While I compose a lovely post to mash all you Emmitt-haters and Barry Sanders fanboys, take a moment and pay homage to one of the originators.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
Billy Dee!
Booyah! Gale Sayers and Kool G Rap all on opening day! I'm looking forward to this!
No doubt Gale was amazing. Never said anything against him, I'd take him over Emmitt too. Too bad his career was cut short, or he'd likely be with Jim Brown head and shoulders above the rest.
Sayers isn't the only one who takes a hit because of a shortened career. Give Terrell Davis some attention, or Priest Holmes.
"A comet, cited forever by those who study the firmament of football." Lord, how I love NFL films.
as someone old enough to remember gale sayers, i've always regarded him as one of the truly sad injury stories (right up there with bill walton; jr richard is a sad one too, but heart problems are different than injury).
i noted yesterday, for instance, that i would place emmitt fourth (just nosing out oj), only because sayers' career was too injury-shortened to be up at the very top.
and MoeLarryandJesus, i realize we're talking about something incredibly subjective here, but terrell davis and priest holmes were very fine running backs, but they weren't gale sayers....
howard writes: "i realize we're talking about something incredibly subjective here, but terrell davis and priest holmes were very fine running backs, but they weren't gale sayers...."
Never said they were. Though I saw them both play, and Sayers is just some old film clips to me.
I realize Sayers is the more spectacular player, but Davis compares to him stat-wise very well. And it's not like Sayers' teams did very well. Winning has to come into it somewhere.
Just ask Franco Harris!
This is the first major disagreement I've had with Ta-Nehisi, and I'm sorry if my argument has been spelled out elsewhere on the blog, which it almost certainly has.
The standard argument was Barry Sanders did what he did without an o-line, and he looked spectacular doing it. Emmitt Smith had the best (and dirtiest, much like the Denver Broncos from the late '90s to now) o-line in the game and had a hall of fame quarterback and wide receiver to keep the defense off balance. Sanders had Scott Mitchell and Rodney Peete for much of his career. Now, there was Herman Moore and Johnny Morton, who were spectacular for a few years, but they didn't last anywhere near as long as the Aikman-Irvin connection.
And Smith hung on for way too long to take the rushing record. With five more seasons, he has only 3,000 more yards than Sanders. Why reward him for staying on too long and punish Sanders for leaving when he was on top?
And why punish Sanders for an inept front office? Winning comes into it with quarterbacks both because (unfortunately) that's who the media focuses on and also that's who runs the offense.
For the record, I'd take an in-his-prime Marshall Faulk over any other running back besides Barry Sanders. He defined a role that first gained ground with Roger Craig, and who knows where LdT and Priest Holmes would have ended up without his coming first?
But yeah, in terms of stats and unbelievable, once in generations talent, no one tops Sanders.
JoePo,
Stay tuned. I have something for you.
Wow, that's impressive. I had never seen any tape of Sayers before this. I must say "Wow" again. I think it's important to recognize the past greats, because it's easy to pretend that everyone is bigger and faster now and thus the past doesn't matter. Sayers says "No" to that.
To add to your Sayers I add Pele:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icbntQJ351k
My goodness.
What up? nice post on gale. though O.J. startled me a bit at 1:52 in. dig your posts.
It's tough to compare running backs statistically because their performance is very much dependent on the run blocking ability of the offensive line and the strength of the passing game (which, as you know, opens up the running game). Emmitt Smith was spoiled in both respects during his tenure with the Cowboys, whereas Barry Sanders was expected to do everything on his own.
My team, the Steelers, has the very poor man's Barry Sanders in Willie Parker. He puts up great stats, but as a fan I find him to be a frustrating runner. Whereas Bettis could consistently get 3 yards+ a carry, Parker can kill a drive by never getting past the line of scrimmage on three carries. Next offensive possession, he'll break through on a long run for 30 or 40 yards. His stats still end up looking good, but it really kills our time of possession. Result? A tired defense and more opportunities for the opponent to score.
Personally, I like the workmen-like running backs. The guys that can sustain a long drive downfield that eats up the majority of a quarter. They're not flashy or exciting, but they'll stifle the opponent when you have the lead.
Barry vs Emmitt is a nice debate, but it obscures the more important issue, which is that the NFL is boring. Yeah occasionally there's a great play, but I can see that in the highlights. The passion, rivalry, and drama of college football beats the NFL hands down every weekend.
Plus, you get to see Barry and Thurman in the same backfield (or Bush and White, etc). If you like Adrian Peterson or VY in the pros, you should've seen them every weekend in college.
In short, real football fans watch on Saturdays.. the athletes are totally exploited and contribute virtually nothing to most big schools' mission, of course. But it is definitely more interesting than the pros. (Hope you don't mind flagrant instigatin' on your blog).
Gale Sayers was cold.
So was this guy, speaking of injury-shortened NFL careers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjO_QfFYV78
Course, he was a man among boys while at Auburn.
moelarryandjesus, i actually don't think winning matters at all when we're evaluating running backs: as was often said of barry sanders, he made some of his greatest runs simply getting back to the line of scrimmage.
that said, i think it's an interesting point that by and large, the great teams in nfl history (going back to the '50s, at least), teams like the late '50s colts, the '60s packers, the '70s steelers, the '80s and '90s 49ers, the '90s cowboys, etc., had outstanding running attacks, but that doesn't mean that brown, sanders, payton, oj are somehow lesser runners because of the paucity of rings on their collective fingers.
That video got me psyched for football season for the first time this summer.
Staash,
Good to see a fellow Steelers fan weigh in. I'm with you on Willie Parker. I wasn't really high on the Mendenhall pick (I thought they had bigger fish to fry with that #1 pick), but he should help make the running game more consistent. And it won't hurt to rest Parker a little, either. They were using him way too much last year before he got hurt.
As for Sanders, I agree that he was probably the best pure talent at running back of all time. But if I was starting a team from scratch and I had my choice of any running back in history, I'm not sure he'd be my top pick. Yes, he played on a lot of mediocre to bad teams, but I think he had a tendency to hurt his offense at times by giving ground trying to make five guys miss in his own backfield. A team can handle some 2nd and 16's when it's got an Aikman to Irvin/Harper/Novacek/Johnson connection to fall back on. That was not the case for mid-late 90's Detroit Lions teams.
howard replies: "i think it's an interesting point that by and large, the great teams in nfl history (going back to the '50s, at least), teams like the late '50s colts, the '60s packers, the '70s steelers, the '80s and '90s 49ers, the '90s cowboys, etc., had outstanding running attacks, but that doesn't mean that brown, sanders, payton, oj are somehow lesser runners because of the paucity of rings on their collective fingers."
Winning is why they play the game, so of course it has to count. It's why Smith is on the list at all, as far as I'm concerned.
And don't use the phrase "paucity of rings" in connection with Jim Brown. He's the best running back ever by a mile and the performance of his teams is a big part of that.
Speaking of the 49ers, Roger Craig never gets enough attention. Or Thurman Thomas.
With all of that my vote for scariest-for-one-game-at-his-peak RB is still Earl Campbell. What a MONSTER!
If you compare Gale Sayers's and Bo Jackson's stats, they are eerily similar. Almost identical, actually, and both had to leave due to devastating injuries.
I should update the previous post to add that the stats are eerily similar if you start with their rookie seasons and end when Bo left the NFL. Sayers played longer, so it is a year to year comparison that I meant, not a career-to-career.
Amazing video. I wish we could see it at real speed, though.
It seems like at any given time there are about 8 NFL running backs who are really fun to watch and can make your jaw drop.
To realize their full potential, however, they need to be on a really sucky team, like Sanders on the Lions or the Sayers' era Bears.
I love Brian Piccolo. And I'd like all of you to love him, too.
Come on, who didn't cry during Brian's Song? If you didn't, you have no soul.
howard, we've had this discussion before, maybe winning doesn't matter as much for RBs as it does for QBs (not sure why), but it's hard to ignore TDs. Emmitt has Sanders beat nearly 2 to 1. Personally, I feel that more often than not, a great RB creates the impression of a great OL while the reverse is almost never true. A great OL never makes a mediocre RB look great.
Imho, Terrell Davis and Priest Holmes were system guys, not outstanding talents in their own right.
moelarryandjesus, no offense, man, but jim brown won exactly one ring in his career.
Just Karl, i disagree about o-lines: denver, for example, was able to plug people in for years.
i do think we might spend a moment definitionally: one of the reasons i love emmitt smith is that he ran, he caught passes (tough passes, over the middle passes), he blocked, he showed up every sunday, and all that is highly relevant when you consider who do you want on your team.
but in my mind, when we're talking about the best running backs, we're not talking about the best all-round players who play running back, we're talking about running ability: the ability to follow and read a block, to make someone miss, to maximize the return that is available from a hole, to turn nothing into something.
and on that pure running basis, i think that barry sanders was better than smith.
(i'll also note that td runs are partly a function of play-calling - i mean, you want a running back with a nose for the endzone and you want a team that is willing to utilize that and you're discussing marcus allen - and partly a function of the overall quality of the offense and its ability to control field position. (it would, for example, be fascinating to know how many of the smith TDs were 3 yards or less compared to sanders....)
As a Dallas native, I to am a believer in the greatness of Emmitt Smith. But I have to grudingly say that he was the second best Cowboy rb. Tony Dorsett was the all-around best rb to play in a Cowboy uniform, and one of the fastest to ever play...behold...TD:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_9mr8Ib6wc
howard replies: "moelarryandjesus, no offense, man, but jim brown won exactly one ring in his career."
Sure, and I never said he had a bushel of them. But his teams (which did not have solid quarterbacking) were almost always in the mix. They made a handful of championship games, right?
You have to acknowledge the difference between "constant contenders" and "constant crap" which was (mostly) the case with Sanders' and Payton's teams.
I know to some extent this is unfair to a running back who gets stuck on a garbage team. I wonder what Corey Dillon might have done if he'd been with a real team starting out. His Super Bowl season with the Patriots was really something, even with all of those miles on him.
moelarryandjesus, do a little homework: when brown was a rookie, his team when to the champioinship and lost.
and then his last two seasons, '64 and '65, his team won and lost.
that's it, which isn't a bad record, but generally his teams were a couple games out of the running.
as for qbs, he had milt plum, who was not as well regarded at the time as he now would be: he was well ahead of his time, as paul brown called all the plays from the bench and plum threw a lot of short passes, a style not at all popular in the late '50s and early '60s.
the two championship game years, frank ryan was the qb, and ryan was one of the top qbs of his time.
i'll happily concede that being buried on a loser is tough on everyone, which is part of what makes sanders impressive, but as i say, it's not the rings that made brown great, it was his performance as a runner....
i disagree about o-lines
Yes, I believe it was 2006 when you were telling me how good the Jets were going to be after drafting D'Brick and Mangold in the first round....You probably don't remember my theory on drafting only skill players and aquiring big uglies via free agency. Faneca was a good pickup for the Jets.
I always thought Barry Sanders would have been impossible to block for. Nobody knew where he was going to go. Sanders could make people miss and turn nothing into something, but he often turned a 3 yd gain into a 3 yd loss because he didn't follow his blocks. He rarely took only what was given by the defense and, as a result, drives stalled and the Lions punted instead of moving the chains and scoring TDs. The RB is the single most important player for controlling field position. Play calling is a function of down and distance. 2nd and 5 offers much more flexibility than 2nd and 13.
I too would like to see a comparison of short yardage conversion efficiency. Not just for TDs but 1st down runs, as well.
i disagree about o-lines
Yes, I believe it was 2006 when you were telling me how good the Jets were going to be after drafting D'Brick and Mangold in the first round....You probably don't remember my theory on drafting only skill players and aquiring big uglies via free agency. Faneca was a good pickup for the Jets.
I always thought Barry Sanders would have been impossible to block for. Nobody knew where he was going to go. Sanders could make people miss and turn nothing into something, but he often turned a 3 yd gain into a 3 yd loss because he didn't follow his blocks. He rarely took only what was given by the defense and, as a result, drives stalled and the Lions punted instead of moving the chains and scoring TDs. The RB is the single most important player for controlling field position. Play calling is a function of down and distance. 2nd and 5 offers much more flexibility than 2nd and 13.
I too would like to see a comparison of short yardage conversion efficiency. Not just for TDs but 1st down runs, as well.
howard replies: "moelarryandjesus, do a little homework: when brown was a rookie, his team when to the champioinship and lost.
and then his last two seasons, '64 and '65, his team won and lost.
that's it, which isn't a bad record, but generally his teams were a couple games out of the running."
You left out the fact that his second year they were in a tiebreaker to get to the championship. In 1963 they were a game out.
Five seasons within a game of a championship! Lions fans would have killed for ONE with Sanders. Correct me if I'm wrong and they somehow, somewhere, got one.
But Milt Plum and Frank Ryan, in your mind, have become borderline Hall Of Famers? Get real and do some homework of your own. Sanders had one career playoff touchdown. Once the playoffs began he did a LaDainian before LaDainian was even invented.
just karl, you must have me confused in this case: i haven't had anything useful to say about the jets since believing joe willie in '69!
and i have to disagree with you about losing yardage: sanders had 442 runs that lost yards out of 3062 carries (he lost around 1100 yards). this means that on the rest of his carries, he averaged north of 6 yards a carry, because even with those losses he averaged 5. it was a reasonable price to pay.
moelarryandjesus, i no longer have any idea what point you're trying to make other than that your reading skills could be better. i did not call milt plum and frank ryan borderline hall of famers. i simply disputed your assertion that brown played without solid quarterbacking - he did not.
i also wouldn't characterize 3 championship games as a handful, and in a short season, finishing in a tie and losing the playoff and finishing a game out aren't championship games, are they?
since i'm not disputing the greatness of jimmy brown, i'm not sure, as i say, what point you're making, but if the point is that championship games are the hallmark of a great running back, then i assume that you think that jim kiick is every bit jim brown's equal....
btw, just karl, i just did a little searching around and it appears that the range for negative yardage as a percentage of running plays typically seems to run about 5 - 12% (from best team to worst team in that category), so sanders was at the very bottom, but...
as i say, typically, the teams that are down there at the bottom of the percentage of negative yardage carries don't nonetheless average 5.0 yards per carry.
howard concedes: "btw, just karl, i just did a little searching around and it appears that the range for negative yardage as a percentage of running plays typically seems to run about 5 - 12% (from best team to worst team in that category), so sanders was at the very bottom, but..."
But nothing.
This crap about how Sanders was really, really great except when he sucked gets old very quickly. He was great to watch - so what? So was Nolan Ryan, but Nolan Ryan just isn't one of the top 20 pitchers ever. He's a freak.
Barry Sanders ran wild on bad teams and never did anything when it really mattered. Calling him an all-timer isn't just silly, it's an insult to players who actually came through when it counted. Barry Sanders looks up at a whole lot of guys in that department. Marcus Allen, John Riggins, Franco Harris, Tony Dorsett - why would any of them trade their careers for that of Barry Sanders, exactly?
Kudos to Moe for mentioning Earl Campbell. In his prime, he was the sort of back whom, even when everyone in the stadium knew he'd be carrying it, he'd still get the yards.
I'm amazed that no one above has mentioned Sweetness--Walter Payton. Gale Sayers-like, same crappy offensive lines, and did his thing for much longer besides.
John B. just beat me to it. Sayers was amazing, which makes him good enough to be the second best RB in Bears history. You can have your Sanders-Emmitt debate if you like. I'd take Jim Brown and Payton in a second over either of them.
And Tony Doresett may have been one of the fastest ever. But he wasn't quite as fast as Darrell Green.
God damn. This post alone makes you a worthy addition to the blogosphere. (We'll deal with your mistaken Emmitt-love another time.)
An unexpected bonus for this old Midwestern boy was the brief comment from Jack Brickhouse, the voice I grew up with. Warms my heart. Hey hey!
PS to John B.: The only reason no one has mentioned Sweetness is because his greatness is inarguable. Barry, Emmitt you can debate -- nothing to be said about Walter except "yes."
Agree with you Rover - Sweetness, Jim Brown and Ollie Maatson all fit into that inarguable category.
Hammer, thanks for the Pele link too. Even when you've seen those moves before, they still amaze.
As is the case with Sayers. I still remember watching the games with my dad and him jumping out of his chair when Sayers made one of those long mazing runs. While OJ had more power with his moves, Sayers had this incredible acceleration from his moves, just amazing. Great stuff - thanks Mr. Coates.