October 26, 2015
After his electric 63-yard run on the first drive of the third quarter in Carolina Sunday night, Ryan Mathews carried the ball just once the rest of the game. DeMarco Murray, meanwhile, carried the ball eight times. Mathews clearly had far out-performed Murray on the night, and had the "hot hand." Mathews' and Murray's numbers on the night:
| Players | Rush | Yards | YPC | TD |
| Ryan Mathews | 6 | 97 | 16.2 | 1 |
| DeMarco Murray | 18 | 65 | 3.6 | 0 |
And on the season:
| Players | Rush | Yards | YPC | TD |
| Ryan Mathews | 56 | 342 | 6.1 | 3 |
| DeMarco Murray | 88 | 307 | 3.5 | 3 |
On the eye test, Mathews has looked better this season than Murray, and it hasn't really even been close. And so, after Eagles' loss Sunday night, Chip Kelly was asked why Mathews wasn't playing more.
"(Running back coach) Duce (Staley) is running the rotation," said Kelly. "Some of it was that we were calling pass plays. He was in there for a few passes, but again, I don't know exactly.
"We had him in there. He was playing in the third and fourth quarter. There were just pass plays called when he was in there."
The explanation that Mathews wasn't getting the ball because he just happened to be in the game when they were calling pass plays seems crazy. When you have a player running the ball as well as Mathews had been in that game, there should be a priority on getting the ball in his hands. The whole "luck of the draw" of who might be in the game for the run plays is a flawed concept if it means that the best player at his position is getting all the pass protection and decoy assignments.
However, during his Monday afternoon press conference, Kelly's explanation on Mathews changed course.
"Ryan was hurt yesterday," said Kelly, "so when I talked to Duce about it, and we talk about it all the time, Ryan hurt his groin on the 22-yard run before he broke the long run and really couldn't go. So Duce was monitoring him on the sideline, what he could do and what he couldn't do, so I think Duce does a great job with those guys and I have full trust in Duce doing that."
Here's the 22-yard run where Kelly said Mathews hurt his groin.
After that play, Mathews did not appear to be in any pain, and he stayed in the game on the next play.
That play occurred before Mathews' 63-yard TD run, shown here:
Kelly intimated that you could see Mathews tweak his groin again on the 63-yard TD run. "If you watch him, when he pulled by Kuechly, he said he felt it again, he didn't think he was going to make it in the end zone. And then Duce monitored him after that, so Duce was dealing with that, in terms of whether he can go in the game after that or he can't go in the game after. We used him a little bit, but that's really the whole status of the whole thing. I'm telling you guys exactly what's going on."
Mathews may very well have further tweaked his groin, but I don't see any obvious evidence of that in the run shown above, as Kelly suggests.
As for Mathews' usage going forward, Kelly said only, "He's injured right now and we'll see if he's available for the Cowboys game."
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