Jamaal Charles has been the bread and butter of the Kansas City Chiefs offense for some time now.
Since being drafted in 2008, Charles has run for more than 1,000 yards in each season in which he's has more than 100 attempts. He tallied nearly 30 touchdowns in his seven years with the team, averaging 5.6 yards per carry in the process.
But with the 27-year-old on the mend following a high ankle sprain in Week 2, it's been Knile Davis in the backfield for Kansas City. The youngster has been impressive, averaging nearly four yards a carry and tallying three touchdowns in less than two full games worth of work.
With Charles a question mark for Monday night's game, Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots will be preparing for both running backs, a task the coach described as different, but the same.
"I think they're different skill sets, but they do the same things with them so the same plays look different depending on who is carrying the ball," he said via patriots.com. "Davis is strong – they're both very fast – Davis is strong, 230 pounds, whatever he is and he breaks tackles, he's got good lower body strength, hard guy to bring down. You see that on some of his kickoff returns from last year, too, where he just runs through arm tackles and all that.
Charles has good playing strength, too, but he's more elusive, great quickness, acceleration. They're different, but they're both very good. They both can hit the homerun ball. They've both got great long speed, they have that in common, but their styles are a little bit different but they're both very dangerous; strong guys, strong runners."
After allowing the third-most yards on the ground in 2013 (134 yards per game), New England's run defense has shown vast improvement through three games this year. Behind the play of Jerod Mayo and Dont'a Hightower -- the team's two leading tacklers -- the unit has allowed only 104 yards per game on average thus far (11th best) and an average of only three yards per attempt (ninth best).
