The Saints’ Running Back Tandem Could Be The Best In History

The New Orleans Saints entered the season on a treadmill of mediocrity. Three straight years of 7-9 meant the team was not good enough for the playoffs and not quite bad enough to give up and rebuild. But the party has returned to Bourbon Street this season as New Orleans has won seven straight games and, according to FiveThirtyEight’s predictions, now has an 88 percent chance of making the playoffs. But perhaps most surprising is how the Saints are winning games. They are doing the most un-Saintly of things: running all over teams.

Drew Brees and the Saints have never been shy about scoring an obscene number of points, traditionally through their passing attack. But the 2017 version of this offense is being spearheaded by a duo of running backs, veteran Mark Ingram and rookie Alvin Kamara. The league has not seen a two-headed monster like this in quite some time — in fact, the pair is on pace to be the most productive backfield tandem in nearly 40 years.

Through nine weeks, Ingram and Kamara have tallied 1,654 yards from scrimmage (rushing and receiving) and are currently on pace for nearly 3,000 combined yards, with Ingram on pace for 1,536 yards and Kamara for 1,404. To put this production in perspective, consider that there have been only 10 pairs of backfield mates since the 16-game era began in 1978 who each totaled at least 1,200 yards from scrimmage, according to Pro-Football-Reference.com. This last happened in 2009, when Jonathan Stewart and DeAngelo Williams did it for the Panthers. But that duo combined for only 2,641 yards — 300 fewer than the projected output of Ingram and Kamara. The only backfield pair to top the Saints’ duo’s 16-game pace was Walter Payton (1,875 yards) and Roland Harper (1,332 yards), with a total of 3,207 for the 1978 Bears.

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