Ronnie Hillman

Who starts at running back for the Denver Broncos has been the topic of more than a few conversations between coach Gary Kubiak and his staff.

Kubiak has been also been asked plenty about how he plans to divvy up the carries between Ronnie Hillman and C.J. Anderson and for the most part Kubiak has routinely answered he views both backs as starters so that means something fairly close to a 50-50 split in the workload.

And to this point Hillman has 138 carries in 11 games, including 14 in Sunday night's win over the New England Patriots, while Anderson has 117 carries this season, including the 15 he had against the Patriots. Both players would very much like to be the team's starter, but for the most part they have each performed their best in games when they weren't.

While it may be risky fantasy strategy, the story pointed out the better back tends to be the one who doesn't start. Hillman has three 100-yard rushing games this season and two of those have come in games Anderson started -- Hillman's 103 yards rushing against the Minnesota Vikings and his 111 yards rushing against the Cleveland Browns. Anderson has two 100-yard rushing games this season and both -- his 113 yards rushing Sunday night against the Patriots and 101 yards rushing against Green Bay -- were in games Hillman started. That's four 100-yard games by non-starters. Apparently the pursuit of the starting job means a little something, the story said.