Prior to the start of the NFL\u2019s regular season, the New Orleans Saints\u2019 starting running back, Alvin Kamara, turned 30 years old, a seemingly pivotal age at which the futures of ballcarriers begin to come into question. Kamara just wrapped his ninth year in the league, all in the Crescent City. The good news? The former Tennessee Volunteer seemed as nimble as ever when he was on the field. Now, the bad? Some injuries led to the tailback playing in a career low 11 games in 2025, missing the team\u2019s final six contests. Kamara was also limited to career-worsts in yards across the board and managed just a single touchdown in the first year under new head coach Kellen Moore, which begs the question: Should the Saints be worried about the state of their run game?<\/p>\n
Historically, there have been a bevy of top-talent halfbacks in the NFL that seemingly just lost their way after making \u201cthe big 3-0.\u201d Players like Marshall Faulk, Earl Campbell, Shaun Alexander, etc., all in their own ways made an impact on the league in their early playing days, but fell off drastically, some less than a decade into their careers.<\/p>\n
Luckily, for Kamara and New Orleans, playing in today\u2019s game means better access to treatment options, faster injury diagnosis, and specialized training regimes to keep players at the top of their game for longer periods of time. Since entering the league in 2017 as a third-round pick, Alvin has notoriously been one of the most elusive backs in football. His ability to absorb contact and just bounce off of defenders, changing direction, just changes the way his body endures the constant grind of playing within the numbers.<\/p>\n
Although he never had a 1,000-yard season either rushing or receiving to this point in his career, Kamara had managed to eclipse 1,000+ scrimmage yards in his first eight seasons before that streak was unfortunately snapped this year. The starter actually went over 100+ scrimmage yards in a game just twice this season, once in week 2 against the San Francisco 49ers and again in week 10 versus the Carolina Panthers.<\/p>\n
As stats decrease and many experts and analysts continue to link Notre Dame RB Jeremiyah Love to New Orleans in mock drafts, is there a real worry that Kamara\u2019s days in the Big Easy could be numbered, or did he just have a fluke season? Personally, there should be absolutely no doubt that Kamara cannot have a bounce-back year with a full offseason under Moore. Add a clean bill of health to an improved offensive line, and I think you have a winning recipe for both the player and fans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prior to the start of the NFL\u2019s regular season, the New Orleans Saints\u2019 starting running back, Alvin Kamara,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":718729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2076],"tags":[7,896,55,65685,84861,401,2588,2572,2571,6,397],"class_list":{"0":"post-718728","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-orleans-saints","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-new-orleans","10":"tag-new-orleans-saints","11":"tag-new-orleans-saints-analysis","12":"tag-new-orleans-saints-player-review","13":"tag-new-orleans-saints-news","14":"tag-new-orleans-saints-roster","15":"tag-neworleans","16":"tag-neworleanssaints","17":"tag-nfl","18":"tag-saints"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115988956661948661","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=718728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/718729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=718728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=718728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=718728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}