Alvin Kamara is the NFL’s biggest matchup nightmare for defensive coaches. The returning New Orleans Saints can tear off a 20-yard run in the stomach or make a linebacker in space look silly as a passport catcher.
Ahead of the Tampa Bay-New Orleans showdown on Sunday night, Buccaneers trainer Bruce Arians knows his staff will have sleepless nights.
“I trained Marshall Faulk, and this guy is scarier,” Arians said of Kamara on USA Today’s Saints Wire.
Arians was a quarterbacks trainer in Indianapolis for Faulk’s last year with the Colts and knows firsthand how much a double-threatening back like Kamara can help an offense.
In seven games this year, Kamara has rushed 87 times for 431 yards and four TDs, adding 55 receptions for 556 yards and an additional three points. The Saints’ Back is well on its way to hitting Faulk’s one-season record for receiving yards with a rewind (1,098) and Christian McCaffrey’s receiving record (119) from last year.
Kamara leads all players in scrimmage yards (987) this season. If he keeps this pace he would be the first player in Saints franchise history to do so in an entire season. Kamara is the only player in the NFL with more than 400 rush yards and more than 500 receiving yards this season.
Kamara came to Faulk (2000) as the only two players in the Super Bowl era with over 400 rush yards and over 500 receiving yards in their team’s first seven games. Faulk finished with 2,189 scrimmage yards, 26 TDs, and was named NFL MVP, while Kamara is on pace for 2,256 scrimmage yards and 16 scrimmage TDs.
The Buccaneers have allowed three opposing RBs only three times over 100 scrimmage yards in a game in the past two years, two of them were in Kamara (both came in 2019).
Kamara had 17 touches, 67 scrimmage yards, a rush TD, and a receiving TD against the Buccaneers in week 1 (his only game without more than 100 scrimmage yards that season).
The Bucs have one of the best defenses in the NFL, but even star linebackers Devin White and Lavonte David fight back in space like Kamara. Since running back is key to the Saints’ offense, how defense coordinator Todd Bowles plans the game will slow Kamara – perhaps the safety of Jordan Whitehead and Antoine Winfield Jr. more than normal in the crucial NFC South fight.
