Since returning the Saints, Mark Ingram hasn't been shy about some of the frustrations he felt earlier in his career jammed in a crowded backfield with limited touches to go around.
So it's fitting that in his return, he's been thrust into a workhorse role due to a knee injury to Alvin Kamara. As he does that, he's also on pace to not only set, but create a brand new NFL record: The first player to ever play 18 games in one season.
"Eighteen games, no bye. It don’t make no difference to me," Ingram said this week. "I’m gonna stay on my routine."
But even as Ingram downplayed the significance of such an achievement, the path taken to arrive there is a bit too wild to ignore. Consider, for starters, that in order to get an extra game, you would have to be traded to a team that had already had its bye week. And you'd have to be coming from a team that hadn't had one yet.
You also would have to have been healthy over the first few months of the season. Both of those things can be said for Ingram, who played in all seven games with the Houston Texans before being traded to the Saints.
Ingram was announced as a starter for a Week 8 victory over the Bucs, and has been a big part of the gameplan in the two weeks since, a pair of losses by a combined 4 points.
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Ingram is quick to credit Saints head coach Sean Payton for keeping player health at the front of his mind, but that only tells part of the story. Ingram's own preparation is a big part of the process.
"It’s a process, recovering from Monday up until game time on Sunday, and that’s just something that I rely on and take pride in, and it always has me ready to go," Ingram said. "So, just rely on my routine and my preparation, and I’ll be fine. .... I get another game to run up some more yards, so yea, we'll look at it like that
And finally, it had to happen this season or beyond, with the NFL adding a 17th game. There have been players to hit that mark before, however unlikely. Emmanuel Sanders did it in 2019, when he was traded to the San Francisco 49ers midseason under similar circumstances. Sanders spent 2020 in New Orleans, but was never a teammate of Ingram's.
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For all of this to happen in Ingram's age 32 season is even more remarkable. The committee backfield approach early in his career might've played a role in his longevity, albeit frustrating. Ingram's contemporary bellcow backs such LeVeon Bell and Todd Gurley had the role Ingram might have wished for, but have since struggled with injury and ineffectiveness.
Ingram just keeps trucking along. Ten down, eight to go.
“Eighteen games? Yea. Just pray to the Lord for health and, you know, 18 games," Ingram said, finally cracking a smile. "I’ll be the only one.”
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