Sorry, wrong. Attempts is most vital to the running game, not yards. You don't shut down a back when he gets 31 attempts. That dictates the physical aspect of the game. I'll write it again; the team with most rushing attempts wins nearly 85% of the time. When you narrow that to most yards rushing the percentage drops dramatically. Once New York had 21 rushing attempts to our 9 at halftime, it verified who was controlling the physical nature, who was superior in the trenches. The scoreboard was semi-irrelevant.
We need to keep feeding Ronnie the ball, regardless of how subpar the OL appears. Eventually something will break open, which will give the linemen and Ronnie confidence and improve the downfield passing opportunites. All this talk about Ronnie being a bust is nonsense, but the number of attempts he is getting reveals the coaching staff does not have full confidence itself. You know darn well Ricky would me receiving far more touches, and will once he returns.
Pennington is not at the top of his game right now. We were extremely fortunate in that regard yesterday. Given 21 rushing attempts he should have had opportunity for great stats throwing the football but did not. Until the 4th quarter drive he was below 5 yards per attempt and ended up subpar at 6.3 or something like that. I forget where it was when I stopped charting. This week will be a test because Delhomme is a liftetime 7.2+ guy who is in his prime and has a running game going that figures to provide huge attempt numbers. Davis got 25 yesterday. So far Delhomme is below his norm at something like 6.4 YPA but that can explode upward at any time. He is hardly the tentative and limited disappointment like Plummer or post-surgery softballer like Pennington.
