Situation Impossible: Replacing Jamaal Charles

Situation Impossible is a weekly column focusing on the most devastating injury of the week in the NFL. "Next Man Up" is a catchy phrase, but some players are harder to replace than others. Here we investigate the alternatives on hand and how a team reacted or will react to having to replace star-level performance.

Injured player: Jamaal Charles, Kansas City Chiefs star tailback. The Longhorn Network was playing a roast of him on Wednesday, which seemed like kicking a man while he's down.

Injury and diagnosis: Charles suffered a torn right ACL, but had no other injury damage. It's heartbreaking to see this happen on a non-contact play. The team knew it as soon as they saw it.

Very rare for MRI not to confirm when mechanism is suspicious and medical staff exam is worrisome for ACL. Terrible. — Jene Bramel (@JeneBramel)October 11, 2015

Charles previously tore his ACL in his left knee only two games into the 2011 season. He recovered and came back to rush for 1,509 yards in 2012. I'd say it's likely Charles is ready to play next September, but maybe not immediately. Something close to Todd Gurley's timeline wouldn't surprise me.

What's missing: This was a crushing blow to the Chiefs. Charles has consistently been excellent despite a mediocre offensive line and inconsistent quarterback play.

There are tons of statistics that illuminate how great Charles has been. Let's stick with the simplest. Here's a complete list of every running back since 1970 with a career yards per carry over five in more than 250 attempts:

Rk

Player

Att

Yds

Y/A

TD

Y/G

Jamaal Charles

5.47

72.2

Bo Jackson

5.4

73.2

Hokie Gajan

5.39

30.2

Mercury Morris

5.15

47.3

Jerious Norwood

5.15

31.2

Darren Sproles

5.11

18.7

Brian Mitchell

5.07

8.8

Justin Forsett

5.01

Keep in mind that the other backs on this list are either part-time players with short careers, Mercury Morris, or the most talented athlete in modern American history (Bo Jackson).

Charles is already, in my opinion, legitimately in the Hall of Fame conversation, even at just 28 years old. The only question is how much more he can do.

What the team will do: When a running back goes down, most teams won't dig for a new one. This is the modern NFL—most running backs are fungible, although Jamaal Charles is not.

Charcandrick West appears to have the first crack at the starting gig. He got most of the carries when Charles went down. West was signed as an undrafted free agent in 2014, and ended up splitting his time that season on the KC practice squad and on the roster. We've seen players with this profile become stars before, but West wasn't actually on most draftniks' radars. (Playing at Abilene Christian will do that.) While I haven't broken down his tape in depth, I find it hard to believe he's going to be a special talent.

Kansas City declined to sign Pierre Thomas or Ben Tate after working them out, so that's a sign of confidence in their current crew.

X factor: Knile Davis has the size-speed combination scouts drool over. It was enough to give him the highest speed score in his draft class.

But between injuries and an inability to learn the skills and techniques to play running back, Davis hasn't gotten much playing time with the Chiefs yet. (OK, OK—Jamaal Charles kept him benched.) Still, there's a lot of upside with Davis. It's curious that the Chiefs aren't going to give him the first look. I think he's the guy with the best chance to be a capable back on this roster.

Adjusting our expectations: It's going to be tough for the Chiefs to rebound from this injury.

The Football Outsiders algorithm gives KC a 6.9% chance to make the playoffs. That's still pretty high for a 1-4 team. While I understand FO's policy on not using RB injuries to adjust probabilities, Charles is an outlier. I think we can reasonably say that the odds of KC making the playoffs should be even lower.

With no running game and no deep passing game, the Chiefs are about to become an extremely one-dimensional team. It's the sort of thing that leads to blowing a lead to the Bears.

Here's the worst thing: Charles will be 29, coming off an ACL tear, in 2016. We're almost assuredly out of his peak. I don't want to bet on Charles losing a step, because we've seen in the course of his career that he defies many normal trends. At the same time, I think it's reasonable to at least be worried about it.

If Charles is no longer Charles, this offense will have the same problems next season. It's a heavy set of questions this team has to ponder while deciding on their future with Charles at running back.