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Ron Dayne career statistics

Among those that haven't yet given up on Dayne, the rallying cry seems to be that he's not suited to the part-time role he's had for the first two years of his career. He needs to get 20 carries a game and wear down the defense, goes the argument.

That might be true. It really might. But if it is, then this breakdown of Dayne's career numbers needs to be explained:

                                RSH   Yard     Y/R    TD   FPT/R
----------------------------------------------------------------
First 10 carries of the game    262   1047    4.00    10    .63
After that                      146    413    2.83     2    .37

[FPT/R = fantasy points per rushing attempt]

If you break it down further, you'll find that Dayne's first 5 carries have been his best by far: 4.6 yards per rush and .69 fantasy points per rush, compared to 3.0 yards per rush and .44 fantasy points per rush on carries 6 and beyond.

It's possible that part of the reason Dayne's end-of-game carries have been so bad is because they have, for the most part, been at the end of Giant wins where Dayne-up-the-middle isn't exactly a surprise. And there may be other explanations that aren't occurring to me right now.

I'm not claiming that this fairly small collection of carries is enough to be definitive evidence of anything. But the above breakdown does make me extremely suspicious of the idea that Dayne would improve if he got more playing time.