Oakland Raiders: Stacking up the running backs against the AFC West
By Kevin Saito
Los Angeles Chargers
Key Contributors: Melvin Gordon, Justin Jackson, Austin Ekeler
LA’s offensive line should be improved this year, with the addition of Mike Pouncey and the return of last year’s second-round pick, Forrest Lamp, after tearing his ACL before the season started.
The line should be better, but with Russell Okung, Joe Barksdale, and Dan Feeney filling out the rest of the line, it’s not going to be elite.
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Where the Chargers are going to run into problems, as far as their ground game is concerned, is the very striking lack of depth in their backfield. They have Melvin Gordon and then – nothing else, really.
Gordon is good, make no mistake. He’s a very powerful and effective back – as his 1,105 rushing yards and eight touchdowns can attest to. That comes a season after he rushed for 997 yards and 10 touchdowns.
As good as Gordon is though, the Chargers had the league’s twenty-fourth ranked rushing attack. And that’s because they don’t have anybody else.
This year, they’re returning Austin Ekeler, who rushed for a grand total of 260 yards rushing, and this year’s seventh-round pick (two hundred fifty first overall) Justin Jackson.
And that’s pretty much it. Los Angeles’ cupboards are pretty bare in terms of running back talent. Not that they rely much on a running game. Not with Philip Rivers back there slinging the ball around everywhere.
The Chargers did have the league’s fourth-best rushing attack, but that’s only because they had the league’s top-ranked passing attack – an imbalance that often hurts them.
The Chargers haven’t had a solid rushing attack since LaDainian Tomlinson wore the lightning bolt, and largely, on the strength of that potent ground game, Los Angeles (then San Diego, of course) made the playoffs in five out of six years between 2004-2009.
Since then? One playoff appearance in 2013, when their ground game was respectable – thirteenth in the league overall.
Coincidence? Probably not.