In years past several observers have thrown around the idea that one of the reasons behind the lack of success by Alabama running backs upon reaching the NFL is that they are worn down from years of heavy use at Alabama. As recently as last month, Colin Cowherd was pushing this theory again, and the idea has been thrown around enough and for long enough that last month Nick Saban finally weighed in. Of course Saban doesn’t feel he’s overworking his backs, but what coach does?
In order to see whether Alabama backs are getting more work than other running backs in college football, I took a look at a handful of Alabama running backs and their workload while in school.