[82lsju]

It took one offensive touch to see that McCaffrey was special.  (By the way, I’ll never forget his actual first play. It was on the KO return team. He raced down the field and blew up the wedge. Players on the sidelines went nuts. Yelling “superstar”. I wasn’t sure if it was sarcasm. Obviously it wasn’t. They knew immediately.).  Yet he hardly saw the field the first half of the year. Incredible.  If you have to delay putting generational talent on the field because your playbook is the size of War and Peace then change the freaking playbook. Rip the damn thing in half.

It could be that mastering the playbook keeps a QB out for a year, but not a running back. The RB isn't making the reads and changing the play. Also, CMAC's redshirt was gone from special teams alone, so no benefit in not using him to the appropriate degree. You can take issue with the coaching staff for not using him enough early in the year. It may be that he hadn't practiced all the plays in the playbook by August, so he couldn't be expected to run all of them well. So I can see a significant start-up period where he wouldn't be seen as the best option as an "every down" back. That probably was a mistake, as CMAC running the 20 plays he did know well was a better option than anybody else we had running the full playbook. That may not have been initially obvious to the staff, so that is on them. However, they eventually did recognize it, and/or by the middle of the season, CMAC had demonstrated he could run whatever they called.

hasn't Shaw also said in the past that playing time for RBs is influenced by their ability to pick up blitzes?

[82lsju]

It took one offensive touch to see that McCaffrey was special.  (By the way, I’ll never forget his actual first play. It was on the KO return team. He raced down the field and blew up the wedge. Players on the sidelines went nuts. Yelling “superstar”. I wasn’t sure if it was sarcasm. Obviously it wasn’t. They knew immediately.).  Yet he hardly saw the field the first half of the year. Incredible.  If you have to delay putting generational talent on the field because your playbook is the size of War and Peace then change the freaking playbook. Rip the damn thing in half.

It could be that mastering the playbook keeps a QB out for a year, but not a running back. The RB isn't making the reads and changing the play. Also, CMAC's redshirt was gone from special teams alone, so no benefit in not using him to the appropriate degree. You can take issue with the coaching staff for not using him enough early in the year. It may be that he hadn't practiced all the plays in the playbook by August, so he couldn't be expected to run all of them well. So I can see a significant start-up period where he wouldn't be seen as the best option as an "every down" back. That probably was a mistake, as CMAC running the 20 plays he did know well was a better option than anybody else we had running the full playbook. That may not have been initially obvious to the staff, so that is on them. However, they eventually did recognize it, and/or by the middle of the season, CMAC had demonstrated he could run whatever they called.

hasn't Shaw also said in the past that playing time for RBs is influenced by their ability to pick up blitzes?