Reconsidering Reginald ... again

Reggie Bush's next rushing yard will make 1,000 for his career. He currently has 268 career carries and 138 career catches, 406 career touches, a reasonable total for a featured back in the NFL. With that in mind, let's look closer at Reggie's numbers through (roughly) his first 400 career touches.

(RYDS is Rushing Yards, PYDS is receiving Yards, TYDS is Total Yards)

In the table, Reggie is just the normal stats. F Reggie is the Reggie Bush of the past five games, since Deuce McAllister went down and Reggie became the "featured" back. A Reggie is "adjusted" Reggie, simply the F Reggie numbers extrapolated over a 16-game season. I didn't plan on the numbers of carries in the first and third rows being identical, but they were.

The numbers seem to speak fairly clearly for themselves, but I do want to make a few comments on the data.

First, the F Reggie (and therefore, A Reggie) numbers are dictated by the level of the opposition. Since the opposition includes the 10th-, 11th-, 20th-, 26th- and 30th-ranked defenses, they may be skewed a bit positively. It would be great to see the numbers against a purely league-average defense, but we make do with what we have. Anyways, the numbers average out to the 19th-ranked defense, so they're not horrible.

Second, looking at Reggie's game log, his best two rushing games were against the best two defenses, Seattle and Jacksonville.

The net of this exercise, I believe, indicates that Reggie can be a fine offensive player, even when forced into a featured role. In fact, when given more opportunities to touch the ball, Reggie's numbers look all the more impressive.