Bruce Arians, the current head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, worked as the quarterbacks coach of the Indianapolis Colts from 1998 to 2000. It was his first season working as a quarterbacks coach in the NFL, though he had worked as a running backs coach with the Chiefs from 1989 to 1992. There, he saw Christian Okoye dominate in his first season as coach (league-leading 1,480 rushing yards and 12 TD). Thus, Okoye and Barry Word (1,015 yards in 1990) acted as a good introduction of outstanding NFL running backs for Arians.
So when Arians arrived in Indianapolis in 1998 and got to watch Marshall Faulk explode for 1,319 rushing yards, 908 receiving yards and 10 total touchdowns from scrimmage, he knew he was witnessing another level of greatness. He witnessed even more greatness after Faulk departed, too, as the star running back joined the Rams in 1999 and became the second player to record a 1,000-1,000 season in NFL history. But all that greatness, at least to Arians, isn't as impressive as what he's seeing from Saints running back Alvin Kamara.
"I coached Marshall Faulk," Arians said of Kamara (via John Sigler of Saints Wire), "and this guy's scarier."
According to the above stats, it looks like Arians is right, based on the small sample size of Kamara's career. From age 22 to 24, Kamara leads Faulk in total yards, touchdowns, yards per touch and Approximate Value, Pro Football Reference's metric that attempts to place an objective value on each player. And these stats don't include what Kamara has done through seven games of his age-25 season. As you can guess, it's a little more impressive than Faulk's numbers through seven games of his age-25 season. Kamara leads in total yards (997 to 985), touchdowns (7 to 3) and yards per touch (7.02 to 5.08).
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So, yeah, maybe Arians is on to something. We'll find out more about that when the Saints take on the Buccaneers in Week 9. Though Kamara struggled in their Week 1 matchup, picking up only 16 yards on 12 rushes, he did succeed through the air and pick up two touchdowns in the victory.
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