Well yes, they do. Awesome running games don't but often even good backs can have bad games. Agree that Smith was inconsistent in 2000 however our running game helped a lot and bailed us out of a few games even.
I mean we had some good running days this year and it had a lot more to do with our style matching up well against the defense...like when we bludgeoned New England and their 3-4 defense the first time around. And when we bludgeoned the Colts. Then we just ran all over the Bills in the last regular season game. To me this says that it was most definitely more than just injury...since we had injured players in all three games on the line and it would be hard to call one line 'healthier' than an other. To me it points to variability based on Mr. Hot-and-Cold Lamar Smith, as well as the defensive formations/personnel. The 2nd time against New England our running game sucked...and Bill Belichick had changed the scheme. We sucked against the same personnel against the colts...could one line have been called healthy and the other not? Same thing with the Bills, one game hot another cold.
As I pointed out on the Heraldtalk board a long time ago when rumors of Ricky Williams first started (actually a little bit before, I was trying to point out how inconsistent Lamar Smith is and tried to find someone to compare him to and out of interest of the Ricky trade rumors circulating well over a year ago, I compared him to Ricky), statistically over his career Ricky Williams has been pretty painfully consistent. The standard deviations on his ypc output in games is so much lower than Lamar its ridiculous.
So given all that, we solved one problem by getting a consistent runner, and hopefully Norv's offense solves the mismatch problem. The injury problem may or may not be solved but in all honesty I don't think that matters much. Like I said we sucked before injuries, we sucked during injuries, and after...even had some good games after injuries and lots of bad ones before injury.