The Carolina Panthers ran the ball a lot on Sunday.
They gave a combined 31 carries to their top-two running backs. But even while doing that, they didn’t really answer the Rico Dowdle vs. Chuba Hubbard RB depth chart question.
Hubbard was just back from his calf injury, which raised uncertainty. Dowdle had gone past 200 yards from scrimmage in each of the two previous weeks.
No one was quite sure whether Hubbard would regain his starting job or if Dowdle would keep being asked to do it all.
In the end, it was a mix.
Dowdle carries 17 times for 79 yards. Hubbard had 14 runs that went for just 31 yards.
“The question is whether the Panthers will ride Dowdle, clearly the better back at this point, or continue to lean on both and hope Hubbard’s 2.2 yards per carry this week was a product of knocking off rust,” NFL.com’s Kevin Patra writes.
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This is a question that ends up feeling much more important in fantasy football than in reality.
The Panthers surely like that they have two talented RBs rather than one.
It just makes things tough for setting fantasy lineups as to whether one back is going to get enough work to be worth starting.
The fact that Dowdle both got more carries and did more with them than Hubbard on Sunday has to help his long-term value.
But the Panthers could also view that as easing Hubbard back in and flip their overall workloads going forward.
There’s still a lot of uncertainty here.
