It’s time to get excited about Chris Ivory’s 2013 fantasy football outlook now that he’s a member of the New York Jets. The talented runner that combines size (5’11.5”, 222 lbs) and speed (4.48 40-yard dash) has battled through injuries and lack of opportunity since college, but his perseverance may finally be rewarded as he gets his chance to shine in the National Football League.

Let’s take a quick look at his production up to this point:

It’s not a large sample size, but the efficiency is sparkling and he has the game film to match it. In order to gauge the type of opportunity he’ll have with the Jets, I went back and recorded the Jets rushing totals under Rex Ryan:

After riding the “Ground-and-Pound” philosophy to two straight AFC Championship appearances, the Jets strayed away from what worked and started to place more responsibility on Mark Sanchez. The offense went from averaging 570.5 carries per season in Rex Ryan’s first two seasons to just 468.5 carries in his second two years. As you can see above, that didn’t work out so well and they missed the playoffs in each of the past two seasons. Heading into 2013, the Jets are poised to return back to the run-heavy offense that brought them success and are gathering the tools to do so.

Ivory is expected to win the starting job with ease and I see no reason that he wouldn’t be afforded the same opportunity as lead runners in the past (see above). To describe the potential of the situation in a not so eloquent manner; Ivory could do a lot of damage with those carries. The following table details the possible statistics I’m talking about:

The above numbers represent the perfect storm; it could happen - Thomas Jones eclipsed those numbers in 2009 - but I wouldn’t be holding my breath. The Jets won’t have Drew Brees opening up the running game and maintaining a 5.1 YPC as a leading running back is a lot to ask for, so I decided to knock down Ivory’s projected YPC to a more ordinary 4.4 and see what resulted:

The totals remained very respectable and the 191.6 total fantasy points would have earned Ivory a 12th place finish in 2012, 7th place finish in 2011, 12th place finish in 2010 and 9th place finish in 2009. Current ADP data places him as RB29, but I imagine that will rise at least a little before the season begins. Chris Ivory must obviously shake the injury bug, but he should be viewed as an RB2 that possesses RB1 potential in the New York Jets offense, which is why he’ll be another target of mine for the 2013 fantasy football season.