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Reggie Bush: Bust
by Michael E Lawrence
18/9/2007
Throughout 2006, as the Saints made their famous, emotive playoff run, I thought it.
I thought it too in the 2006 post-season, when a handful of big plays didn’t seem to me to be enough to offset an otherwise pedestrian rushing and receiving output.
And finally, though I resisted the notion all through the off-season, buying into the learning curve argument (he just needs to learn how to run against NFL defenses!), I thought it again when I watched the New Orleans Saints get blown out of the water two weeks running to open the 2007 National Football League regular season.
I thought: Reggie Bush is a bust.
 Of course in week 1, the Saints were blown out of the water by the Super Bowl champions. It’s just that those same Super Bowl champions were featuring a street free agent and undersized 7th round draft pick at its defensive tackle positions. This week, more worryingly, they were trampled by a team that won five games in 2006 and allowed a hefty 139 yards and 8 first downs rushing only a week before. Poor Sean Payton. He must, he must, he must improve his bust.
Now I know Bush wound up scoring 9 total touchdowns last season, and I know he broke out a little against the Bears in the NFC Championship game with an 88 yard touchdown reception, but this just isn’t how elite players begin their careers.
Elite players don’t begin their careers with 565 yards rushing in their rookie seasons. They begin with 1808 like Eric Dickerson did in Los Angeles in 1983, or 1470 like Barry Sanders, the man Bush is supposed to be a quick twitch reincarnation of, in 1995.
Elite players don’t begin their careers with a 3.6 yard rushing average, they begin it with 5.5 yards per carry like Clinton Portis in 2002, or with 4.8 like Tony Dorsett in 1977.
Okay, Walter Payton started off a Hall of Fame career with a 3.5 yard average in 1975, but two weeks into his second season he had 218 yards rushing and 2 touchdowns.
Two weeks into his sophomore year, Bush has 65 yards and zero scores.
Elite players do go out from day one terrifying opponents and racking up yardage and touchdowns. That’s why we’re all talking about Adrian Peterson and Marshawn Lynch they started as they mean to go on, so that already this week Detroit’s and the Pittsburgh’s defensive co-ordinators were planning for those players above all others.
‘Aah,’ the Bush campaigns team says fingers wagging, ‘but Reggie is a dual threat, a player as dangerous as a receiver as he is a runner. You can’t compare him with the traditional backs of yesteryear.’
Ok, but he recorded 742 yards receiving last year alongside his 565 on the ground. Brian Westbrook, an actual dual threat, compiled 699 in the air as well as 1217 on the ground. I know who I’d rather gameplan against.
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Elite players don’t begin their careers with a 3.6 yard rushing average, they begin it with 5.5 yards per carry like Clinton Portis |
And another thing, Deuce McAllister was the most important running back on the Saints last year, not Reggie Bush. McAllister scored 10 touchdowns and was relied upon to convert third downs and grind down opponents when it really mattered.
So far in Bush’s career, all I see is another Dave Meggett or Eric Metcalf exciting players with fantastic open field skills (Ourlads draft guide said of Bush before he came out: can score from any position on the field), but ultimately a player whose size and skills demand a role too limited to establish him as an elite, generation defining player, which is exactly what we all thought he was going to be.
And then there are the Texans, who passed on Bush the fools! we cried with the 1st overall selection of the 2006 draft, instead preferring to select Mario Williams. At last check this season, Williams is leading Bush in touchdowns 1-0. He is a defensive end.
Now I’m not saying Bush won’t break out. It could well be that he finds his comfort level, stops dancing and running east to west, and starts breaking defenders’ ankles with lighting bolt moves and switchblade cuts.
But I also have the strangest feeling that this might be it from Bush 500 yards rushing here, 600 receiving there, and 7 or 8 touchdowns to go with ’em. Useful numbers, but Gale Sayers he just ain’t.
He’s not even Maurice Jones Drew, who had a similarly quiet opener against Tennessee.
Only Jones Drew collected 1377 yards combined and 15 touchdowns last year, and every single time he touched the ball always found a way to go north-south with authority.
Metcalf was a similarly touted all round threat who just never quite got it going like he was supposed for the Browns in the 1990s.
Bush needs to step it up, or he might go the same way.
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