Assuming Ezekiel Elliott (or someone like Leonard Fournette, Kareem Hunt, or Dalvin Cook) doesn’t end up back with the Cowboys, Dallas will enter the season with Malik Davis, Ronald Jones, Deuce Vaughn, and Rico Dowdle as the collective depth behind a first-time clear lead back in Tony Pollard. We’ll get to the relative strength of and corresponding expectations for those role players in a bit, but I think it’s clear that such a group of backs does not represent a particularly formidable obstacle to opportunity for a guy who has proven to be a dynamic weapon to the degree that Pollard has. Considering those factors -- lack of competition and demonstrated ability -- together, Pollard will likely serve as an interesting case study this season on the kind of performance we can anticipate from good but lightly used runners -- Pollard has never averaged even 15 touches per game, a threshold that generally distinguishes fantasy fringy RB3 types from weekly starters in the RB2-or-better range -- who get a bump in opportunity several years into their careers and at a point when most backs are already past their prime.

Such players are relatively rare. If we hone in our focus on guys who never averaged at least 15 touches per game in a single season (with at least 8 games played needed to qualify) until doing so some time after they turned 26 and after having played at least four years in the league, we’re left with a group of just 18 backs since the turn of the century:

In my opinion, a quick survey of that cohort should be encouraging for how we approach a presumably expanded role for Pollard going forward. From their first 15-touch season (which, mind you, necessarily took place once they were over the age apex) on, those guys collectively scored at an RB2-level (12+ PPR points per game) in a collective 41.3% of their remaining career seasons and at an RB1-level (15+ PPR points per game) in a collective 17.5%, while 83.3% of them produced at least one RB2-level season from that point and 44.4% of them produced at least on RB1-level season. We don’t know what Pollard’s circumstances will look like after his franchise tag expires next offseason, but for at least the immediate future, an uptick in volume on a quality offense would seem to set him up to produce at an RB1-type clip for the second straight season.

Michael Turner finished as the RB7 with Atlanta in 2008 after spending four years backing up LaDainian Tomlinson with the Chargers.

Considering the caliber of the other players in this backfield, that much is virtually a given. Malik Davis is the closest thing to an incumbent breather back on the Cowboys roster, and he was a sub-replacement-level runner as a rookie last season, as he produced an 89.8% mark in Box-Adjusted Efficiency Rating, a -0.3% mark in Relative Success Rate, and a -1.04 mark in Rushing Yards Over Expected per Attempt, numbers that land in the 33rd, 50th, and 11th percentiles, respectively, among NFL backs in the last seven years. All that after a five-year college career that saw him post BAE Rating and RSR numbers in the 7th and 11th percentiles, respectively, among eventual NFL draftees while maxing out at 115 touches in a given season (which he didn’t reach until he was a super senior).

The most proven non-Pollard runner on the roster is probably Ronald Jones, who has multiple seasons with top quartile marks in both BAE Rating and RSR in his career and has posted positive figures in RSR in every season of his career, though his team-relative efficiency and his ability to command volume have decreased in each of the the last three years. I’m not confident that Jones can make it through an NFL season without picking up multiple healthy scratches along the way, let alone in his ability to siphon significant work away from a Pro Bowl-quality player like Pollard.

Beyond those two guys, it’s Rico Dowdle, who has just seven carries for 24 yards in three years as a pro after a nondescript college career that saw him produce an 8th-percentile BAE Rating and never accumulate more than 819 scrimmage yards in a season, and it’s Deuce Vaughn, a 179-pound receiving dynamo whose combination of undersizedness and 7th-percentile college RSR likely represent a fundamental inability to meaningfully contribute in the running game. I don’t see either of them making a huge dent in Pollard’s workload.

So, unless the team brings in a veteran to leech some calories away from their new RB1, Pollard will be operating as perhaps the only value-adding rusher on the Cowboys, and any subduing of his workload will therefore come from the necessity of simply not giving him a 95% opportunity share. Regardless, Pollard should smash the 15 touches-per-game threshold for the first time in 2023. That increase in volume will help him from a fantasy perspective, but given the top-notch efficiency numbers he’s posted so far in his career (demonstrated in the below table), I’m particularly interested in how it will affect Pollard on a play-to-play level, something that our historical sample could give us some insight into.

With their pre-volume increase numbers serving as the control, those 18 backs who were thrust into greater touch loads relatively late in their careers experienced the following changes in per-carry and per-reception efficiency in their initial high-volume seasons:

And the following portions of them either maintained or improved upon their pre-heavy workload numbers during their heavy workload seasons:

Whether those widespread decreases in per-touch efficiency are due to an uptick in volume, age-based deterioration, or both, it’s a bit sobering to acknowledge that Pollard is much more likely than not to become a less efficient runner as he steps into the RB1 chair in Dallas than he was as the Robin to Elliott’s Batman -- as he saw less volume and, according to the Box Count+ numbers, enjoyed far more advantageous circumstances as a runner than Zeke did -- in recent years. The best ball-carriers in this group were especially afflicted with decreases in efficiency after taking on more work, as the top-five in pre-volume increase yards per carry -- Mostert, Turner, Forsett, Jordan, Ekeler -- averaged a 0.58-yard dropoff in that metric during their first heavy-volume season, and three of them -- Mostert, Turner, Jordan -- saw their per-carry average fall by at least 0.99 yards. You could make the argument that those guys were particularly susceptible to such a phenomenon simply because they had further to fall toward the mean, but it’s nonetheless not out of the question that Pollard goes from performing as one of the most efficient runners in the league to producing at a below-average per-carry clip -- Pollard averaged an 8th-ranked (among backs with at least 50 rushing attempts) 5.22 yards per carry last season, so a Turner- or Jordan-like dip would see him fall to Joshua Kelley territory in the 4.2 range. It’s nice that his to-date performance gives him so much wiggle room, but it wouldn’t be unheard of for Pollard to suddenly become a low-efficiency runner that produces high-end fantasy numbers by slogging through more touches with no buffer and now in less ideal circumstances than he’s ever received them.

I almost wish the Cowboys would bring in someone better than Davis to supplement Pollard, but the latter’s skillset -- he’s a former wide receiver with a relatively thin frame at 6’0 and 209 pounds -- is such that any legitimate complement would almost necessarily absorb many of the high-value goal-line touches that Pollard stands to benefit from going forward. Instead, we have another (perhaps lesser, perhaps not) evil in the form of a complete lack of such competition, a seeming (and possible) boon to Pollard’s output that also comes with increased risk of injury and an almost certain decrease in efficiency.

I’ll spare you any more words of caution and wringing of hands: I’m pretty in on Pollard in 2023. Dude finished as the RB8 in PPR points per game last season despite touching the ball fewer times on a per-week basis than all but two guys in the top-24 of fantasy running backs (Cordarrelle Patterson and D’Andre Swift). Assuming he can stay healthy -- which isn’t a foregone conclusion after undergoing surgery for a high-ankle sprain and broken left fibula back in January, though reports out of OTAs are that he’s running and cutting at full speed and “not really limited at this point” -- Pollard will be a dynamic talent stepping into greater opportunity on an offense that has been elite in recent years (in three seasons with a healthy Dak Prescott since Pollard was drafted, Dallas finished 3rd, 1st, and 6th in points and 10th, 1st, and 1st in yards, respectively). Things may change a bit on that side of the ball with former offensive coordinator Kellen Moore now with the Chargers, but head coach and new play-caller Mike McCarthy has historically used talented running backs fairly heavily: going back to the start of his career in Green Bay, McCarthy’s RB1s have averaged at least 15 touches per game in nine of 17 seasons, at least 17 touches per game in seven of them, and at least 19 touches per game in five of them (with Ahman Green, Ryan Grant, Eddie Lacy, Aaron Jones, and Ezekiel Elliott accounting for those heavy workloads).

Mike McCarthy has a history of feeding talented running backs, like six-time 15+ PPG scorer Ahman Green.

Even at RB10 prices in dynasty (according to KeepTradeCut) -- and especially at RB13 prices in dynasty (according to the ADP data over at bulletproofff.com) -- I think there’s meat on the value bone for Pollard despite the fact that he’s technically an “old” running back who has never produced at a truly elite level. It wouldn’t shock me to see him put up 18-20 PPR points per game and finish as a top-5 runner in fantasy this season, an outcome that would constitute as acceptable were it coming from more highly-drafted players like Christian McCaffrey or Saquon Barkley (the current RB2 and RB6, respectively, at BPFF). I don’t want to speculate on Pollard’s post-2023 outlook given the uncertainty surrounding his future with Dallas, but I believe the current running back landscape in dynasty is conducive to a win-now approach in both startups and the trade market anyway, so I have Pollard ranked as my RB8 and in a tier with big-time win-now pieces like Ekeler and Barkley.