Is the Chargers' Ryan Mathews Going to Breakout?

Matthews hasn't looked the greatest in camp, better hope he turns it around

According to San Diego Chargers head coach Norv Turner, Ryan Mathews is the featured back and will be “on the field a lot.” Can Mathews take advantage of the opportunity?

The 24 year old (well, he’s 23 but turns 24 early in the season) Mathews struggled with pass protection last year as well as some injury concerns. The biggest injury that had an impact was the high ankle sprain he suffered early on. It lingered and really hindered the player that we thought we were going to see.

Mathews looks to be hurting a little bit with multiple injuries and coming to camp out of shape, but the Chargers are going to be taking extra precautions to keep him healthy until the regular season hits. Not to mention he has supposedly improved one of the weakest points of his game, pass blocking. Picking up the pressure is intrical for a team that loves to drop back and fire passes down the field all game.

So, with the pass protection problem solved, or at least enough to make him the featured back with a vote of confidence from the head coach, what’s the holdup? Durability concerns.

It was quite obvious that his high ankle sprain and arm injury held him back last year as he only played in 12 games and never was fully healthy when he did play, the stats he put up were quite impressive given the circumstances. He went for 678 yards on 158 carries for a 4.3 ypc average. Oh, and he also managed to get into the endzone seven times.

Anyways, it’s very hard to ignore his ability to produce on the field and in your fantasy football match-up. I’m the type of guy that usually ignores injury concerns unless they are at an alarming level and they are beginning to get to just that.

In Mathews college career:

Year	Games Missed	Reason
2007	2	Torn muscle in collarbone
2008	5	Knee and foot issues
2009	1	Mild concussion

Go ahead and throw in the four games he missed last year and we’ve got a disturbing trend. It’s a little disturbing knowing that he hasn’t played a full season since his high school days, over four years ago.

Here’s another interesting snippet we’ve ignored until now: he isn’t a pass catching back. When he is in on passing downs, he’s making sure Phillip Rivers stays safe half the time. Mathews takes a hit in PPR leagues due to this.

In the end, I do have a philosophy that injuries can be just dumb luck to a certain point. Mathews is still a mere 24 years old, which benefits him right now, but with one more injury filled season, I’m avoiding Mathews at all costs for the rest of his career. It could be 16 games or bust this year.

As hard as I’ve been on his injury history and his imperfections, Mathews is still a solid breakout candidate.

We also can take one of the reasons he failed last year into account as to why he’ll succeed this year. Mike Tolbert.

Tolbert was very effective last year and even though Mathews is the featured back, Tolbert will still be sharing the workload, which is great, because it should allow Mathews to stay fresh from his somewhat physical style of play. Not taking so many hits equals fresher legs and more production, just what we want to see from Mathews.

In fantasy football, it’s all about taking risks if you want to win your league and Mathews is a decent risk if you want to get to the top, because while there are already red flags due to injuries in camp, he could wind up being completely healthy by the start of camp and break out.

He is going to get his carries and will get the red zone looks. Draft Mathews as an RB3 with the upside to become more.