Braelon Allen was honest ahead of the season about how important Year 3 was for him and proving his worth.
A potentially significant moment in his young career has arrived.
With Breece Hall (quad) out for Sunday’s Week 4 game against the Bears in Chicago, Allen becomes the Jets’ top running back.
Hall, who suffered the injury in the Week 3 loss to the Lions, is considered week to week, meaning there’s a possibility Allen will have more than one game as the lead rusher.
Hall’s injury is a major blow to a Jets running game that was already struggling this year — they are averaging 3.3 yards per carry, which ranks 30th in the NFL.
But Allen during training camp said he wanted to “prove myself as a workhorse back.” This is his opportunity to do exactly that.
“I’m an all-down back, I’m a three-down back, I’m more versatile than I get credit for,” Allen told The Post after practice Friday. “I’m just hoping I continue to get more and more opportunities to show that.”
Allen’s ability to prove himself was stolen from him just four weeks into last season when he sprained his MCL after taking a hit while returning a kick against the Dolphins. It required surgery and ended his season.
“It sucked,” Allen said. “It was my first major injury, first surgery and all that. Kind of my season being taken away while I was kind of just getting into my groove and felt like I was figuring it out a little bit, it was tough. But it was definitely a learning experience. I’ve grown so much from it.
“There’s definitely dark times through that process and I just knew — you have to decide how you want to come out of it on the other side. I wanted to make sure that I was gonna come back better, bigger, faster, stronger and more explosive. That was the mindset that I had, was just to get through it better.”
The injury abruptly ended the progress he made during a promising rookie season two years ago, when he rushed for 334 yards and two touchdowns. And the Jets bringing Hall back on a three-year deal worth $45.75 million this past offseason meant Allen remained firmly No. 2 in the pecking order. But for the moment, it’s his show.
“Everyone knows who Breece is as a player,” Allen said. “One of the premier running backs in the NFL. I’m not trying to replace or be him in any way. I want to go out there and make my own name.”
Allen presents a much different profile than Hall, one of the league’s best dual-threat running backs. Allen, at 6-foot-1 and 235 pounds compared to the 5-11, 217-pound Hall, is bigger and more of a bruiser.
“He’s a strong, physical, downhill runner,” guard Joe Tippmann, who blocked for Allen at Wisconsin and is again blocking for him with the Jets, told The Post. “I think what a lot of guys oversee is that he’s fast. He’s got the speed to get around the edge to make those open-field cuts and be able to break those tackles. I’ve always said with Braelon, you can’t one-arm tackle that guy. Nobody can. You gotta get two hands on him and wrap him up.”
The Jets rushed for just 58 and 67 yards the last two weeks, respectively, both losses — a letdown after they imposed themselves on the ground with 152 rushing yards during their season-opening win over the Titans.
They’re now without their star running back, but the offensive line believes it’s identified the issue.
“We’re kind of just getting caught up a little bit on the movement, the D-line’s moving and stuff,” Tippmann said. “We just gotta go back to our basics of running off the ball, getting up on the double teams, regardless of if they’re moving or not. We can’t just sit there and anticipate, ‘Oh, they’re gonna move.’ We just gotta go, go get off the ball and go get on them. That’s what really opens up those lanes. I think we’re trending in the right direction. Last week, we definitely took a step back in the run game. We’ll have bad games there, but it’s trending in the right direction.”
That trend, at least for this week, will hinge on a new RB1.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: nypost.com
