The Facts: Approaching a crossroads eight seasons into his NFL career, Ingram has things he still wants to accomplish in football. “I’m going into my ninth year, I feel like I’m better than ever,” Ingram said. “I feel like my career’s still going up. I want to rush for 10,000 yards. Clearly, I want to win the Super Bowl. I just want to keep pressing forward, keep doing the best I can do and just control what I can control.”

Diehards Line: But will Ingram be striving for those milestones with the New Orleans Saints, the team that brought him into the NFL from Alabama as the 28th selection in the 2011 draft? Ingram has played out a four-year, $16 million contract signed in 2015. If the Saints don't re-sign him before the NFL's 2019 business year starts on March 13, Ingram will become a free agent. He was headed toward free agency in 2015, but he re-signed with the Saints a few days before reaching that point. He has been talking to the Saints and would like to finish his career there, but. ... "I have all confidence in my abilities and all confidence in what I can do given the opportunity to be a feature guy," Ingram stressed. "So I'm not scared to bet on myself." Ingram ran for 645 yards in 12 games in 2018. Of the 28 players with more rushing yards than Ingram this season, only three were older than the 2009 Heisman Trophy winner, who will turn 30 years old late in the 2019 NFL regular season. But Ingram figures his years of sharing the duties in the Saints' backfield with a series of ball-carriers that has included Pierre Thomas, Darren Sproles, Chris Ivory, Khiry Robinson, Tim Hightower and now Alvin Kamara gives him a football age that's younger than his birth certificate would indicate. It's a fair point and one that should make him of interest to the Saints and others.