The Eagles shuffled up their backfield this offseason by trading LeSean McCoy and signing DeMarco Murray and Ryan Mathews as free agents.
Darren Sproles stayed put, however, and his presence on the roster isn’t the only thing that remains the same as 2014. Sproles is playing on 31 percent of the team’s offensive snaps this season, just as he did last year, but that isn’t stopping the veteran back from finding his role on the team “kind of frustrating.”
“I’m not getting enough chances,” Sproles said, via Jeff McLane of the Philadelphia Inquirer. “They got me more in there to run routes. DeMarco and Ryan get the bulk of the carries. … To get in a rhythm you need more touches. That’s for any kind of player.”
As McLane points out, Sproles is actually getting the ball a bit more often on a per-game basis than he did last season. He’s also played more snaps than Mathews, but Sproles has been less effective with the ball in his hands than he was in 2014 or during his time with the Saints. That suggests that there’s more at play than just the number of times the Eagles are calling Sproles’s number, although he should get a chance to test that this week with Mathews looking likely to be out because of a concussion.