Could Cardinals benefit from Beanie Wells’ injury?

Injuries are part of football. Teams that are in the best shape to withstand injuries to key players on their team often are the ones that excel and challenge for the championship.

The Arizona Cardinals suffered a significant setback last week in their win over the Philadelphia Eagles when running back Beanie Wells went down with a turf toe injury. The fourth-year running back will miss at least seven games after being placed on the injured reserve/designated to return list earlier this week.

So that leaves Ryan Williams as the feature back for the Cardinals, and based on the fact that he’s got all of 31 carries as a pro on his résumé, there is some concern.

But an ESPN Insider article by KC Joyner indicates that Wells’ injury might be a sort of blessing in disguise for the Cardinals. Joyner uses advanced statistics to point out that Wells was largely ineffective in his opportunities so far in 2012.

Injuries aren’t normally beneficial to a team, but Wells did a terrible job on plays with good blocking this season. His 4.1 mark in the good blocking yards per attempt (GBYPA) category is well below the 6.0 mark that typically serves as the low end of the spectrum in this metric. Wells just isn’t very good at finding running lanes, and when he does find the lanes, he doesn’t have enough burst to gain big yards.

Wells had just 76 yards on 29 carries this season before the injury, and only five of those carries have gone for more than five yards.

Williams, on the other hand, has shown improvement and leads the team with 105 yards on 31 carries. The Virginia Tech product got stronger as the game went on against Philadelphia and amassed 62 of his team-high 83 rushing yards in the fourth quarter of the victory.

That is not the case with Ryan Williams, who will be taking Wells’ place in the starting lineup. His 8.9 GBYPA this season is admittedly based on a very small sample size (only 31 total carries), but that number is backed by the game tape assessment, as Williams has shown better vision and burst than Wells.

Again, you never want to see a player get hurt. Depth is a major key to success and Wells has proven himself in the past.

But Joyner at least provides some hope that the Cardinals’ running game will improve — which is good news considering they’re facing the tough rushing defense of the Miami Dolphins Sunday.

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