The ques­tion on everyone’s mind these days is and will con­tinue to be, how and bet­ter still can Jason Garrett use the wealth of run­ning backs he has at his disposal?

With the start of train­ing camp rapidly approach­ing one would think that Jason Garrett is hard at work devis­ing a plan to opti­mize the abun­dance of tal­ent he has at the run­ning back position??????

The Cowboys invested #1 money on Marion Barber to be the #1 guy, but we are all aware of the fact that Marion is bet­ter suited to be fresh in the fourth quarter!

The Cowboys also used a first round selec­tion last year on Felix Jones, so there is an extremely high need to get him touches as well.

Then let’s not for­get about the 2008 unsung hero from Georgia Tech, Tashard Choice! When the Cowboys were dec­i­mated by injuries Choice stepped in and per­formed at an extremely high level.

These are three very dif­fer­ent run­ning backs which will allow Jason Garrett a ton of flexibility.

Marion Barber: Marion is the head knocker of the group, while he is not a burner so the big plays you get from him are more of the “just ran over three peo­ple on his way to a 20 yard touch­down” vari­ety. However with his hard nosed run­ning style his body wears down much quicker than the elu­sive style back.

Felix Jones: Felix is the epit­ome of a “Home run hit­ter” there is not one spot on the field where he can­not score from. Possessing speed, agility, vision, and great hands. Felix Jones is in the mold of a Reggie Bush type. For all the good qual­i­ties he pos­sesses the one con­cern with him is his abil­ity to stay off the injured list.

Tashard Choice: Tashard is very much so one of the most vocal lead­ers on this team. He is the most com­plete back of the group, while he is not the fastest or strongest he can do a lot of good in many areas. He has the abil­ity to give oppos­ing defenses many dif­fer­ent looks. The only ques­tion with Tashard is, was last year legit or did he catch some teams off guard and worn down?

What is con­sid­ered by many (includ­ing myself) to be the biggest strength of this years team, could pos­si­bly be a night­mare for Jason Garrett? If Garrett fails to ade­quately use this group, the wheels of this sea­son could come fly­ing off!

There has been many peo­ple try this off sea­son to pre­dict how many touches each man should receive on a per game basis. While there is no one good way or rule to go by, many claim a sequence such as this:

Marion Barber: 15–20 Touches

Felix Jones: 10–15 Touches

Tashard Choice: 5–10 touches

This appears to be a solid marker to fol­low, but I am not a big fan of this way of think­ing. I just feel that if you set your­self bound­aries, you ulti­mately are set­ting your­self up for failure.

The amount of touches this unit gets (designed run­ning plays) should be and I believe will be han­dled on a game by game, sce­nario by sce­nario basis.

Jason Garrett needs to know what he has, and to put the player and the team in good sit­u­a­tions. Part of know­ing what he has is going to be the recog­ni­tion of what sit­u­a­tions the player per­forms at his peak.

Many peo­ple includ­ing myself mar­vel at the clos­ing abil­ity of Marion Barber, while this is a very true state­ment there is some­thing that must be taken into account. The only time his clos­ing abil­ity will come into affect is if this team is ahead in the fourth quar­ter and that they can con­tinue to pick up first downs.

Jason Garrett can­not become pre­dictable with his for­ma­tions or his sub pack­ages, the defenses can­not be given the lux­ury of sim­ply look­ing in the back­field to see who is there and know what the play is.

The Cowboys should be able to line up two if not all three on the field in cer­tain situations.

If I was a bet­ting man I would have to say that Felix Jones will spend a lot of time this year lined up out wide and in the slot. Allowing Garrett to give teams a full dose of Marion and Tashard early and often!

The first half of games this year will be cru­cial to the suc­cess of the team. They need to be able to estab­lish the ground game early on. The score at the end of the first half is not the most impor­tant thing.

The rest of the league knows what the Cowboys have at the run­ning back posi­tion; So Garrett will be forced to make some cru­cial deci­sions very early on in games.

Teams will sim­ply over­load the line of scrim­mage and try to force Garrett to give up on the run. He must be strong willed enough to fight off the urge to open up the air attack! We all saw what hap­pened when this team became so one dimen­sional last year.

Those 90’s Cowboys teams were the best at sim­ply beat­ing a team into sub­mis­sion by the 3^rd quar­ter.  This team has some­thing that those teams did not, depth! There is no need for 35 car­ries a game to one man, this team can run a dif­fer­ent guy through the holes in the line like fans through the turnstiles!

If this team and Jason Garrett use what is avail­able to them cor­rectly, there will be noth­ing that any­one can do about it! That is one big IF though.