First look at the Jets' Breece Hall-Braelon Allen backfield did not go well

In an otherwise lost season, one of the better stories of the 2026 New York Jets has been the emergence of Braelon Allen. When the Jets lost Breece Hall to injury in Week 3, Allen took over as the lead back and had a stellar five-week run.

Over that span as the lead back, Allen averaged 5.4 yards per attempt, with 504 yards and two rushing touchdowns. He also had three 100-yard games during that time period as well.

The Jets had something good going, and with Hall coming back, there were major questions about how the Jets would handle the split. They didn't pass their first test.

New York Jets fail Breece Hall and Braelon Allen reps test

Jets offensive coordinator Frank Reich made it clear last week that Hall would be the Jets' "bell cow" running back. That was essentially half true in this game against the Chiefs.

Hall was the starter in this game and had more touches than Allen. Hall had 15 carries for 61 yards, averaging 4.1 yards per attempt. He also had three catches for 26 yards to go with that. Allen saw a major decrease in his touches. He had just eight carries for 33 yards, averaging 4.1 yards per attempt as well, and had two catches for 21 yards in the receiving game.

From a production standpoint, Hall started and received 18 touches to Allen's 10. Looking a little deeper here, there's a snap difference. Allen played 59 percent of snaps to Hall's 43 percent.

I don't think it's a surprise that this was Allen's worst game since Week 3. If we learned anything from his time as the starter, it's that he's a volume rusher. He's not the type of back that can get a limited RB2 workload and have success. He needs to get in a rhythm as a rusher and wasn't able to due to the split.

Hall was fine in this game; he didn't play poorly, and this shouldn't be taken as a negative argument against him as a player on this team. The argument is that the carries likely should've been flipped.

In games where Allen has had 10 or more carries this season, he is averaging 5.3 yards per attempt. In the three games where he received fewer than that, he's averaging just 3.2 yards per attempt. That's over a two-yards-per-attempt difference.

Hall, as the change of pace back, getting somewhere between eight and 10 carries, and three to five receptions, while Allen gets 15 to 17 carries, is the best approach to go. Their total touches would end up close to the same, and you would get more out of each back in that scenario.

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