The Kansas City Chiefs are entering the 2019 campaign with a pretty new look on offense. Gone is Pro Bowl running back Kareem Hunt, and dynamic wide receiver Tyreek Hill may also be unavailable to play due to child abuse allegations.
Now, to be clear, the Chiefs lost Hunt last November after releasing him following a video that surfaced which showed him assaulting a woman outside of a Cleveland hotel in February 2018.
So, Kansas City played its last five regular-season games plus the playoffs without Hunt this past year.
Stepping up in Hunt's stead was Damien Williams, who totaled 256 yards and four touchdowns on the ground on the season overall.
But now, Williams will be entering the 2019 season as the Chiefs' starting running back, something he has never done in any of his previous five NFL seasons, four of them coming with the Miami Dolphins.
What, then, should Kansas City expect from such an inexperienced running back?
Well, let's start by saying that it would be silly to say for sure what Williams will do this coming season, because no one knows exactly what to anticipate.
Williams does not have enough of a track record to go off of, and it's not even like he got extensive playing time at Oklahoma outside of his junior campaign in which he rushed for 946 yards and 11 touchdowns.
But with the Chiefs potentially being without Hill this season and with the rest of the receiving corps outside of tight end Travis Kelce and Sammy Watkins being incredibly unproven, Kansas City may end up leaning on Williams quite a bit in 2019.
The Chiefs' No. 2 back is Carlos Hyde, who is coming off of a very rough 2018 season in which he averaged just 3.3 yards per carry between the Jacksonville Jaguars and Cleveland Browns, and it's not like he has such a great history, either.
Based on that, Williams will likely get the majority of the touches in Kansas City's backfield, and certainly more than the 50 carries he totaled this past season.
As a matter of fact, the 27-year-old Williams has only carried the ball 183 times throughout his entire NFL career, a number he will likely surpass in 2019 alone.
What we do know about Williams is that he was an efficient runner behind the Chiefs' stout offensive line in 2018, but prior to that, Williams had never averaged four yards per carry.
Of course, that was on the Dolphins, and Kansas City's offense is an an entirely different animal, but it seems important to note that Williams has never really been an impressive rusher on his own.
That likely means that Williams will take as much as the Chiefs' offense gives him this coming season, as he will be very dependent upon the offensive line to create holes and running room for him, not to mention Patrick Mahomes opening up the field with his arm.
Williams is not like Hunt and can't really create for himself, so he will need Kansas City's offense as a collective to make his job easier.
It would honestly be pretty surprising if Hunt ended up rushing for 1,000 yards on the year just because of the fact that he doesn't have a very prolific past.
Then again, we have seen running backs come out of nowhere in great offensive systems before, so perhaps Williams can represent another one of those types of guys.
Still, the smart money is on Williams finishing with under 1,000 yards and averaging in the neighborhood of four to 4.5 yards per carry, which is absolutely fine in the Chiefs' offense.
Follow Us
Subscribe