Hogs Haven
While Commanders fans and media have been preoccupied by distractions, like Terry’s contract, and whether the defense will be able to hold opposing runners to under 7 yards a carry around the right end, I have been busy digging through the stats to get to the bottom of the really weighty matters that no one is talking about. And no issue will be more critical to the Commanders’ season, and their eventual return to glory than what they are going to do at fullback.
In fact, this topic is so multifaceted and crucial to the success of the Peters/Quinn rebuild that I had to break my second annual fullbacks update into two parts. The first part provides an update on the state of the fullback position, league-wide. And the second part drills down to examine the Commanders’ fullback utilization in Kliff Kingsbury’s first season as offensive coordinator.
Washington’s last championship run was powered by a diesel engine, Hall of Fame fullback John Riggins. Riggins was listed as a fullback on the Jets’ and Redskins’ rosters for the first nine years of his playing career. Then his designation was switched to RB the season prior to the first Super Bowl win under coach Joe Gibbs. But he remained the powerful rusher, lead blocker and occasional receiver that he had been throughout his earlier years.
The role of fullbacks in NFL offenses has undergone considerable changes since Riggins hung up his cleats following the disappointing 1985 season (record 10-6, 3rd place in NFC East). In fact the fullback role has evolved continuously throughout NFL history, punctuated by a near extinction event in 2013, when their numbers dropped to two active players. Since then, the numbers of fullbacks on active rosters have rebounded. But, as so often happens following evolutionary bottlenecks, the new fullbacks are different than their predecessors.
In the 2024 season, 11 NFL teams listed 12 fullbacks on their active rosters. However, as we are about to see, those numbers belie the true importance of the fullback role to NFL offenses.
Prior to the 2024 season, Dan Quinn’s offensive coaching hires, followed by Adam Peters drafting TE Ben Sinnott in the second round raised hope among the faithful that we might see a return a noble vestige of the Redskins’ second championship era. As I showed in my hopeful review of the prospects of seeing increased fullback utilization in Washington’s offense, OC Kliff Kingsbury, Run Game Coordinator Anthony Lynn, and Quinn himself all have strong histories of using fullbacks in their offenses.
This two-part miniseries will examine the extent to which that hope was realized in the first season of the Quinn/Peters “recalibration”, and how the Commanders’ fullback utilization compared to that of other NFL teams. But before we get to the Commanders, I will need to review the state of fullbacks in 2024, to set the scene and dispel common misconceptions about the most misunderstood position on NFL rosters.
