God forbid he'd have been the only back to groove on...

But I'm with you, Matt. In a way. Because I'm hoping for more than the best.

Alaska

I'm usually a sunshiner when it comes to the Saints, but this one was disappointing to me. When he was healthy, he averaged less than 4 yards per carry behind one of the best lines in football. The injuries were disappointing as well. Come on guys, are there really only two or three people on this board that are second-guessing this guy's ability to deliver first-round pick results on the field? I appreciate optimism, but Ingram just was not very good.

Here are some Rookie stats:

I will leave AP out of this, because he's a freak.

MJD: 941 yards, 5.7 average, 13 TD's (More than AP)

McFadden: 499 yrds, 4.4 avg, 4 TD's

PT (Rookie): 252 yrds, 4.8 avg, 5 TD's

PT (2011): 562 yrds, 5.1 avg, 5 TD's

MI: 474 yrds, 3.9 avg, 5 TD's

Is what we expect from rookies too much? If we take what rookies do their first season, PT would be gone. I think stats can be misleading sometimes. Lets look at Darren Sproles' numbers...

DS (career): Rushing: 1,757 yrds (603 with Saints), 5.2 avg, 8 TD's

Recieving: 2,110 (710 with Saints), 9.1 avg, 18 TD's

Now those are not really impressive numbers. But who wants Darren off this team?

The Saints are not a rushing juggernaut team. We have 4 RB's that are great. That is a very good problem to have. None of our RB's are gonna have 1,000 yrd years. Our offense isn't set up to do that. I was very happy with Mark this year. Hate he had the toe injury. I really think he would have finished with 600 yrds this year. I understand your disappointment, but again, don't we expect too much from our rookies?

I would compare College guys going into the NFL; like expecting a person who has been driving a car for 20 years to getting in a NASCAR racecar and saying, "Win or else".

"The only thing keeping Mark Ingram from being Rookie of the Year is me". -Sean Payton

and Chuck Norris

Fin come on the was a first round pick and he had no sacks thats what he was drafted for. He was a disappointment

i'm glad u brought that up danno.payton believed, i were not disappointed at all with ingram give him 25 plus carries a game with this (passing offense)and see where this thread goes. its not fair to grade him when he was sharing lots of carries.

Again, he was mostly given the ball in short yardage situations, so it would be ludicrous to demand that a rookie would continuously break out on long runs when the blocking schemes of the O-line don't support that in the given situation.

Just look at Ingram's TD runs against SF and the Texans from this highlight video, and tell me that this kid doesn't have the talent to be an elite RB.

Well then I have to say that the scouting department did an awful job, because everyone knew that Jordan's strength coming out of college was his run stopping ability.

If he hadn't been as good against the run as he was - I'd agree with your assessment, but I can't because he was.

...and he did have a sack! ;-)

He wasn't drafted to get sacks. He's a LDE.