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Football Outsiders’ Aaron Schatz, also via ESPN Stats & Info, said that all 2012 rushes (scrambles excluded) against eight in the box produced just 3.4 yards per carry.

As you load the box with defenders, the rushing average understandably declines. However, while the number of defenders in the box does matter, the frequency of this strategy of using eight or more is not the heavy burden on a running back some lead us to believe.

Sando also had*some different numbers on the concept of “loaded boxes” which are defined as the defense having more defenders in the box than the offense has to block them. Peterson only had 39 carries against loaded boxes through 14 games last season. No back had more than 58 carries. It is possible to have enough blockers against eight in the box for those runs to not factor into this.

Pro Football Focus*had slightly different results with Peterson facing 8+ in the box on 34.5 percent of his runs in 2012. The highest was San Francisco’s Frank Gore (42.3 percent).*The league average was only 23.3 percent, which may be the most interesting number of them all.
PFF also looked at*runs where the team kept no more than one receiver split out, which would invite teams to load up the box more. Only 21.74 percent of rushes happened this way in 2012. Gore ran on such plays a league-high 53.5 percent of the time, which explains why he faced so many eight-man boxes. Peterson was third with 37.64 percent of his carries coming with one receiver split out.

No matter which numbers you believe, the fact is no defense is loading the box even half the time against top running backs. It’s just not a realistic strategy to employ often in the NFL.

A good way to look at it is, if the cpu runs 25atts. We should be playing 8 in the box on 5 of those runs. Unless they are only using 1 wr split out then that's cause for more in the box.