It took most of the season for the running-back-by-committee experiment to be deemed a failure, but in mid-November, Mike McCarthy finally awarded Rico Dowdle with the lead back title. While there are questions around whether this decision should have been made much earlier, there is no doubt that the running game has greatly improved since making this decision. Better late than never.
In Dowdle’s first nine games, he was only averaging around 10 carries per game. Now that he is getting the bulk of the carries (19, 22, and 18 in the past three games respectively), he has proven that he is capable of being a bell cow running back.