Sunday, February 5, 2012

Super Bowl Running Backs Vs. The Greatest of All Time


Newk’s Bender on the Game

Throwing you a bender because I just thought you should know…

With the Super Bowl upon us and the New England Patriots playing for the championship without having a running back going over 700 yards for the season, it surely signifies how the game has changed from the days when Jim Brown established himself as the greatest running back of all time. 

The Patriot runners this year (Green-Ellis, Ridley, and Woodhead) combined for 1459 yards, a total Jim Brown exceeded by himself in three different seasons!
In this pass happy era of professional football where the quarterback is the most essential part of any team, don’t you think that there are times when Brady, Manning and Brees would love to just turn around and hand the ball to Jim Brown? Imagine the glee of head coaches and offensive coordinators as they call plays allowing Jim Brown to pound the line and achieve 5.2 yards per carry and 104.3 yards per game, on average!

While other running backs had phenomenal skills and careers, nobody compares to the consistency and excellence over an entire career. Walter Payton, Emmitt Smith fall woefully short and even the great Barry Sanders is behind Brown regarding average per carry and average per game. 

As Jim Brown’s career spanned an era where NFL teams played only 12, and then 14, games per season, we must look at averages in order to compare the runners equally. In 118 games, Brown was able to run for over 100 yards per game and over 5 yards per carry. Only Sanders approaches those numbers with 99.8 and 5.0 yards respectively. Again, Payton (88/4.4) and Smith (81.2/4.2) trail far behind despite gaudy career totals.

To lead his league in rushing for 8 of the 9 years he played shows his dominance over the competition which is another barometer that allows us to compare eras.  In just nine seasons, Brown retired and left the NFL as the record holder for both single-season (1,863 in 1963) and career rushing (12,312 yards), as well as the all-time leader in rushing touchdowns (106), total touchdowns (126), and all-purpose yards (15,549).
 
By contrast, Payton led the league once out of 13 seasons; Sanders just once also in 10 campaigns and Smith led the league 4 out of his 15 years.

So comparing Jim Brown to modern era runners allows us to see how he still ranks as the greatest running back of all time. Stacking him up against the most current edition of runners also shows us how much the game has changed, how unique Jim Brown was, and how we will never see a football player of his magnitude and dominance again.

All this because I know more about nothing…

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