Yards per season as a Cowboy - rushing

[Thomas82]

Lomas Brown & Kevin Glover

Lomas Brown was the anchor of the "Great Wall Of Florida", one of the all-time great offensive lines in college football history, and then went on to become a Day 1 starter at left tackle for the Lions in his rookie season. A rookie starting on opening day at that position and being trusted to protect the blind side of his quarterback speaks volumes. Right tackle Harvey Salem was another Day 1 starter as a rookie, in 1983 with the Houston Oilers, and started every game for them that season. In fact, he blocked for Earl Campbell in his last Pro Bowl season. Kevin Glover struggled with knee injuries in his first 2 seasons, and was a guard in his first 4 years before moving to center in 1989 and becoming an iron man and eventually an All-Pro.

 

[Thomas82]

That's such a tired argument that has a lot of misconceptions. The Lions offensive line was pretty capable and had 2 outstanding players in Lomas Brown and Glover. Herman Moore was an excellent receiver. Their 2nd and 3rd receivers in Perriman and Morton were quite good too. The biggest difference was consistency at QB with Rodney Pete and Scott Mitchell. Though Scott had a pretty outstanding 1995. 4300 passing yards and 32 tds which was 2nd and 3rd in the league. Go find that kind of season from Aikman. He didn't need it because he had Emmitt.

No doubt the Cowboys were a better overall team, but we can't pretend Barry Sanders had no talent around him and every yard he got was inspite of that. They had talent, the Lions just never ascended and Barry wasn't a factor in 5 of the 6 playoff games he played.

If you have any old preseason magazines from within the first couple of years in the 90's, if you go through them, you'll see that the Lions offensive line was rated higher than the Cowboys unit. A lot of people probably don't remember, but Emmitt Smith used to constantly have to defend his O-line to the media in his early years. Here's a quote from Emmitt that I took from a 1992 preseason edition of Dallas Cowboys Weekly defending them:

"People keep saying my line is sorry. If they're so sorry, how did I lead the league in rushing?"

One other thing that's worth pointing out is that Emmitt Smith had better chemistry with his O-line than Barry Sanders had with his. The real issue is that the Lions O-line was poorly utilized in terms of run blocking, in large part because of the running style of their featured back. You didn't see other backs behind that line regularly taking hits for losses. You also didn't see Lions quarterbacks taking an inordinate amount of sacks compared to other starting QBs for the majority of Barry's tenure. Again, there's no way you run for as many yards as Barry did with no protection. Bottom line, that Lions O-line doesn't get nearly enough credit. The narrative about them is one of the worst misconceptions in football history. Just watch some old games and highlights and you'll see the lies.