Having owned most (ok, all) of the RBs you named here, I’m a little confused by this statement.
Spiller barely touched the ball as a saint in 2015. He had 36 carries & 34 receptions all year (13 games played). That’s ~5 touches per game. I believe you may be misremembering here, at that’s hardly an example of someone eating into Ingram’s touches. No one else got hurt, and Spiller was as much of (or more) a disappointment there as he has been everywhere he’s played.
Pierre Thomas was a Saints starting RB from 2007 to 2014. For the 3 years between 2011-2014 it was a pretty even timeshare. In 2014 Thomas had 45 carries & 45 receptions while Ingram had 226 carries & 29 receptions. So it was actually Ingram’s emergence that ate into Thomas’ numbers.
Hightower was also in a pretty even timeshare with Ingram, though Ingram started 15 games to hightower’s 1 GS.
in none of those years do I recall a Saints RB getting hurt & the “next man up” getting more carries while Ingram’s stats stayed the same, as you describe here.
What it really comes down to is that the Saints, in recent memory, have *always* been a 2-back team, and historically (Spiller aside) there’s been fantasy value to both backs.
The last true “feature back” aside from the first few seasons of Pierre Thomas in NOS was probably Deuce McAllister.
