Could We See Ricky Williams This Year?

2007 has turned out to be a bad year for running backs.

Some, like Cadillac Williams, ended their season early because of injury. Others, like Steven Jackson, Shaun Alexander, and Rudi Johnson, have battled injuries all season.

Now you can add Ronnie Brown to the ever-growing list.

Brown injured his knee on Sunday during an interception return by New England, and had to leave the game early. Today, it was reported that he too will miss the rest of the season with a torn ACL. With Brown out, the Dolphins will rely on Jesse Chatman, Patrick Cobbs and Lorenzo Booker to shoulder the running duties.

Which brings up the question of whether or not we'll see Ricky Williams playing in Miami this season. He applied for reinstatement on Monday, October 1, but the NFL has up to 60 days before it has to make a decision. By then, Miami would have about five games left in their season.

It seems like a longshot, but with Ronnie Brown out, and the team in serious rebuilding mode(Chris Chambers has already been traded, and there's talk that Jason Taylor might be gone after this season) this would be the best time to get Ricky in for a few games to see what he has. At the very least, it could drum up some trade offers, and at best, the Dolphins might find they have a decent running back to back up Ronnie Brown next year to help keep his wear and tear to a minimum.

Of course all of that hinges on Ricky's ability to pass drug tests, which up to this point has been a problem.

2005 NFL Player Salaries Comparison Continued, The Running Backs

So, we've made our way through the first set of players, the quarterbacks, and are moving on to their backfield mates, the running backs. Up to this point, we've seen that in 2005 the top 10 highest paid quarterbacks cost their respective teams an average of $675,880 per touchdown thrown. Let's see how the running backs of '05 compare to that and each other.

Stiff-Arming Into the Comparison, The '05 Running Backs

In 2005, the highest paid running back was Cincy's Rudi Johnson. He was paid $10,250,00 which put him about $1.2 million ahead of second place's Edgerrin James. Now let's take a look at how all of their salaries breakdown in terms of rushing touchdowns.

Rudi Johnson: $10,250,000/12 rushing TD's = $854,166/TD

Edgerrin James: $9,081,000/13TD's = $698,538/TD

Kevan Barlow: $8,131,400/3TD's = $2,710,466/TD

Deuce McAllister(5 games): $7,650,000/3TD's = $2,550,000/TD

LaMont Jordan: $7,550,000/9TD's = $838,888/TD

Brian Westbrook: $7,430,770/3TD's = $2,476,923/TD

Shaun Alexander: $6,323,000/27TD's = $234,185/TD

Tiki Barber: $6,003,960/9TD's = $667,106/TD

Cedric Benson: $5,670,000/0TD's

Domanick Davis(Williams): $5,384,400/2TD's = $2,692,200/TD

There's the top 10 highest paid running backs in 2005, and their respective rushing touchdown stats. Out of that group, Shaun Alexander was a "steal" at $234k per rushing touchdown scored. Barlow, McAllister, Westbrook and Davis(Williams) were all extremely costly with each of them costing more than $2 million per rushing touchdown, and Cedric Benson was paid over $5 million and failed to score one rushing TD. As a whole, the top 9(excluded Benson) highest paid running backs were paid an average of $1,524,719 per rushing TD. That's significantly more than the $675k that the quarterbacks averaged. As with the QB's, there were a few players that weren't in the top 10 in terms of salary, but performed well during the season. There were 6 that scored double digit rushing TD's, but weren't in the top 10 group. They were:

Larry Johnson: $678,000/20TD's = $33,900/TD

LaDainian Tomlinson: $5,001,320/18 TD's = $277,851/TD

Corey Dillon: $4,003,520/12TD's = $333,626/TD

Stephen Davis: $2,600,000/12TD's = $216,666/TD

Mike Anderson: $640,000/12TD's = $53,333/TD

Clinton Portis: $455,000/11TD's = $37,916/TD

In terms of running backs, L.J. and Coach Janky Spanky(Portis) were big-time "steals". They both came in well under the $1.5 million average set by the top 10. To give you an idea of some of the players that were paid more than both of them in '05 here are a few names: Rod "He Hate Me" Smart, Eric Shelton and Ryan Moats.

That's it for the '05 running backs. Tomorrow we'll tackle the wide receivers.