A 116 yard rushing performance on 23 carries (5.0 yards per carry) may not seem like an accomplishment but for a team that was averaging 2.7 yards per rush going into Washington, it's a good day. Edgerrin James and Tim Hightower ripped off productive runs all afternoon and I was somewhat surprised by the breakdown of the carries, so let me know what you think:
My first thought was that it was pretty surprising for the majority of the carries to be to the outside. I thought going in that it played to Edge and Hightower's strengths to run between the tackles but for whatever the reason the Cardinals made their living running either at the offensive tackle or outside the OT.
The overwhelming successful place to run was behind or outside of left tackle, as that was the only area with a significant number of carries that averaged better than five yards a carry. When running at left guard, they averaged 5.5 yards per carry but with only two carries, it's hard to make much of a conclusion about that area. The right side, consisting of Levi Brown and Duece Lutui, struggled a bit though contributing with between 4.0 and 4.14 yards per carry.
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Thoughts? Is one game enough to make any conclusions about the offensive line or do we need to look at this every week to see if there's a pattern?