Record will confirm Emmitt's great, just not greatest
Aug. 26, 2002
By Pete Prisco
SportsLine.com Senior Writer
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Barring injury, Dallas Cowboys running back Emmitt Smith will take a handoff, most likely in October, and run himself to the top of the NFL career-rushing list. He will pass the great Walter Payton and look down on the careers of the best who ever played.
Smith won't dance or prance or act the fool. He is cool beyond that, not one of those look-at-me players who have come to dominate highlight shows.
Emmitt Smith should catch Walter Payton sometime in October. (Allsport)
When he does take down the record -- he trails Payton by 539 yards -- teammates will mob him. The networks will cut to the record-breaking run as soon as it happens and Smith, in his usual classy way, will thank his family, Cowboys fans, teammates, his great offensive linemen from the past decade and anybody else he has time to mention.
What will be left then will be to decide where the feat puts Smith among the best RBs in history. The rushing yards will say he's tops, but the reality is that Smith might not even be the best back to wear the star on the side of his helmet, a distinction Tony Dorsett backers would claim.
Taking down Payton is special, but in studying how Smith got to the top, it's time to offer what probably isn't the politically-correct thing to say when an entire league is ready to fawn over one of the classiest players to put on the pads:
Smith's record is overrated.
There, it's said. This isn't meant to diminish what Smith will accomplish because it is indeed special.
Looking below at Jim Brown, O.J. Simpson, Eric Dickerson and all the other great backs is a tribute to the player who showed up for work each week, playing with the toughness needed to take a pounding for 12 years. Especially amazing considering the "life expectancy" of a running back is less than five years.
This record, though, is a longevity record, and longevity records show desire, passion, toughness, mental awareness, maturity, physical conditioning and, perhaps most of all, luck.
They don't always show greatness.
Disagree? Well, how many would consider Jets quarterback Vinny Testaverde one of the 10 best quarterbacks of all time? His wife probably wouldn't even put him on that list.
Yet if the 38-year-old Testaverde plays three more seasons, throwing for a total of 10,000 yards in those three years, he would finish his career with 49,059 passing yards. He would rank fourth all time, behind only Dan Marino, John Elway and Warren Moon.
Testaverde, one of the most-maligned passers to play the game, would be looking down at Johnny Unitas, Dan Fouts, Joe Montana, Troy Aikman and Steve Young, some of the best to play. Testaverde certainly is not better than any of them. But with three more seasons he will have played 19 years.
Longevity.
The same holds true for Smith.
Like Testaverde, Smith gets respect for having the skill and desire to play as long as he has. But it also takes a lot of luck. Why luck?
What makes Smith avoid major injury, allowing him to break the record in the same year when Denver's Terrell Davis likely has to call it a short career because of bad knees? Doesn't luck have something to do with it?
Nobody can ever predict when the little ball in the injury roulette wheel will come up on double zero, signifying the dreaded ACL for a running back. Smith has, for the most part, avoided the major injury, allowing him the games to move past Payton -- who held the record because of his longevity.
Payton played 13 seasons and 190 games; Smith has played 185 games in his 12 seasons.
Assuming Smith averages his career per-game mark of 87.5 yards, he would break the record in Game No. 192, the seventh game this season against Arizona.
More than likely, assuming he can get off to a good start against the expansion Texans, he will break it in the 191st game, that coming against Carolina. Payton's per-game average was 88 yards, showing a definite parallel to their careers.
They are two of the best backs of all time in terms of yards, yet they aren't close to 100 yards per game, which is still a magical per-game number. That's why this record is a bit overrated.
Brown, who is sixth on the career-rushing list, is the reason it is.
In his nine seasons, Brown averaged 104.3 yards per game, the only rusher among the top 10 all time to average over 100 per game.
Brown is sixth on the rushing list, but he cut short his career after just nine seasons, still in his prime. Brown walked away to make movie after rushing for a career-high 1,544 yards in his last season in 1965.
Had he played four more seasons (giving him 13 like Payton and now Smith), Brown would be far and away the leader on this list.
Using his per-game average, and multiplying it by 56 (14 for each season since that was the number of games per season back then), he would have finished with 18,153 yards. Smith would be forced to play this season and next season to have a chance to break the record.
Moreover, he would have to do it in more than 200 games compared to Brown getting his 18,153 in 174 games (the 118 he played plus the mythical 56). Smith has played 185, so assuming he averaged the 87.5 per game, it would take him to his 208th game to reach that total.
That's why Brown is the best of all time. The only other back among the top 10 to come close to averaging 100 per game is Barry Sanders, who is third on the rushing list. He averaged 99.79 yards per game in his 10 seasons, retiring in his prime after the 1998 season.
Sanders, like Brown, walked away after an impressive final season, rushing for 1,491 yards. Eric Dickerson, who is fourth in career rushing yards, averaged 92.6 per game.
Behind the Numbers
Player Years G Att Yds Avg Yd/G TD
Payton 13 190 3,838 16,726 4.4 88 110
Smith* 12 185 3,798 16,187 4.3 87.5 148
Brown 9 118 2,359 12,312 5.2 104.3 106
* Still active.
There are several other statistics that can be used to show that Smith's breaking of the record -- and Payton's holding it for that matter -- are longevity based.
The most significant of those is the yards per carry.
Of the top six backs, Smith and Dorsett are tied for lowest per-carry average at 4.3. By comparison, Brown averaged an amazing 5.2 per rush and Sanders averaged 5.0. Payton was at 4.4. Simpson, who ranks 11th on the rushing list, averaged 4.7 per rush in his career.
That shows that Smith got the carries. He has averaged 316.5 carries a season, by far the tops of all the backs. Granted he played in the era of 16-game seasons, but Sanders did, too, and he only averaged 306.2 carries a season.
Smith's 20.5 carries a game tied Dickerson for the highest per-game average, although Payton (20.2), Brown (20.0) and Sanders (20.0) all got 20 per game.
Smith has to be commended for the number of carries he's been able to handle, a testament to his ability to stay on the field and play through pain.
Dorsett, who is fifth all time in rushing yards, averaged only 17 carries per game. While his per-carry average is the same as Smith's at 4.3, he wasn't able to handle the same type of load that Smith has during his career.
Some other interesting numbers:
Smith has just one 200-yard game in his career, getting 237 against the Eagles in 1993. That's the same number of 200-yard games as a guy named LeShon Johnson and one less than Greg Bell. By comparison, Simpson has six 200-yard games to top the list, and Brown and Sanders and Houston's Earl Campbell each had four.
The highest per-carry average that Smith has had in one season is 5.3 in 1993, which is a heck of an average. But Brown averaged an amazing 6.4 in 1963, second only to the 8.4 Beattie Feathers averaged in 1934. Sanders is next after Brown at 6.1 in 1997, with Simpson at 6.0 in 1973. Brown and Sanders averaged over 5 yards per carry five times in their careers. Simpson did it three times. Payton, like Smith, did it once. Sanders, Simpson and Dickerson all went over 2,000 yards in a season in which they averaged over five per carry. Terrell Davis is the only other back to go over 2,000 yards in a season. Smith's best year was in 1995 when he gained 1,773 yards, but it took him 377 carries to get there for a 4.7 average.
Smith does hold the mark for rushing touchdowns in a career with 148. He is second all-time in touchdowns scored with 159 to Oakland receiver Jerry Rice, who has 196 touchdowns. Smith has averaged 12.3 touchdowns per season, which is easily the best of any of the backs.
Smith's accomplishments are commendable and deserve some of the attention they are receiving. They are not, however, numbers that make him the best back of all time.
Longevity numbers rarely signal that.
It's debatable as to who is the best of all time, but it's hard to argue with the numbers Brown put up during his time. True, he was playing in a different era, where he was as big as the defensive players attempting to tackle him, but he ran over people and ran away from defensive backs.
Few have ever done both.
As for Smith, he has done his running with class.
After coming into the league with a little chip on his shoulder -- he wasn't exactly the best with the media -- he has grown and matured into a good man. When the Cowboys were winning Super Bowls in the 1990s, they gave new meaning to phrase Wild, Wild West.
Many Cowboys had run-ins with the law, their excesses with drugs, women and sin detailed in the courts and in the press. Smith somehow always remained above it, a class act all the way.
That's why his record chase has been so well received. This wasn't the surly Brown or the think-about-himself Simpson. Like Payton, Smith is viewed as doing it with dignity, not throwing women over balconies, nor would you expect him to later become involved in the murder trial of the century.
For that, Smith deserves much of the attention he will get. But when he does break the mark, and the game is stopped to give him his due, let's remember one very important fact:
It's a longevity thing, and longevity marks are always going to be a bit tarnished.
. That was just funny for some reason I can't pinpoint.
