AP

When teams release their depth charts, they add a note saying that they are unofficial and the Lions provided a pretty good example of just how unofficial they are on Sunday.

They list Ameer Abdullah as the third-string running back on their depth chart heading into Week One and then gave Abdullah more snaps and more touches on offense than either Joique Bell or Theo Riddick. Abdullah wound up touching the ball on nearly a quarter of the team’s offensive plays and picked up 94 yards from scrimmage, but coach Jim Caldwell said that successful debut won’t lead to an even greater share of the offensive workload for the rookie in the weeks to come.

“I think [Ameer’s] a guy that gets the ball a number of different ways, too,” Caldwell said, via the Detroit Free Press. “I think you have to look at the total. He’s carrying the ball on kick returns, he’s carrying the ball on pass receiving, he’s carrying the ball from scrimmage. So that’s a pretty good sampling size there.”

As MDS pointed out on Monday, Abdullah is the first rookie in decades to get at least 50 rushing yards, 40 receiving yards and 100 return yards in his first NFL game. If he’s able to consistently put up those kinds of numbers, it will be tempting for the Lions to revisit the division of labor down the road so the ball is in Abdullah’s hands even more often.