The Dallas Cowboys have no shortage of weapons on offense – a list that includes Tony Romo, Jason Witten and Dez Bryant. However, despite all of that talent, it’s DeMarco Murray who’s expected to shine this season.
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Under the tutelage of offensive coordinator Scott Linehan, ESPN Dallas believes that Murray is primed for a big season which will include a career high in carries.
“This will be (DeMarco) Murray’s team. He will get the bulk of the work. I’m not ready to pencil Williams in for anything because of his injury history,” says Todd Archer. “Dunbar will get third-down tries, but Murray should see a career high in carries this year. He had 217 last year and missed a couple of games. I’d put him at 250 this year.”
Talent hasn’t ever been much of a concern for Murray who has performed well (generally) when on the field. Staying healthy has been a different matter, but you can never presume health problems and if he’s on the field, the expectation is that Murray will produce.
Make no mistake, Dallas isn’t going to have a prototypical workhorse who surpasses 300 carries as the team will rotate running backs to a point, says Linehan, but it appears Murray is understandably the lead dog.
“You’ve got to have depth at the running back position,” Linehan said. “DeMarco is great. Love to see him have the best year of his career. We all would and he’s going to, in my opinion. But to do that, that’s a long grueling season. There’s got to be other guys step in like we have here and do the job. People call it the committee thing. I don’t know what that means, but I think all the good teams, all the good offenses have more than one back.”