The top 5 potential breakout running backs for 2014

The running back carousel is a cold, dreaded death machine.

Since running back is the most brutal and combustible position, there’s always someone waiting who’s younger, and fresher. Someone who can replace all but those who occupy the very top tier. More than any other position, there are always breakout stars who emerge from the ether each season.

A while back I gushed about Montee Ball. Here are five more potential breakout running backs for 2014.

Toby Gerhart

Here lies the year’s finest bust out candidate. Stepping out from behind Adrian Peterson’s large and finely-chiseled shadow, Toby Gerhart is in a position to shine immediately after signing with the Jacksonville Jaguars.

A brute, chain-moving downhill runner at 231 pounds, Gerhart’s build is similar to the bulk of Eddie Lacy. It’s also similar to Michael Turner, and so is Gerhart’s potential for a late-career blossom in a new location. Like Turner, Gerhart heads to a new team fresh after being used minimally. Over four seasons as Peterson’s backup, Gerhart was given only 276 carries, with just 36 coming this past season.

Gerhart’s only time with a sustained workload came in 2011, when Peterson missed four games. That’s when he averaged 4.9 yards per carry. Overall throughout his career in Minnesota Gerhart has averaged 4.7 YPC.

He’s minty fresh for a 27-year-old running back, he’ll be given buckets of carries (or the “bulk of the carries” if you prefer, as Jaguars general manager David Caldwell does), and he’ll be supported by a sneaky promising offense filled with youth.

Andre Ellington

Andre Ellington is another golden child among NFL running backs in 2014, and has been ever since Arizona Cardinals head coach Bruce Arians started spewing his silly talk of 25-30 touches per game. That won’t happen, as even on the low end the math there is 400 touches, which will break a man. Still, it’s clear Ellington is destined for a much larger role after averaging 5.5 yards per carry during his rookie year, and accumulating 1,023 total yards on a light 157 touches.

But there’s a problem: he’s only slightly taller than your average smurf.

Or at least he is by the standards of NFL running backs. Ellington is 5’9” and 199 pounds, with weight the far more important number there. But is that really super teeny tiny?

I dug deep into that question back in late May, and found there’s a shining example who refutes the Ellington as an elf claim: Chris Johnson

Johnson is the most durable running back of our time. He’s entering his seventh NFL season this fall, and he’s missed only one game, which came back in his rookie year. He’s also only four pounds heavier than Ellington.

Bernard Pierce

We don’t know how long Ray Rice will be suspended. But we know he’ll be suspended, and if there’s any logic in this world, at minimum it’ll be for six weeks.

When that happens, Bernard Pierce will be the Baltimore Ravens’ starting running back by default, a title that will come with a lot of production.

Pierce regressed last year (averaging a pathetic 2.9 yards per carry), but there’s reason to be optimistic about a sharp turn in the other direction now. Mostly, those cheerful thoughts are centered around new offensive coordinator Gary Kubiak, whose zone-read, run heavy scheme often leans heavily on one pounding workhorse running back.

Long-term, that’s not a good thing. Just ask Arian Foster, who seems to be annually broken after two seasons with over 390 touches under Kubiak in Houston.

But short-term, Kubiak’s influence and his run first, ask no questions later thinking is a good thing. Just ask Arian Foster, who turned those heavy workloads into two seasons with over 1,400 yards on the ground, including a mammoth 1,616 yards and 16 touchdowns in 2010. If Pierce is given a steady diet of footballs early and gets chugging like that, he’ll keep going even once Rice gets back, with the diminutive Pro Bowler settling into a secondary role.

Ben Tate

There’s a glaring caveat here: injuries. Ben Tate has missed 24 games over four seasons.

But if we imagine a world where he remains healthy for 16 games, that place could be magical. Unless he’s either injured or absolutely faceplants in training camp, Tate should hold down the starting job after signing with the Cleveland Browns, and he’ll do it for a Kyle Shanahan offense that will also hammer heavily with the run through a highly effective zone-blocking scheme. It’s a system Tate is familiar with from his time in Houston.

As the offensive coordinator in Washington, Shanahan rode Alfred Morris steadily, pounding away with the run to set up read-option passing. The result in 2012 was an offense that led the league in rushing (2,709 yards) and a running back who finished second among his peers with 1,613 rushing yards, averaging 100.8 per game.

Lance Dunbar

At first this feel like a reach. Then it doesn’t, because new Dallas Cowboys play caller Scott Linehan loves him some pass-catching running backs.

That’s pretty clear after Linehan orchestrated a Detroit Lions offense in 2013 which produced the first running back tandem to each have 500 receiving yards in a season: Reggie Bush and Joique Bell.

Bell was the secondary back -- if such a title truly existed -- and he had more yardage through the air than Bush (547 to 506). Lance Dunbar is more firmly behind DeMarco Murray, but a similar surge on a smaller scale feels possible.

Through two seasons we don’t have much of a sample size to use while judging Dunbar, especially after his 30 carries and seven receptions last year. But even then we saw his breakaway speed with a 45-yard run in Week 17.

At 5’8” and 188 pounds, Dunbar is even smaller than Ellington, and not ready to handle a heavy workload quite yet. Which matters little, because that’s not the plan. His position coach Gary Brown has called him a “complete weapon”, speaking highly of his pass catching ability while lined up in the slot or even split out wide.

So it’s no surprise the Cowboys are “creating stuff” in their offense specifically for Dunbar. He’s ready to ascend if Murray misses time again, and looking further ahead, he’ll be waiting if the oft-injured starter isn’t re-signed when he becomes a free agent next March.