That was DeMarco Murray when he was on the field.
In 2011, his rookie year, he didn't have the great offensive line that most of the other RB's had. He hadn't started to raise them yet. He ran behind LT Free and the rookie Tyron Smith playing RT. The interior was undrafted 2nd year center Phil Costa, Montrae Holland and Kosier at guards. .
The first time he was given significant carries was game #6 his rookie season against the .Rams and he ran for 253 yards.
In two of his next three games he ran for at least 130 yards. He averaged over a hundred yards per game in his first seven starts with a 5/5 average yards per carry and then he got hurt. At that point they were 7-5. They ended up 8-8, Jason Garrett's first season as HC. Had he remained healthy it would have changed a lot of trajectories,
In 2012 the Cowboys started an offensive line composed of 5 players that had zero experience playing their specific position. The tackles switched places and the interior was completely replaced. The new guards and center was Nate Livings, Ryan Cook and Mckenzy Bernadeau. Murray got pretty beat up, missed six games and averaged only 4.1 yards a carry. He played hurt for the majority of the season..
In 2013 the offensive line was revamped again. This time Livings was replace by Leary and Cook was replaced by Travis Frederick, a rookie. Murray still missed a couple games but rushed for his first thousand yard season. He got 1121 yards and a 5.2 yards per rush. He picked up an additional350 yards on 53 receptions and made his first Pro Bowl.
In 2014 Bernadeau was replaced by rookie Zack Martin. Murray played every game as he set a new Cowboys rushing record of 1845 yards in addition to 416 receiving yards on 57 receptions. He totaled 2261 yards. In two playoff games he totaled 198 rushing yards.
At this point, the Dallas Cowboys had the "magic sauce"..
The rest of the NFL wasn't prepared for such a massive running game. Offenses had, for the most part, evolved into a more open and elaborate passing attack. Defenses were structured to attack a QB with quicker but smaller DE's, blitzing LB's in nickle and dime packages. The Cowboys emerging offensive line was huge but athletic enough to get into the 2nd level and destroy defenses on the ground.
Jerry had what he needed in his hand and he blew it bad.
Murray was now a free agent as was Dez Bryant. Jerry felt like he needed to make a choice. First he lowballed Murray with a low offer before th eend of his record season. He didn't make another offer to Murray until the amount of interest from other teams were revealed. Jerry made another offer, too little too late. The sad thiojg is, Murray had indicated that he wanted to stay in Dallas and even hinted at as discount. Murray was no fool, he knew that the offensive line that he had been practicing with for years was his best ticket to success but the two offers by Jerry convinced him that he wasn't wanted and he took the Eagles offer..
No doubt my narration will be disputed but I had very strong feeling about keeping Murray and I monitored the events closely. It became clear that Jerry made the conventional decision despite the results of the two previous seasons. he signed Dez to a huge contract and, right on cue, Dez never had another thousand yard season.
Meanwhile it became clear that the Eagles didn't sign Murray to use his skillset as their primary weapon on offense. They decided not to have a primary weapon and Murray shared duties with two other backs. In addition, he did not have the familiarity and cohesion he'd had with the Cowboys line.
It seemed that one of the reasons for signing Murray had more to do with depriving their chief divisional rival Cowboys. It was a decision that backfired on the HC who was fired after that season.
As to the myth of a RB declining after receiving that number of carries. sports journalists compared him to only those RB's that had more carries then Murray. . This is a statistical breach. Murray was not among the group of RB's that had MORE carries than Murray. The proper technique is to imbed Murray's numbers in an interval where his numbers are the midpoint.
In other words, the highest number of carries in NFL history was 14 more than Murray's. Therefore it would be fair to look at all RB's with carries that were WITHIN 14 carries of Murray's total. That is, you include all RB's whose carries were +/- 14 of Murray's. When you do this, you not only get a list of NFL's HOF Whose Who in RB history, you get guys that .did it multiple times.
Jerry tragically concluded that any RB could run behind that line and have an effective running game. To prove it, he seemingly used the worse example possible, "Clepto" Joe ran his mouth better than he ever ran with the ball. Not only did he get far less "meat on the bone", after the 1st quarter he couldn't find the bone. His career lasted less than half a season later. Due to Randle's inept rushing, Romo was forced to pass more in obvious situations and that indirectly led to his injury.
Murray proved he wasn't "burned out' when he again ran for almost 1300 yards the following season for the Titans in 2016 while Jerry seemingly reversed his earlier philosophy by drafting Murray's eventual replacement, the 4th overall pick in the draft. In 2016 Zeke was teh leading rusher. Murray was in 4th place.
Jerry has had a long history of over valuing WR's by trading away 1st round picks for someone else's. Alternatively, he had spend the past 28 seasons disrespecting RB's starting with Emmitt Smith During his1993 contract holdout Jones was quoted as saying.
"Emmitt Smith is a luxury and not a necessity"
That quote pretty much summarizes Jerry Jones's credibility as an NFL GM.
