A great rookie season, but things have been disappointing since then. No, this isn’t another Robert Griffin III and Washington Redskins tale of tears and sadness. This is one is about Alfred Morris.
Morris, like the Redskins and Griffin, peaked in 2012, his rookie year out of Florida Atlantic. He ran for 1613 yards and 13 touchdowns, as it seemed like the Redskins landed a great 1-2 punch on offense in one draft class. Three years later, and that’s quite the opposite of how the team feels about Morris and Griffin, who’ll be with them in 2016 due to the option they picked up foolishly.
But enough about Griffin, who has become irrelevant at this point except on the salary cap. Morris ran for 1275 yards his second season and 1074 yards his third season. He hasn’t missed a game and scored 15 touchdowns in 2013-2014, but the average yards per carry dropped from 4.8 to 4.1. One might attribute it to the declining offensive line which is struggling this season as well, but Morris might be one of those players that shows his best right out of the gate and slowly faded away.
This year it’s been awful. Paired up with rookie Matt Jones, Morris is leading the team in rushing, but with just 312 yards on 95 attempts, a terrible 3.3 yards per carry production, with not one touchdown scored. It seems the teams is a bit more interested to see how Jones turns out, although his numbers, 276 yards on 74 carries, aren’t eye popping as well.
With 91.3 rushing yards per game, the Redskins are 27th in the NFL on the ground. There are a lot of changes coming for them this offseason, maybe at quarterback as well, again. Morris? He’ll hit free agency and will probably find a team elsewhere. The Redskins have moved on from that 2012 season, which seems to be an island in a sea of awfulness over almost a decade, unable to find the right players and coaching staff to pull them out of it for more than one season.