Kansas City Chiefs: Offensive player stat predictions for 2019 season

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Kansas City Chiefs running back Darwin Thompson (25) (Photo by Scott Winters/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images) /

Group 1: Running Backs

Backup: Darwin Thompson

Projected Stat Line: 432 Rushing yards, 220 receiving yards, 7 total touchdowns

This stat line took a little more work coming up with than Damien Williams’. It was a trial by error. I tried mixing and matching numbers, and finally came up with a reasonable stat line for the rookie running back.

Let me preface this by saying I am a HUGE Darwin Thompson supporter, and expect big things from his as a player. This stat line also took some guess work on my part. The biggest and most obvious being that Thompson beats out veteran Carlos Hyde for the backup running back spot. If that happens, all of this is null and void.

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Still, I took the leap of faith and went with who I thought was the better player.

Getting these numbers was tricky. What I did was take the numbers from previous Chiefs seasons, and try to project those onto Thompson as a player. I actually went back to 2017, the last year the Chiefs had a true number one running back for a full season.

Last year’s numbers were a little weird because Kareem Hunt was cut midseason. In 2017, the Chiefs ran the ball 25 times per game. The amount in 2018 happened to be 24, so there was some consistency/precedent there.

I already established Williams was going to hover around 14 rushes as the starter. That left around 11 more rushes per game to be handed out. I gave six of those to Thompson. This left some wiggle room of about five attempts per game to be handed to any other receiver on a sweep or Mahomes on a scramble/option.

After estimating Thompson at six rushes per game, I had to do some guess work to what his yards per carry was going to be. I settled at 4.5, which seemed like a fair number for a runner in an Andy Reid offense that fields a talented offensive line.

Next were the receptions. This is where I leaned into 2017 a bit more. I combined the receptions of back ups Charcandrick West and Akeem Hunt that year, averaged that, then averaged there yards per catch. I took those numbers and stuck it to Darwin Thompson over a full year.

This brings the D-Train’s total production as a rookie to 652 total yards and seven touchdowns. Not too shabby.

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