Paul Kuharsky thinks the Texans should look into the idea of bringing in Thomas Jones.. Jones' past two years in the league have been pretty awesome. In 2008 he rushed for 1,312 yards at a 4.5 YPC clip, with 13 TDs. This past season Jones managed 1,402 rushing yards and 14 TDs. Looks like an easy decision, right?
Problem is, Jones is going to be 32 in August. How he's managed to hold up these past two seasons at the time most running backs empirically fall off is a testament to his work effort, but how long can he keep this up? We need not go into the statistics of how many 30+ year old running backs have failed once they hit that age. Been there done that. Kuharsky, however, does bring out an interesting statistic.
In 148 NFL games over 10 years, he’s averaged 17.4 touches on offense.
It's still a decent number of touches, but not nearly the same amount that the heavy workload backs get. Still, since 2005, Jones has gotten less than 295 carries just once (2008). It may seem redundant to keep bringing up the age, but 32 is a scary number to have attributed to a starting back, not to mention he'd be coming from a pretty solid run-blocking line with the Jets to a unit that performed very inconsistently here in Houston. Also, Jones would be a stop-gap solution at best and it might be better to develop the young guys now rather than later. I'd look elsewhere unless his price tag drops an incredible amount.
More good guy stuff. Love Amobi Okoye, love the group of guys we have on our team right now.