I watched enough of the Colts to know this isn’t true. Maybe occasionally, but not consistently as say someone like Adrian Peterson deals with 8-9 man boxes.
Furthermore, Donald Brown had much more success than Trent Richardson dealing with the same defenses. Maybe, Trent needs to believe this and not the truth that he simply did not have a good year with the Colts. Here is his quote courtesy of Indystar.com.
“Go back and look at last year,” the team’s starting running back said. “People say our running game wasn’t successful, but there were times where (defenses) were stacking nine men in the box. If you look at it like that, they respected our running game.”
That is one way of looking at it, once again, it appears he is trying to rationalize his 2.9 YPC average in 14 games with the Colts.
Even if there were 11 men in the box, a decent running back should be able to break 3.0 YPC. The Colts invested heavily in Richardson, we will see if last year was a fluke or just who he is as a running back.