by Aaron Schatz

All season long, when talking about Shaun Alexander's problems, you've seen us refer to the "Curse of 370." You've also seen that term as we tracked Larry Johnson's high number of carries all season long. Now that Johnson has set the NFL record with 416 carries in the regular season, the "Curse of 370" is showing up in everything written by Football Outsiders. We wanted to help those who were new to our site understand the Curse of 370, which is something we've been writing about for three years. The first article about 370 carries appeared in the book Pro Football Forecast 2004, and was also published on our site when Ricky Williams retired in July 2004. You'll find that article here. A sequel article appearedProspectus. With both Shaun Alexander and Edgerrin James entering free agency this off-season, one precept in particular got a lot of attention: the 370-carry theory.

The 370-carry theory is generally summarized as follows: "A running back with 370 or more carries during the regular season will usually suffer either a major injury or loss of effectiveness the following year, unless he is named Eric Dickerson."

Some recent examples of the 370-carry theory in action include Curtis Martin's collapse last year [i.e. 2005], Jamal Lewis's struggles for the last two years, and Ricky Williams falling from 4.8 yards per carry in 2002 to 3.5 yards per carry in 2003. Terrell Davis, Jamal Anderson, and James each tore his ACL a year after going over 370 carries. The 370-carry barrier helped destroy