Alvin Kamara willing to share the load upon return

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Latavius Murray put up Alvin Kamara numbers when Alvin Kamara was out with an injury.

So now that he’s back, Alvin Kamara is perfectly willing to share.

Via Mike Triplett of ESPN.com, Kamara said he’s willing to split the reps with Murray, who had 307 yards from scrimmage and four touchdowns while Kamara was out with knee and ankle issues.

“It’s not like I’m selfish. I don’t need the ball every play. He’s fully capable, too. So I think we’ll get a good balance going, and it will be hard to stop,” Kamara said. “And he was like, ‘I’m good. I’m not tripping.’ I think it’s an unselfish team. . . . So however it shakes out, it shakes out. I’m ready.”

Kamara has been part of such job shares before, working in tandem with Mark Ingram throughout his career. And coach Sean Payton talked this offseason about keeping Kamara’s “pitch count” similar to last year’s, when he played 61 percent of the snaps in games in which Ingram also played. The first five games of this year, Kamara was in for 75 percent of the snaps.

“Week 1 [of] Alvin coming back. We’ll be smart,” Payton said. “And the good news is the way [Murray] played and the way Alvin’s played, we feel like we’re real good at that position. And they’re smart players, they’re real good teammates, they’re guys that can block, they’re guys that can handle the pressures, they can handle the receiving element of it.

“Obviously, they’re uniquely different, but we’ll sort through that and figure that out. Certainly it was great to see the way Latavius stepped up.”

And if that means Kamara stepping aside from time to time, he’s fine with that.