Saints RB Alvin Kamara is on the trade block, but Titans won’t reunite Bama RBs
By Will Lomas
Titans won’t be involved with Kamara.
Alvin Kamara is one of the most interesting players in the NFL, but I don’t expect the Tennessee Titans to be interested in a trade for him.
Just for fun, I wanted to talk for a second about why the thought might briefly cross Titans GM Jon Robinson’s mind.
Going back to 2017, it is easy to see why Kamara became a household name despite being a career backup in college. At the University of Tennessee, he was asked to be a receiver out of the backfield more often than not, but he wasn’t used as often as he should have been as a true running back.
Well, when the New Orleans Saints drafted him in 2017 they knew that he would be the perfect complement to “starting” running back Mark Ingram. Despite Ingram’s recent success with the Baltimore Ravens, 2017 is still the best season of his career. Why?
It helps when you have two running backs that can attack defenses in different ways, but (crucially) aren’t one-dimensional players.
What I mean by that is, when defenses saw the Saints send Mark Ingram on the field they assumed that a run was coming. If Sean Payton and Drew Brees saw that, they would take advantage and find a way to scheme Ingram against a slow linebacker which is evidenced by his career-high 58 receptions in 2017.
This matters because this mismatch allowed Mark Ingram to have a career year as a runner and receiver because of the Saints’ versatility, but it also led to Kamara’s more productive year as a receiver and his most efficient rushing yards per attempt to date (6.1).