When a running back receives double-digit carries in a preseason game, it’s not always a good sign. It might be an indication they’re needing to play their way onto a team’s roster.
That very clearly was not the case when Arizona Cardinals rookie Jeremiyah Love ran the ball 11 times, also catching three passes for good measure, in Arizona’s preseason opener against the Las Vegas Raiders. As the No. 3 overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft, Love figures to be a very big part of the team’s plans this season.
Assuming he’s healthy, that is.
Love suffered a high-ankle sprain in the heavier-workload outing last Thursday. The Cardinals are hopeful that he can be ready for Week 1 against the Los Angeles Chargers, but it appears that Love’s preseason is now done.
Was this just a fluke injury? Or did the Cardinals bring this upon themselves by overfeeding Love with a 14-touch outing?
Did Mike LaFleur misplay his hand early?
After news broke that Love’s ankle injury might be worse than expected, first-year Cardinals head coach Mike LaFleur defended giving the rookie so much work in his first game.
“I mean, it’s a rookie that hadn’t played,” LaFleur said. “One that, not to share too many secrets because I haven’t said it with the players yet, but you know, that was how it was going to be in terms of how many games these guys were gonna play, for what we were looking for. So, that’s what the thought was.”
Take that how you will, but it sounds like LaFleur was saying he wanted to see how Love would handle extended duty.
On the one hand, it makes sense. The Cardinals made the controversial decision to draft Love third overall – the highest-drafted running back since Trent Richardson in 2012 – and are paying him more than $53 million. That’s more guaranteed money than both Jahmyr Gibbs and Bijan Robinson received in their new extensions. And they drafted Love that high despite signing Tyler Allgeier this offseason and having James Conner, Tre Benson and others already on the roster.
The Cardinals clearly want to feature Love, but it’s not something that he really was asked to do a ton in college. Love was Notre Dame’s lead back the past two seasons, but he had fellow first-rounder Jadarian Price carrying a big chunk of the load alongside him. In 41 career games with the Irish, Love was only asked to touch the ball 20 times or more in only four of those outings.
LaFleur made it clear at the start of camp that he didn’t want to overload either Love or Allgeier, saying, “Not one running back can take all 65 snaps. We've seen that story when guys are a little bit overloaded.”
Well, now Love will be sidelined for a few weeks, and a crowded backfield suddenly looks a bit thin. Connor has yet to take part in full-team work following offseason foot-and-ankle surgery, and Benson has been slowed by his own knee injury.
Making matters worse for the Cardinals is the fact that their top four draft picks this spring are all currently out. Second-round OG Chase Bisontis (torn MCL) and fourth-round DT Kaleb Proctor (torn meniscus) are both done for the season. Love and third-round QB Carson Beck (rib injury) are also banged up.
An already thin margin for error appears to have narrowed further. LaFleur already was swimming upstream this season with QB questions and defensive concerns as two of the major problems they’re facing while playing in arguably the NFL’s toughest division.
They’ll have to hope that Love will be ready by the start of the regular season, and right now they’re unsure of how much work can be earmarked for him when he is ready to go.
Jeremiyah Love’s workload was high for a top back, rookie or otherwise
Last year’s preseason rush-attempt leader, D’Ernest Johnson, ran the ball a whopping 46 times in three games. Once the regular season rolled around, Johnson ran the ball a total of 14 times in eight games for two different teams.
In fact, if you look at the 2025 preseason’s 13 leading rushers in terms of carries, not a single one of them had more carries in the regular season. Several had zero. A few didn’t even play in the NFL’s regular season a year ago.
The bottom line: It’s rare to see any prominent back, even a highly drafted rookie, carry the ball much at all in the preseason. Most backs earning heavy preseason carries are either scratching to make a team’s roster, or the team doesn’t want to put its top backs in harm’s way – and often both are true.
Four backs had at least 300 regular-season carries a year ago: Jonathan Taylor, Christian McCaffrey, James Cook and Derrick Henry. They combined for exactly one preseason carry last year, a 9-yard run by Taylor.
But Love is a rookie, you say. He needs the reps!
Perhaps. But most teams with highly drafted rookie backs in recent years haven’t subscribed to the idea of giving them a high preseason workload. Of the six other first-round running backs since 2021, only Najee Harris had anything close to a Love-like workload – 13 carries, four receptions – but those touches were spread over three preseason outings.
The two 2025 first-round backs, Ashton Jeanty and Omarion Hampton, had three and two carries, respectively, in their rookie-year preseasons. First-rounders Jahmyr Gibbs and Bijan Robinson combined for 12 touches between them as rookies in the preseason. Even maligned Jaguars coach Urban Meyer knew to give minimal preseason work to his first-round back, Travis Etienne, in 2021 – two carries and one catch.
The Cardinals and LaFleur might have learned the hard way what other coaches have historically shown they want no part of finding out. It might be best to save a key back’s heavy workload for when the games matter.