Emmitt's last stand

[Nerm222]

After the induction, I wanted to take a few moments to discuss the issue about where Emmitt stands as an all time RB. I have been a life long Cowboys fan, so I am biased on this issue. However, I also spent many years in Michigan, during the late 90s, while the "Emmitt vs Barry" debate raged.

I got to see a lot of Barry.... every week. He had moves that Emmitt couldn't touch. However, he was a huge reason that Detroit was a loser. I personally believe that Emmitt's rushing TD record was a bigger accomplishment than his yardage record. There is nothing tougher than running the ball when the D knows what is coming, but Emmitt could do that.

With Barry, he was a huge liability in the red zone. Take a look at his stats in his final year. He had 343 carries and 4 td's. His FB had 18 carries and 6 tds that year. Now, this was a bad year for Barry, but it is a fitting end to his career. He was always a liability in the red zone. Take any FB/RB off any practice squad in the league... and they will be better than Barry near the goal line. Barry simply ran the wrong way when he needed to gain important yards. If the problem was the OL's fault.... why did his coaches take him out and give the ball to the "scrubs" when they needed points?

Besides Barry.... can you think of any other player in the HOF that you can say.... "He was great, but you dont want him in the game near the end zone"
On offense or defense... I cant think of another player that you need to take out of the game when you get inside the 20.

Also, who do you want on 1st and 10 to start a drive? Again, Barry tended to run the wrong way. Where Emmitt would dive into a pile for a 2 yd gain, Barry would try to make something out of nothing and end up with a 2 yd loss. 2nd and 12-13 yards to go was a common scenario with Barry... not a winning scenario. However, those 2 yard losses for Barry tended to stay on the cutting room floor, so fans just got to see the highlights.

Watching Jimmy Johnson in the years following his divorce from the Cowboy's, he would always correct reporters when discussing Barry/Emmitt. When someone would say "Barry is the best running back". He would respond... "He is the best runner, Emmitt is the best running back". Barry was a highlight guy. Emmitt helped his team win. Barry was still in his prime when he retired, but his team scored more points and won more games the next year... after he left.

Finally, Im just going to touch on the OL briefly, as those issues have been discussed at length. IMO, Barry's OL had much more success when their RB's didn't run away from the LOS. Obviously the Cowboy's OL never made any of Emmitt's backups look even average. So, that’s not much of an issue to me.

]If you want highlights, Barry was better, by far. If you want to win, take Emmitt every time.


P.S. - The obvious choice for best of all time tends to be Jim Brown. No one is close as far as domination of the game. However, no one discusses OL when it comes to this issue. After Brown retired, his replacement won a few rushing titles at about the same YPC that Brown had. Obviously, the defenders against Brown were slower, lighter, and weaker than Emmitt’s defenders. It would have been nice to see what Emmitt could do against 250 pound DTs.

 

[EMMITTnROY]

agreed with every word..

 

[pgreptom]

You seriously make Barry sound as if the only time he gained yardarge was on 2nd down when he wasn't near the red zone. Let's not forget Barry was a 10 time Probowler, and 6th time All-Pro bowler. He did not get those accolodates by running backwards every play as you suggested. You didn't even mention one good thing about Barry.

How about with "all the running backwards" Barry did, he still averaged 5.0 ypc over the course of his career. How about he's a Hall of Famer? How about he ended two seasons averaging 6.1 and 5.7 yards per carry?

And how about this:

You speak of him as if they took him out in the redzone.... but you failed to mention over the course of his short 10 year career, he touched the endzone 109 times? Let's recap his years here(good years).. 16('91), 14('89), 13('90), 11('95,'96,'97).. Only 5 times in his career did he have less than 10 touchdowns.. 9 in 92', 3 in 93'(he was injured that year), 7 in 94', and 4 in 98'.

You know, I love Emmitt too.. but I can definitely sniff a homer a mile away, and my man you are it. The stuff you're posting in this thread is a downright disrespectful to a great player. He may have not been the most 'total' HB in the league, but ****** if he wasn't a great one. I'd take Emmitt every day for heart, and the fact that he never gave up. But regardless of who I would take, I respect both runners for how different they were - but much more than that, how great they were(respectively).

 

[THUMPER]

P.S. - The obvious choice for best of all time tends to be Jim Brown. No one is close as far as domination of the game. However, no one discusses OL when it comes to this issue. After Brown retired, his replacement won a few rushing titles at about the same YPC that Brown had. Obviously, the defenders against Brown were slower, lighter, and weaker than Emmitt’s defenders. It would have been nice to see what Emmitt could do against [/COLOR]250 pound DTs.

Every time I see/hear this argument it shows just how narrow people's thinking is.

Just a short and sweet comment on it then: If Emmitt had played in the late 50s-early 60s he probably would have weighed 175-180, not 205-212, making your argument completely irrelevant.

The main reason why players today are so much bigger and stronger than those of earlier eras is because of the conditioning and diet that they have. Very few players worked out with weights back then because the belief was that too much muscle would make them stiff and inflexible. That was probably true with the free-weights they had which made it difficult to focus on particular muscle groups like they do now with resistance machines.

Players in that era had to have jobs in the offseason because they didn't make enough (except the big name offensive stars) to support their families throughout the year. Most worked on farms, sold cars or insurance, some wrestled, some were mechanics, etc. They didn't workout year round like players today do. They showed up to Training Camp and THEN worked on getting into playing shape.

Diet was also a big difference, most players just ate a lot of calories, well balanced meals for their day, but nothing like the meals guys eat now. Most players gained weight during the offseason and had to whittle it down in TC. Most of TC had to do with conditioning rather than learning & running plays.

Everyone downgrades Jim Brown's achievements with the same stupid argument that he was as big as the LBs and the DLs were only 15-25 lbs bigger than him. So what? Lots of RBs back then were 210-230 lbs but only Brown dominated like he did.

I'll give you a sample of what I'm talking about, using 1961 NFL as a base. I will go with the top FB on each team (FBs back then were not simply blockers like they tend to be now and also Brown was a FB).

Browns - Jim Brown: 6'2" 228
Giants - Alex Webster: 6'3" 225
Eagles - Clarence Peaks: 6'1" 220
Cards - John David Crow: 6'2" 215
Stealers - John Henry Johnson: 6'2" 215
Cowboys - Amos Marsh: 6'1" 208
Commanders - Don Bosseler: 6'1" 212
Packers - Jim Taylor: 6'0" 215
Lions - Nick Pietrosante: 6'2" 225
Colts - Joe Perry: 6'0" 195
Bears - Rick Casares: 6'2" 225
49ERs - J.D. Smith: 6'1" 200
Rams - Joe Marconi: 6'2" 225
Vikings - Mel Triplett: 6'1" 215

As you can see, several FBs were Brown's size or within a couple of pounds of him, but while they were very good players, they were nowhere near the level of Brown. They were similar in size and ran against the same DLs but they weren't putting up numbers like Brown did. Jim Taylor is the only one to come anywhere near Brown but he played for the Packers who dominated that era.

There were other FBs who were bigger but they usually weren't the starters on their team.


All that said, I believe Emmitt was the greatest RB of all time, with Brown a VERY close second.

 

[Yakuza Rich]

I would be really curious to see a statistic of how teams who lead the league in the % of plays that are for 0 yards or negative yards do each year and how that correlates to winning and losing in the NFL.

I think that it would be a HUGE factor and I would gladly put together the stats if I had them available.

Barry is the all-time leader in carries for a loss. I think that is such a gigantic factor in the game of football (but perhaps I'm wrong statistically) and that's why I don't have Barry Sanders in my top 10 of all-time RB's.






YR

 

[Hook'em#11]

I will take Emmitt over all of em. Again and again.

 

[Ashwynn]

To be truthful. I always thought Sanders was a dancer. Sure he had highlight reels, volumes of them. But for every great play there was a -2 yard loss play that was just as exciting. I dont know if he ever really hit the hole, he pranced and waited for a block and if it wasn't there, he would dance on over to the other side and check things out, very good east and west, but only occasionally good north and south.

Given all things I dont even consider Sanders to be in the great RB class. Hes good and a ticket seller, but I would never build my franchise around a Barry Sanders if my goal was anything other then dollars. I would around an Emmitt Smith.

 

[The Great Number 8]

Because football is a team game, you'll never know. If Barry had Aikman and Irvin/Novacek to make the safeties and linebackers play it honestly, maybe he doesn't lose so many yards behind the line. As Michael said "pick your poison, you could die through the air or die on the ground,". You think anyone on Detroit was saying that?

Scott Mitchell, Rodney Peete, Erik Kramer...and you wonder why the Lions were losers?

He didn't move piles like Emmitt did, and he wasn't nearly as good in short yardage situations, and not close to the receiver Emmitt was in his career. But any guy who averaged 5 yards a carry in his career consistenly carrying over 300 times a season was going forwards a whole lot more than he was going backwards.

I don't know who was better but Barry Sanders was a damn fine football player.

 

[Chuck 54]

If you take the top rbs in the HOF, an argument can be made for several as the best rb ever...Jim Brown, Eric Dickerson, Earl Campbell, Barry Sanders, Emmitt Smith, Gayle Sayers.

There are arguments for and against them all. I would personally take Gayle Sayers over all of them if I could have any rb on my team. He did things that no one had ever done before, things that Emmitt couldn't do. As a rookie, he dominated the NFL, scoring TD's in every way imaginable. He was a TD machine who ran full speed all the time, even gliding sideways, yet he was a tough inside runner as well with the high knees of Calvin Hill. But the argument against him as the best of all-time is that his career wasn't long enough and his knee injury changed his career...bad luck. Today that same injury would mean very little other than one lost season.

If you wonder what people are talking about when they mention that Felix is setting up the next defender, not the one in front of him, and you aren't sure what it means, try viewing a Gayle Sayers highlight reel...he seemed to be popping through the line and already setting up the DB while contending with the LB. He said he never worried about the guy trying to tackle him, he'd already beaten that guy...he was setting up the secondary guys.

Emmitt was a great great RB, and he would have been great on any team. He could run, block, catch a little, and score TDs. And he was tough. The best RB ever? I think it's best to just say he's the all-time rushing yards leader and leave it at that. If Jim Brown could have made the money playing football that Emmitt did, he probably would have stuck with it...If Jim Brown plays out his career, Emmitt never touches his stats...not even close.

Emmitt and Walter Peyton were both great team RBs and they both did it for a long time, which is why they held the rushing title, but neither of those guys dominated the NFL the way Jim Brown did, nor in my opinion, the way Sayers did. Combine Emmitt with Sanders speed and moves and you have Gayle Sayers, imo.

 

[Idgit]

Emmitt's behind Jim Brown and a shade behind Walter in my book. And then there's a significant gap after Emmitt.

 

[Thomas82]

agreed with every word..

So do I, and I have a blog entry on this very topic if anybody is interested in reading it.

 

[jswalker1981]

I just looked at the stats from 1990-1999, and looked at the YPC for any back with over 50 carries. Here are the top YPC for that time, just to show how that "great" offensive line did for everyone:

1 - Emmitt Smith, 1993, 5.25 ypc
2 - Chris Warren, 1998, 4.93 ypc
3 - Emmitt Smith, 1995, 4.70 ypc
4 - Emmitt Smith, 1992, 4.59 ypc
5 - Emmitt Smith, 1991, 4.28 ypc
6 - Emmitt Smith, 1999, 4.25 ypc
7 - Emmitt Smith, 1998, 4.18 ypc
8 - Emmitt Smith, 1997, 4.11 ypc
9 - Chris Warren, 1999, 4.07 ypc
10 - Emmitt Smith, 1994, 4.03 ypc
11 - Tommie Agee, 1990, 4.02 ypc
12 - Sherman Williams, 1996, 3.90 ypc
13 - Emmitt Smith, 1990, 3.89 ypc
14 - Sherman Williams, 1997, 3.87 ypc
15 - Emmitt Smith, 1996, 3.68 ypc
16 - Derrick Lassic, 1993, 3.59 ypc
17 - Sherman Williams, 1998, 3.44 ypc
18 - Lincoln Coleman, 1994, 2.81 ypc

Chris Warren is the only other RB in the top 100 in career rushing yards (25th).

Chris Warren finished with 7400 rushing yards (most with Seattle).
Tommie Agee finished with 309 rushing yards.
Sherman Williams finished with 1162 rushing yards.
Lincoln Coleman finished with 312 rushing yards.

 

[tyke1doe]

You can never reach a consensus on topics like this.
I still think Jim Brown is the best ever. But Emmitt has the rushing record, and that's without dispute.

 

[Thomas82]

You can never reach a consensus on topics like this.
I still think Jim Brown is the best ever. But Emmitt has the rushing record, and that's without dispute.

My top 3 are Jim Brown, Walter Payton, and Emmitt Smith. A case can be made for all 3 of them as being the best ever.