As of Friday, Rudi is out for our Monday night game against the Patriots. At the risk of taking an unpopular position, I’m going to say that maybe this will turn out to be a good thing.

Before we go further, I’d like to go on the record and say that I have been, since 2004, a big Rudi Johnson fan. And I’ve also been known to call Kenny Watson, who is likely to fill-in for Rudi on Monday night, the Royce Clayton of running backs.

(For those who don’t know, Royce Clayton is a shortstop who’s played for about every team in Major League Baseball. He is not particularly good at anything, never has been, but he has this reputation of being a decent shortstop, so he keeps getting the opportunity to play. When he played for the Reds for part of last season, it was a disgrace to the memories of Davey Concepcion and Barry Larkin.)

But I changed my tune on Kenny Watson last year, when Comer Kai pointed out how well Watson performs whenever he gets the chance.

And this season I’ve started to worry about Rudi J. I used to love watching him consistently get at least three extra yards after first contact, but I haven’t seen that this year.

During last week’s game in Seattle, Rudi looked nothing like the punishing bruiser with a no-surrender mentality. He seemed to be dancing around a lot, trying to get position on the defense, instead of running into the line and breaking through holes. And when he got touched, he went down.

Anyway, here’s what I’m thinking:

1.) Having a new running back (one with a different running style) will give New England’s defense something else to think about.
2.) Without the familiarity of Rudi, everyone on offense will step up to try to compensate for his absence.
3.) We might try to work Jeremi Johnson into the game plan more, put the ball in his hands a few times. This is something I think we should be doing anyway.
4.) For some reason, I think that Watson will be able to handle 25 touches a game. He just seems like too much of a pro not to be prepared for it when the bell rings.

On the flip side, taking Kenny out of the special teams game is not going to help at all.

Lots of people today are talking about Rudi being out, including me (obviously). Still, the question is going to be how well our defense can contain their offense. But if we can continue to use our running game to control the clock when we have the ball, that could be a huge lift. What do you think?