Mathews, not Murray, should carry load for Eagles

A few feet away from Ryan Mathews, the crowd around DeMarco Murray's locker had swelled until it was three reporters deep.

After the Eagles' loss Sunday to the Redskins, Murray had made a calculated decision to suggest that he get the ball more often, that an increase in his workload would lead to better things from him and the Eagles' offense as a whole. And as Murray dealt with the fallout from those assertions Thursday, as he was asked whether he believed Chip Kelly's system and the team's tattered offensive line would eventually allow him to run with some freedom, the back who has been the better option this season sat at his locker, fiddling with his smartphone.

"I could get no carries," Mathews said. "As long as we win, I'm good."

Always reluctant to speak to the media, Mathews wasn't trying to paint himself as the anti-Murray as much as he was trying to blow off a question he didn't want to answer. But the Eagles' current condition demands that the last thing they do Sunday against the New Orleans Saints is limit Mathews' carries for the sake of getting Murray going.

If anything, facing a game they need to win if they're to have any realistic chance of salvaging their season, with tackles Jason Peters and Lane Johnson hurting, they ought to feed Mathews the football more. The statistics, and the magnitude of the moment, make this the wrong time to test Murray's theory that all will be well if Sam Bradford simply stuffs the ball in Murray's belly more frequently, and Kelly seemed to recognize as much Thursday.

"If you have 22 carries for zero yards, we'd better call another play. You know what I mean?" Kelly said. "So, I mean, I would love to get everybody in a right lather and going, but when we're not having success running the ball at all, then it's tough to say, 'Hey, we're just going to make sure we get him 22 carries and he's lathered up.' I mean, it's the entire group, and it's not just one player that's involved in it."

That's been the Eagles' party line all along - that from the backs to the blockers to the coach calling the plays, every aspect of their running game has failed in some regard - but the numbers reveal a deeper truth. Yes, Murray's are terrible: He has gained 47 yards on 29 carries, and 30 of those yards came on a single rush against Washington. But Mathews' aren't. He has 132 yards on 33 carries, a 4.0 average, and a disparity that great, even over a sample size of four games, hardly seems coincidental, no matter what the Eagles themselves might say.

"It's the exact same offense," lineman Matt Tobin said. "Like last week, early on DeMarco had that big run. Everybody just executed. That's what it all comes down to."

Most of Mathews' yards, 108 of them, came in the Eagles' Week 3 victory over the Jets, a game Murray missed because of a hamstring injury. To that point, Murray had been conspicuous for all the tacklers who surrounded him as soon as Bradford handed him the ball, and Mathews was practically invisible. He had just four carries through the season's first two games. Then he had that big game in East Rutherford while Murray was sitting out, and at the time it appeared that the Eagles might have sorted out their run-blocking enough that Murray could thrive once he returned.

But aside from that one stunning gain, Murray had 6 yards on seven carries against the Redskins. Mathews had 20 yards on five carries - not much, but more productive than Murray. Although the two of them are roughly the same size - each 6 feet tall, Murray six pounds lighter at 214 - Mathews is the more physical runner, better amid the thicket of big bodies near the line of scrimmage, his shoulders square every time he approaches a hole. His style, truth be told, would suit the way the Eagles ought to play Sunday, when the injuries and upheaval among their offensive linemen should compel them to use rushing plays with simpler designs and blocking schemes.

Maybe Murray just needs more opportunities to run in that manner, to begin to justify the five-year, $40 million free-agent contract that he signed with the Eagles in March. Maybe he just needs Kelly to call fewer of those stretch runs that have Murray moving parallel to the line of scrimmage, looking for a sliver of space that never seems to materialize. Maybe the disparity between what Murray has done and what Mathews has done through four games really is coincidental and would even out over time.

Except the Eagles don't have time. They have to win Sunday, and they have to go with what's worked for them, or what's come closest to working. That's Ryan Mathews. He's the short-term solution. Satisfying DeMarco Murray can wait.

msielski@phillynews.com

@MikeSielski