |
| 2022 | Javonte Williams, Den. | 4 | 204-76-0 | ?? | ?? | ?? | ?? |
| 2022 | Rashaad Penny, Sea. | 5 | 346-16-2 | ?? | ?? | ?? | ?? |
| 2022 | Breece Hall, NYJ | 2 | 463-218-5 | ?? | ?? | ?? | ?? |
Four of those guys came back and knocked it out of the park: McCaffrey (just last year), Bell, Mixon and DeAngelo Williams. Those guys were top-5 backs the next season, which should probably be considered out of reach for Hall-Williams-Penny. But six other were top-25 backs, which looks like a reasonable target area for each of them, should they be available in Week 1. That's possible for all three of these backs.
Veteran signings (especially Cook) would impact any of these backs' outlooks, and recovery times are uncertain. But as things stand right now, none should be written off.
--Andy Richardson