New Orleans Saints Forums - blackandgold.com - The Advocate Mark Ingram has 'a lot of stuff pent up' for return to Saints

BY JOEL A. ERICKSON | jerickson@theadvocate.com Oct 4, 2018 - 5:45 pm

As soon as the sound started to fill the indoor field at the Ochsner Sports Performance Center on Wednesday, Mark Ingram started dancing, his familiar No. 22 back on the far sideline behind Drew Brees, gyrating his way through pre-practice stretches.

The song?

Mase's "Welcome Back."

A celebratory feeling has accompanied Ingram's return all week long. The veteran running back met the Saints at the airport on their return from beating the Giants. Cameron Jordan walked into the locker room and shouted "That boy Deuce Deuce is loose!" at the top of his lungs upon seeing the throng of media assembled at Ingram's locker.

"I've had a lot of stuff pent up, built up," Ingram said. "I'm ready to go."

Ingram's time away from the Saints has drawn a lot of attention, but the veteran running back said that while he served his four-game suspension for violating NFL policy on performance-enhancing substances, he stuck to his normal offseason routine.

Ingram made headlines for training with retired star Anquan Boldin, but he's been training with Boldin for the past seven years. He works out with Atlantic Community High School in the summers. Practicing at Florida Atlantic might have been a little out of the ordinary, but for the most part, Ingram stuck to the routine he uses to get ready for the season.

Except that he spent his Sundays in front of the TV, watching the Saints race out to a 3-1 record without him.

"(Sundays) sucked," Ingram said. "We were winning games; it made it better. I was excited to see us winning and playing well, and just being able to get back with these guys and be with the team, it was something I looked forward to every day."

Ingram has been forced to miss games before with an injury, but those absences were nothing like this. After a player retires, he almost says he misses the locker-room camaraderie more than anything. Ingram did not have the daily jokes, the daily stories, the daily interaction he would still have if he'd been injured.

"If you sit out with an injury, you're still here," Ingram said. "Still with the team, still in meetings and all that stuff. Sometimes you travel, depending on your injury. I wasn't with anybody."

Whether Ingram returns to his full workload immediately is unclear, but he instantly takes some of the pressure off of Alvin Kamara, who has averaged 57.3 snaps and 22.8 touches per game through the first four weeks — far more than the 32.5 and 13.8 he averaged last season after the team traded Adrian Peterson.

"I'm not worried about it. I'm just going to do me," Ingram said. "I'm not Alvin; Alvin's not me. I'm just going to do what I do."

New Orleans tried several backs as a complement to Kamara in Ingram's absence. Mike Gillislee, Jonathan Williams and Dwayne Washington all got their shots, only to give way to Kamara.

Ingram, obviously, is a different animal. A back-to-back 1,000-yard rusher, Ingram fits the New Orleans scheme perfectly.

"He's such a productive player," Saints quarterback Drew Brees said. "He's so versatile. He's all-purpose. I feel like Alvin is, too — but man, the complement of the two of them, you saw what we were able to do with those two guys at the end of last year. Hopefully we'll be able to pick up where we left off."

Ingram has not talked much about his suspension this offseason — he declined to confirm a report by former NFL receiver Cris Carter that his suspension was related to cold medication — but his teammates see a clear motivation in the veteran now that he's back in the locker room.

"Excited for my guy to be back," Jordan said. "You talk about the way he approaches the game, the way he approached practice today, it was like it was game day. Along with him and everything he's accomplished, he's got a big chip on his shoulder."

A chip on Ingram's shoulder that will fuel him, but not to the extent that it changes his game.

"I'm always somewhat angry when I'm running the ball," Ingram said. "I'm going to try to stay calm, not press too much, just let the game come to me. If there's a big run there, I'm going to try to take advantage of it. If there's not, I'm going to try to get what's there."

And getting what's there is something he's waited a month to do.