Exhibit A: Frank Gore, the San Francisco tailback who ran for more than 1,600 yards last season, was held to 39 yards Sunday against the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Exhibit B: Three games into the NFL season, 20 players are on a pace to run for 1,000 yards — which was once the hallmark of a great rusher, but now requires a rather pedestrian 63 yards a game — and Pro Bowler Larry Johnson isn't one of them.
Exhibit C, D, and E: LaDainian Tomlinson, generally acclaimed as the best back in the NFL, has only 130 yards — fewer than the Steelers' Najeh Davenport, who isn't even the top back on his own team — after three games. And Tomlinson's one "SportsCenter" moment so far this season was a pass play. And he was the thrower, not the receiver.
After three games, 15 teams — nearly half the league — have given up fewer than 60 points, which is a 20-point-per-game average. Last year, only 12 teams hit that mark, including only two in the NFC.
The evidence, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is clear. NFL defenses have caught up to the offenses.
But opposing counsel might mention the season's offensive point totals don't necessarily bear that out. Last season, five teams scored more than 400 points, a 25-per-game average. This season, 11 teams are on their way to that figure.
Admittedly, three games is a painfully small sample. It's tough to believe that Pittsburgh will give up 139 points this year, or that Dallas will finish with 619 points.
But there are still conclusions to be drawn from this schizophrenic season — or at least a question: how can offenses and defenses both be performing better at the same time?
The central issue is that the running game is increasingly irrelevant, at least in terms of its traditional role as the offensive building block. With more teams adopting the defensive model of three line clogging linemen backed up by four quick linebackers, it isn't nearly as easy to run the ball as it used to be.
Gore's production last Sunday was so minimal, in part because Pittsburgh's outside linebackers — and occasionally, safety Troy Polamalu — were quick enough to make tackles from the back side.
It hasn't been all that long ago that teams didn't have to worry about blocking the linebacker away from the attack on running plays because he couldn't keep contain and run down the play at the same time. Now that tackle is almost routine.
On running plays, especially ones that take a long time to develop, the offense has to block everybody, and hold those blocks long enough. And how often does that happen?
In part, that change has taken place not in the pros, but on the college level, because that's where most players switch positions. Two years ago at Temple, the coaching staff asked Joe DeSanzo, a quarterback who started a few games as a true freshman, to move to linebacker.
He transferred, but that doesn't change the point. With an emphasis on defensive speed in college football, guys who might once have been moved to tailback are now converted to linebackers, where they tackle the other team's tailback a dozen times a game.
And once they get to the pros, they've got enough information to absorb without having to train for a new position.
But if run defenses are getting better and point totals are still higher than they were last year, it stands to reason that more teams are succeeding with the pass.
Eight quarterbacks — Jon Kitna, Carson Palmer, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Brett Favre, and Tony Romo — are on pace to crack 4,500 yards this season. And even so-called running teams like the Steelers, with league rushing leader Willie Parker, are using the run to ice the game, not to establish a lead.
That is in keeping with the data compiled by those who have studied play-by-play charts of thousands of games. Those folks, such as the "Football Outsiders" and authors of "Total Football," have figured out that the path to NFL success is to get the lead by passing, and drain the clock by running on a demoralized defense.
Again, the standard disclaimer, that three games is too small a sample, applies. I'm pretty sure Kitna won't finish with 5,200 yards.
And there are other explanations that explain at least some of the phenomenon. The Steelers, for example, have benefitted from an early-season schedule that put them up against the Cleveland Browns and Buffalo Bills, arguably the league's two worst teams.
But if teams keep shutting down backs like Tomlinson, Gore, and Johnson, more offenses will choose to travel by air.
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