When Saints running back Khiry Robinson broke his leg against the Giants in Week Eight, it seemed like it would open the door for an increase in playing time for C.J. Spiller.
Spiller would catch the last of Drew Brees’s seven touchdown passes in that game, something that seemed to lend support to that notion but last Sunday’s loss to the Titans sent things in a different direction. Spiller played on six offensive snaps, his lowest total of the season, and touched the ball three times, which isn’t much return on the $9 million in guaranteed money that the Saints gave Spiller as a free agent this offseason.
Spiller says he’s not frustrated by the lack of activity, something that was sometimes the case for him in Buffalo as well, and that he’s also not the one to ask about why he’s spending so much time as a well-paid observer.
“I go in when I’m told to go in. There’s nothing I can change,” Spiller said, via ESPN.com. “I know what I can present to this league. So it’s the same questions, [but] there’s no different answer. That’d be something, I guess for upstairs to answer, not me. I haven’t went up there and asked for an explanation. Obviously, there has to be a reason behind it. ... But I feel good, and I stay in-tuned into the game so when I am called upon I’m ready to go out there and play. Obviously, you want to play more. You’re a competitor, you want to be out there, but you can’t play with 12 people on the field.”
Coach Sean Payton said that Mark Ingram is the team’s “protecting back” and that led him to dominate snaps against the Titans because Tennessee was blitzing a lot last Sunday. We’ll see if this week brings a different approach as the Saints try to bump themselves back to .500 in Washington.