Under conventional wisdom, Dallas Cowboys running back DeMarco Murray would have it made in the shade. Murray will be a free agent this spring, coming off a record-breaking 2014 season that has him firmly in the MVP conversation. Perfect timing for a gigantic payday. Right?

Murray’s 2014 statistics are so far ahead of the rest of the league they look like typos. Murray became the first player in NFL history to start a season with eight consecutive 100-yard rushing games, and with three weeks remaining has nearly a 400-yard cushion in the race for the most rushing yards over Pittsburgh’s Le’Veon Bell. Murray’s 123.5 rushing yards per game isn’t just 20 yards per game ahead of second-place Arian Foster. It is also the 13th-best mark of all-time, and more than legends like LaDanian Tomlinson, Emmitt Smith, or Marcus Allen ever had in a season. Perhaps his most ridiculous stat of his 2014 season: Murray has more yards rushing on first down (1,143) than every other player except Bell has on all downs.

Here’s another record that Murray is chasing —a record that isn’t nearly as enticing as all of his other achievements: total carries. Larry Johnson set the all-time mark for carries in a season with 416 for the Kansas City Chiefs in 2006, or 26 rushes per game. Murray is just behind him at 24.6 carries per game, which puts him on pace for 394 carries, the seventh-most in NFL history. How much of an outlier is Murray’s workload? The only other running back in 2014 that is projected to have at least 300 attempts is the Eagles’ LeSean McCoy (318).

A decade ago, on the occasion of Ricky Williams’ (first) retirement, Aaron Schatz of Football Outsiders presented the Curse of 370: running backs who receive 370 carries or more in a single season tend to see their performance, effectiveness, and health plummet in the following years.

Schatz’s article came a year before Shaun Alexander, probably the posterboy for the Curse, had exactly 370 carries for the Seattle Seahawks in the 2005 season. Alexander’s statistics before and after his 370-carry season show a dramatically different player. From 2000–2004, Alexander’s average season was 279 carries, 4.4 yards per rush, 12 touchdowns, and 1,187 yards. He was a reliable, top-tier running back. From 2006–2008, Alexander was an aging scrub, with average seasons of 157 carries, 3.5 yards per rush, four touchdowns, and 545 yards. Following his 2005 mega-season, Alexander signed an eight-year contract which—were it fully guaranteed—would not have ended until this past offseason, with Alexander at age 36. Oops. Alexander hasn’t played in the NFL since 2008.

Whether they’ve read Schatz’s research or not, NFL teams are effectively heeding his advice. To the chagrin of fantasy owners everywhere, fewer running backs are getting pushed to their maximum workload, as most teams employ some sort of tandem backfield approach. In the last five full seasons (2009–2013), 22 running backs have received over 300 carries, with two getting more than 350 and none reaching the 370-rush threshold. In the five seasons prior (2004–2008), 40 runners received at least 300 carries, including 10 over 350 and four over 370. Ultra-heavy workloads for running backs are quickly trending toward obsolete.

Brian Burke of Advanced Football Analytics has argued that the Curse of 370 is not so much a matter of a debilitating workload as it is a matter of regression to the mean. In other words, running backs like Williams or Alexander don’t necessarily suffer after their 370-carry seasons because the heavy workload wore them down, but instead because the confluence of positive events that led to their 370-carry season are so hard to replicate. That argument has merit in the context of Murray and the 2014 Cowboys:

• He’s running behind one of the league’s best offensive lines (ranked first in Football Outsiders’ adjusted line yards metric).
• Between Joseph Randle and Lance Dunbar, Murray doesn’t have an established, carry-stealing backup.
• The Cowboys are not deep at receiver. Dez Bryant (73 receptions/1,034 yards/10 TD) is a superstar, and Jason Witten (46/495/4) is a reliable option at tight end. But the Cowboys’ second- and third-string wideouts, Terrance Williams (30/482/6) and Cole Beasley (25/292/3), are not very productive in terms of starters. Without multiple receivers on his team who demand targets—such as Roddy White and Julio Jones of the Atlanta Falcons—Murray touches the ball that much more often.
• Murray has stayed healthy. After missing at least two games in each of his first three seasons, Murray has not missed a game this season, giving him the chance to rack up more carries.
• The Cowboys finally realized that less is more when it comes to Tony Romo. They have established a balanced ball-control offensive gameplan, with a run-first mentality that protects its defense and sets up favorable play-action passes for Romo. Cowboys are 8–1 this season when Murray has more than 20 carries, and 1–3 when he doesn’t. While there’s often clear chicken-and-egg to this stat — you tend to run more when you’re ahead — this type of balance is new territory for Dallas.

If any of these circumstances change, suddenly Murray gets a lot fewer overall carries. As Burke argued, perhaps the real Curse of 370 is that it’s highly, highly unlikely that all of these elements will again land in Murray’s favor in the same season. Keep in mind I haven’t mentioned anything about Murray’s talent, instincts, or explosiveness as a runner. While those factors can certainly influence his stat line as well, there are so many other things out of his control that ultimately impact his overall production, and it becomes difficult to project another monster season by Murray.