How else to you describe how a running back with the stature of a standard garden gnome averages over five yards per carry against some of the most ferocious front sevens in professional football, and especially when most of his carries go right into the teeth of the defense?
At 5' 8" tall (which may be a generous altitude) and 195 pounds, Lewis may be small in stature, but is hardly as fragile as the aforementioned garden gnome - his injury history has all been non-contact - as he possesses a powerfully built lower body which aids him in breaking arm tackles, as evidenced by his performance against the Miami Dolphins last Sunday, when he ran right through the tall trees a season-high fifteen times for a career-high 112 yards.
Used sparingly in the first four games of the season while the Patriots gave newcomer Mike Gillislee every opportunity to take the lead back role for himself, Lewis has effectively supplanted the power runner from Buffalo, his video-game like elusiveness combined with powerful getaway sticks providing New England with 5.1 yards per carry in the past seven games as their lead back.
But his success goes beyond simple statistics.
The folks at Football Outsiders provide an insanely complicated formula for expressing the value of a running back to their team called Defense-Adjusted Yards Above Replacement (DYAR) that tells tale of what would happen to a team's carries and rushing yards should the player be absent, however that occurs - not from how his replacement would fare, but how the league average for replacement players hold up against the absent running back.
Madness, all of it, but it paints a picture that may shock football fans as Lewis is rated as the fourth-best "lead back" in the National Football League - trailing only the Saints' Mark Ingram, the Cowboys' Ezekiel Elliott and Chicago's Jordan Howard - as it is estimated that for the season, the Patriots would have lost nearly 15% of their ground yardage without Lewis.
That's some rarefied air, but it gets better.
The same folks that provide the formula for DYAR also generate a formula to measure the effectiveness of a back based on several variables - like success rate in the red zone, down and distance and quality of opponent - that they call Defensive-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA), again the average being the average of all NFL running backs...
...of which Lewis rates an astounding 29.5% above all of his peers, with Ingram and Tennessee's Derrick Henry coming in second and third, respectively, lagging more that ten percentage points behind.
So, what is behind these statistics that label Lewis the best runner in the game? Patriots' safety Devin McCourty thinks he knows. "Man, it's tough." McCourty exclaimed when asked how challenging it is to face Lewis in practices, "We try to get as many players as we can around him, but he runs with such confidence and and runs with anger."
"It's football, you know?" Lewis said of what provocates his attitude when running the ball. "Football is an emotional game. It's a physical game. You put your all into this, so of course you're going to get some chippiness, but it's part of the game."
Kind of sounds like hockey player there, doesn't he? And with his stature married with his anger, Lewis could be considered football's version of a "Little Ball of Hate" - and he's in the right area to carry that moniker, as the Boston Bruins' Brad Marchand carries that title on the ice.
So Lewis doesn't deny that he runs with anger, but that is to be expected from a guy who has always been the shortest guy on the team no matter where he's been, be it at Pitt in college or in Philadelphia, Cleveland or Foxborough in the pros - so he can be excused for letting a thing called the Napoleon Syndrome emote while carrying the football. Or blocking in pass protection. Or in the pattern, or even in the return game...
...there is no limit to how far a chip on the shoulder can take a guy, so long as he is disciplined in how he uses it and projects it. "My job is to protect the ball and to make plays" Lewis says, bypassing the self-promotion that one might hear elsewhere, adding, "That's my job in the offense and it's what I try to do every game. Just protect the ball and try to make plays when I get the opportunity."
And his opportunities have increased incrementally with each game during the Patriots seven-game winning streak, but is still only averaging 13 carries per game in that time period - the rest going to Rex Burkhead who, because of injury, doesn't have enough carries to qualify for the list - with passing back James White thrown into the mix every now and then.
But it is Lewis that makes the running game go, which makes the play action work, which helps keep quarterback Tom Brady upright, which gives the pass catchers time to break into their routes, which...well, you get the picture.
"It's a part of the running game to help us out with play action" gushed a naturally upbeat tight end Rob Gronkowksi after the win over Miami, "When you get open like that, it's set up previously. We were running the ball super good today."
The Patriots are a pass-first team - and why not, with Brady calling the shots? But Lewis and the other backs provide the type of balance that Brady needs to force the defense to defend the entire field - and when they are forced to do that, someone is going to be open or someone is going to have a running lane...
...but even if the lane is not there, Lewis can make his own, as his absurd 4.47 yards per carry after contact will attest, ranking him first in the NFL by a considerable margin.
But, what else would you expect from a guy who is football's version of the Little Ball of Hate?
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