Things are looking up in Miami, which is welcome news for an outfit that went 1-15 last season. Randy Mueller and Cam Cameron are out, replaced by Bill Parcells, Jeff Ireland and Tony Sparano; the Dolphins have a franchise left tackle (although some are skeptical); Ricky Williams is again excited to be playing football; Jason Taylor has decided to put off his Hollywood dreamz for another season; and Ronnnie Brown, the team's 2005 first-round pick, expects to be completely healthy by the start of the season.
Brown, who's coming back from a torn ACL, thinks he can return to the form that saw him average 5.1 yards per carry through Week 7 of the '07 season.
Are those expectations too high? Based on other backs returning from ACL injuries, the results are mixed:
[Edgerrin] James averaged 4.4 yards per carry the year before (2000), 3.6 the year after (2002) but 4.1 and 4.6 in '03 and '04. Terry Allen (4.5 year before, 4.0 year after) and Jamal Anderson (4.5, 3.6) also fell off initially but still topped 1,000 yards in their first year back. (Anderson tore his other ACL a year later.)So, basically, it could go either way. NFL Network analyst and migraine sufferer Terrell Davis cautions Brown to take his time coming back, and thinks Ricky Williams should begin the season as the starter.
But Jamal Lewis, who tore his ACL in 2001 training camp, had virtually no fall-off (4.4 in 2000, 4.3 in '02, 5.3 in '03). Ex-UM star Willis McGahee, who sat out his rookie NFL season (2003) after tearing his ACL and two other knee ligaments in the Fiesta Bowl, averaged 4.0 in 2004, the second-best of his career.
I don't know if I'm willing to go that far, but whenever Brown returns to full-time duty, I'm guessing he'll be just as good as he was before the injury. The Dolphins' offensive line has improved, and in a sense, running behind last year's unit was very similar to playing with an injury. That he was still able to average 5.1 yards per carry is probably worthy of some sort of retroactive Pro Bowl recognition.
