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With quarterback Drew Brees out for several weeks with rib and lung injuries, the New Orleans Saints’ Super Bowl hopes rest on a jack-of-all-trades that is sometimes dismissed as just a role player: the running back Alvin. Kamara.
Sorry, did you expect the team’s quarterback Taysom Hill? Hill, the gadget specialist and wish-fulfillment character who currently fills for Brees, is certainly essential to the Saints’ success. But Kamara has been their best offensive player by far this season and has become a worthy contender for the NFL MVP.
In Week 11, Kamara placed second in the league with 1,179 total scrum yards and 12 combined rushing and receiving touchdowns. His 67 receptions tied him for seventh in the NFL and led all running backs. According to Pro Football Reference, Kamara leads the league with 619 yards after the catch and 14 broken tackles after receptions. Coach Sean Payton lines him up as a running back, a variety of wide receiver, punt return and sometimes as a wild quarterback to make the most of his diverse talents.
Kamara’s production has been vital for the Saints in a season in which Brees’ skills continued to decline noticeably and Michael Thomas missed six games due to injuries and alluring siren song from the bad behavior of the wide receiver. (Thomas missed a match for “disciplinary reasons”, would have after an altercation with a teammate during training.)
The Saints’ offense this season has often consisted almost entirely of Brees floating soft throws into flats or transferring so Kamara can dodge and work his way around defenders for significant gains. Yet despite their over-reliance on one individual, the Saints are 8-2, first in the NFC South and leading the conference playoff race.
Kamara isn’t exactly an unsung hero – he’s a three-time Pro Bowl draft and a perennial first-round pick in fantasy football leagues, where his combination of rushing production and receiving is highly coveted. But its contributions can be undervalued, for a variety of reasons. Kamara is a “committee of return” who shares litters with Latavius Murray. He’s a versatile fullback who is outclassed in the statistical standings by rushers whose production isn’t split into two categories, like Minnesota Vikings’ Dalvin Cook (the current leader in scrum yards and touchdowns) and Derrick Henry. the Tennessee Titans (last leader in a hurry of the year).
Kamara also doesn’t have the origin story of the folk hero of Hill, the 30-year-old lifelong hopeful who overcame multiple college injuries and rose from the proverbial mailroom of the training squad of the Saints to gain extended hearing as a long-term replacement.
Kamara played only a minor role in Hill’s debut, rushing 13 times for 45 yards and a touchdown (no catch) in Sunday’s 24-9 win over the Atlanta Falcons. Payton surprised the Falcons by treating Hill like a true quarterback instead of building a game plan out of play options and Kamara’s easy throws. Hill surprised his skeptics by looking more like a true quarterback than a Mary Sue written in Saints fan fiction to appeal to the demographics of middle-aged high school legends.
Hill’s decision-making process in the pocket boils down to “waiting for Thomas to open up and run for the light of day if he doesn’t,” but there are plenty of quarterbacks around the NFL that would benefit from similar clarity.
It’s one thing to use unexpected tactics to confuse the hapless Falcons, who earlier in the season mixed up procedures for manage a kick in play and a living pomegranate. The Saints face the tighter Denver Broncos defense on Sunday, and future opponents (including the Falcons again in two weeks) will be ready to drop the Hill-to-Thomas connection. The Saints will need Kamara more than ever. Then Brees will (likely) return as the playoffs approach, and the Saints will start needing Kamara again as much as they always have.
No matter how irreplaceable Kamara may be for the Saints, he remains far from being considered an MVP. The last non-quarterback to win the award was Adrian Peterson in 2012, when he rushed for 2,097 yards. The closest versatile performers like Kamara to winning the award were LaDainian Tomlinson, who had 2,323 scrum yards and 31 touchdowns in 2006, and Marshall Faulk, who had 2,189 combined scrum yards and 26 touchdowns in 2000. Kamara is on. a pace for 1,886. yards and 19.2 touchdowns: excellent, but not impressive enough to win a prize almost exclusively reserved for quarterbacks.
Kamara’s MVP case is much more solid once assumptions about the relative values of quarterbacks and running backs are put aside. He’s spent most of the season helping a waning Hall of Fame whose average throw this season has only traveled 5.8 yards on the field (according to NFL Next Gen Stats, the second-lowest number of the league). He is now responsible for supporting a non-denominational substitute for Tim Tebow. He’s responsible for 31 percent of offensive distance for a team that swept the Tampa Bay Buccaneers out of Tom Brady and is on a seven-game winning streak. And his dual role as a rusher-catcher makes him a more effective focal point for a modern NFL offense than workhorses like Cook and Henry.
OK, even taking all of that into account, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes could still be a better MVP candidate in 2020. Kamara remains the Saints’ most valuable player. And if he can get them to the Super Bowl, that’s all that really matters.
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