Running back by committee? Bell-cow back? Nathaniel Hackett has shown he can succeed both ways

The door isn’t closed on Melvin Gordon III returning to the Broncos; as general manager George Paton noted at the NFL Annual Meeting in Palm Beach, Fla. on March 27, the lines of communication between the Broncos and Gordon’s representation remain open.

The door also is ajar for the Broncos to add a running back in the draft to a room currently headlined by Javonte Williams and Mike Boone.

Either way, Nathaniel Hackett has demonstrated a willingness to adapt his use of running backs to the talent he has on hand in the backfield.

In his 71 games as a playcaller in Buffalo (2013-14) and Jacksonville (parts of the 2016 and 2018 seasons and all of 2017), Hackett has seen the gamut. He’s dealt with injuries. He’s had something close to a 50-50 split with C.J. Spiller and Fred Jackson in Buffalo in 2013.

And, in his most successful season as a coordinator — the Jaguars’ 2017 sprint to the AFC Championship Game — he had a top-5 draft pick to whom he fed the rock, then-rookie Leonard Fournette.

In the 21 games that Hackett called plays with Fournette over the 2017 and 2018 seasons, Fournette accounted for at least two-thirds of the touches from the running-back position 13 times — 61.9 percent.

But in the 50 other games for which Hackett called plays, just nine of them saw a running back have more than two-thirds of the touches — a mere 18 percent.

Having Fournette shoulder the heavy burden largely worked. In 10 of those 13 games when he had at least two-thirds of the team’s running-back touches, he amassed at least 100 yards from scrimmage, including once in the postseason.

But the ideal situation is a collective

“I think that with any running back, you always want to have as many as you can. You want a big stable,” Hackett said in Palm Beach on March 28.

And that is what the Bills had when Hackett was there.

For 24 of his 32 games as Buffalo’s offensive coordinator, he had Jackson and Spiller available. In 22 of those games, no running back accounted for 60 percent of the touches, and in eight of those 22 games, neither running back had even 50 percent of the touches from the running-back position.

“Actually, a lot of the places that I’ve been, there’s always been kind of two guys, because you always want to try to split the load as much as you can,” Hackett said, “but, at the same time, he’s a great player, but we’re going to have to continually get it. But we’ll just have to see how the whole thing goes.”

So what will Hackett do?

It is likely to depend on what George Paton does over the next few weeks. Re-sign Gordon, and it could be a platoon. Pass on bringing back the 8-year veteran, and it could be a heavy dose of Williams.

“You want to have a guy that you can feed and make sure that he gets a lot, but he’s still a young player, and he’s still learning, and you want to be sure that you split it as much as you can,” Hackett said.

Whether Williams handles the bulk of the work like Fournette or whether he is part of a Jackson-Spiller-like tandem, Hackett has shown that he can make it work.