The crux of this piece by ESPN's AFC South blogger, Paul Kuharsky, is that your Houston Texans may find a way to give more carries to Derrick Ward to rest Arian Foster. How does that hold up in coach-speak versus on-the-field facts?
↵Well, the first issue is that Arian Foster actually isn't on pace for that many carries at all. Thanks to big blowout losses against the Giants and Cowboys that left the Texans throwing for the majority of the second halves, as well as a team-imposed benching for missing a team meeting in Oakland, Foster is only on pace to carry the ball 306 times. That's not really a big number at all in the modern NFL, and he's not supplementing that with a whole heck of a lot of catches either.
↵The second problem with that is that Ward hasn't really been all that impressive either. Yeah, he had a couple of great carries last game, but outside of those, his only real contribution was in the Oakland game, where everyone and their mother was running over the Raiders. He's earned more of a look than Steve Slaton, certainly, but he doesn't deserve to be in a job-sharing arrangement or anything close to that.
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