Saints: 3 reasons why Drew Brees will eclipse 5,000 passing yards

Healthy Alvin Kamara

There’s no secret about two things with Alvin Kamara. For one, he was injured last season and it affected his play. The second thing about Kamara is that he’s finally healthy and he sure looks like his old self.

People look at Kamara and like to point out how his yards per carry weren’t drastically worse last season, compared to the year prior. The reason that people know Kamara looked beat up last year, but they couldn’t put their finger on the difference, is that his receiving ability took a steep drop.

Brees missed out on a couple of hundred yards from Kamara’s flat out ability to make yards after the catch.

Kamara did in fact have a lot of receptions, but he didn’t have the same juice and elusiveness that we’re accustomed to. Kamara still had his usual receptions, you better believe Sean Payton was going to be aggressive to crack open Kamara again.

Kamara had 81 receptions in 2019, 81 receptions in 2018, and 81 receptions in 2017. The difference is that his receiving yards were 533 last year. In 2018, his yardage was 709, and it was 826 in 2017.

His explosiveness was without a doubt drastically worse in 2019, compared to 2017. He took around a 300-yard drop between his 2019 outings and 2017 performances.

Kamara is finally healthy and he’s in an offense with more weapons. This all bodes well for him to make more plays with more juice, but also have more favorable match-ups. If Sanders and Kamara go in the slot at the same time, there won’t be a quality cover player on Kamara.

I’d expect Kamara to at least break his 2018 receiving statistic. He should have at least 200 more receiving yards from last year. He’s finally healthy, in a better offense, and let’s not forget that it’s his contract year.

Drew should have no problem with throwing it to Kamara in 2020 and letting him do his thing.