What does Abdullah coming back mean for the Lions
By Jack Ozark
Before last season, the Detroit Lions thought they finally had an answer to their running game through second-year back Ameer Abdullah. He and Theo Riddick were positioned to become one of if not the best one-two punch in the league. However, in week two against the Tennesee Titans, Abdullah busted off a big run and also busted up his foot. This injury knocked him out for the rest of the year. Which has led to another year of us wondering about Abdullah’s potential.
Yesterdsay a video came out with Abdullah running again. So it seems like this season he should be back up to full speed in week one. The expectations are going to be the same for Abdullah, but will he be able to live up to the hype that surrounds him? Let’s look into the Lions options and see what they should do with the young tailback.
Feature Ameer
This seems to be the most obvious choice. After spending a second-round pick on Abdullah in 2015 it’s too early to give up on the young talented back. Last season the team tried to get away with running Theo Riddick, however, that proved to fail very quickly. What did work well though was when Zach Zenner was given the ball to run between the tackles.
How Zenner played should be a model of what’s to come with Abdullah. Ameer is more talented than Zenner, and his play style allows him to do the same as Zach just slightly better. I wouldn’t mind seeing Zenner still get some snaps, as keeping Ameer as fresh as possible throughout the game would be ideal.
Add Another Back
I’m not sure if you’re aware, but the NFL Draft is coming up. This season a plethora of highly talent running backs will be coming out. Specifically, Dalvin Cook out of Florida State and Leonard Fournette out of LSU. If either of these backs happened to fall to Detroit, (which doesn’t seem likely) it would basically be saying that Abdullah’s done here. Both of these backs have game changing ability that aren’t even present in some drafts. Having an emergency back as good as Abdullah would be nice, but using him too much would hold back these greater talents.
Other later round talents, such as Wayne Gallman, Kareem Hunt or Joe Mixon could also be options. These players wouldn’t command the attention that Cook or Fournette would, but would put a fire behind Abdullah. They would also be a nice insurance plan in case of another injury to Abdullah. Again, if this were to happen and Abdullah did have to sit out a few weeks the fans would probably give up hope on him every staying healthy again. If the Lions did this last season, they probably would have had more success running the football all year.
So what do you think? Do you still have faith in Abdullah? Do you think the Lions should draft somebody else regardless? Is there a free agent running back that you would love to see in Honolulu blue?
Follow Jack @J_zark on Twitter and Like SideLion Report on Facebook!