How the New Orleans Saints should handle Alvin Kamara’s return

Alvin Kamara is returning to action for the New Orleans Saints in Week 10 after missing two weeks. which led to two great games from Latavius Murray.

Not only did the New Orleans Saints have to play five games without their starting quarterback, but the team also had to play two games without their starting running back, with one of those games overlapping.

Like Teddy Bridgewater under center, Latavius Murray took over at the running back position and thrived while Alvin Kamara missed two games. Murray, who was brought in as a replacement for Mark Ingram, who was viewed as a downgrade from Ingram, did something in these two games that Kamara has never done in his career.

He rushed the ball 20 times in both games and had a lot of success doing so. He carried the ball a combined 48 times for 221 yards and three touchdowns. He also hauled in 14 receptions for 86 yards and a touchdown.

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After two solid games, Murray now has just 14 fewer rushing yards than Kamara despite only having 138 rushing yards in the first six games combined.

With Kamara set to return in Week 10 against the Atlanta Falcons, Sean Payton and the Saints find themselves in an interesting predicament. Do they turn it completely over to the more naturally talented Kamara, or do they continue to feed the hot hand in Murray?

This has pretty much been the story of Kamara’s career for his entire career. He has never been the feature back, he has shared the duties with Mark Ingram.

Instead of just splitting the carries right down the middle, the Saints should get creative with their two backs and utilize Kamara a bit differently than they normally would.

With a thin receiving corps, the Saints can afford to run two running back sets more often than not. Instead of doing the traditional two backs in shotgun formation alongside Brees, though, the Saints can get creative and can get Kamara more involved in the passing game.

I would like to see the Saints run Kamara at the slot receiver a few times in this game. From there, that opens the door for check-down screens, over the middle routes (that Kamara has proven he can run) as well as jet sweeps and a myriad of other unique plays.

Kamara should still carry the ball at least as much as Murray, but should also be more of a presence in the passing game as we have all seen how good he can be as a reliable target for Drew Brees.

He should still line up in the backfield and even run that traditional two-back shotgun set but the Saints could open Pandora’s box by including him in the offense in this non-traditional way and there is no better tea to experiment this against than the Atlanta Falcons and their shoddy defense.

Latavius Murray has been great and the New Orleans Saints should reward that in some regard, which would be by giving him more running opportunities as they would be utilizing Kamara in more ways than they usually do.