I'm surprised nobody mentioned Gale Sayers who would have been by far the best RB ever if not for a knee injury.
I mentioned him as the 2nd best ever just about 5 posts back and he was mentioned about 2 posts again after that.
[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjO_QfFYV78[/YOUTUBE] theres alot of IF's. staying healthy is what earned Curtis Martin's numbers.
Yeah, Bo Jackson may have ended up the best too although I personally think it would have been Sayers. Hell, he ran for 6 TDs in a game as a rookie. He really was unstoppable.
There's no clear winner in this debate. Jim Brown the most physically dominating RB of all time. Barry Sanders, the most electric back of all time. Payton the most well rounded back of all time. And many more can be in this debate if you go through the list.
i was going to quote this one earlier but this is basically how i feel. i dont think theres a BEST EVER. thats always debatable.
Barry Sanders is the only runningback ever to be non-line dependent. To me that makes him the best of all time. People who didn't see him play don't understand how the amazing numbers were generated. Sanders would have 10-12 carries a game where he got stopped at the line of scrimmage or in the backfield. He'd have another 8 or so where he got mild positive yardage of 1 to 4 yards or so. Then he'd have the two long gainers, often very long runs, where he literally ran through the other team because he'd finally found a crack in what was usually a congested line of scrimmage. This is not saying that the Lion's offensive lineman were bad, but with a few exceptions they weren't particularly good either. If you'd put Sanders on the Steelers teams of the 1990's he'd have rushed for 2,000 yards every year and probably would have had close to a 3k year in there somewhere.
If If If. Going down that road is ultimately a road to nowhere since you can play the If game with Payton too. Sanders played with some good offensive lines that helped him achieve what he achieved. No running back achieves rushing records w/o the help of his teammates and in particular his offensive line.
Agreed. I typically say Barry is my all time favorite, or "in my opinion" the best because I know that everyone has their own opinion. That said, I've enjoyed reading the debate in here and think alot of it is also generational. While I can respect and appreciate what Jim Brown did, I grew up watching Barry! Oh, and THANK YOU to whoever said Emmit's name should not be in this discussion!
Bump, ever since the injury people have forgotten how godly Leon was.. Tt was a freak injury come on this guy is a 1 man offense! Please go watch some highlights or something, just remember how Leon was our whole offense before he went out....he has a rare ability and I want him back.
Leon's injury was a broken bone. That likely makes it a freak occurrence, since repeat broken bones just don't happen very often even at runningback. If he still has the same mobility and quickness that he had going into last season when he gets to camp I think he's just as likely to have a breakout year.
If he's ahead of schedule (as has been reported) I think that increases his chance of being close to 100% the player he was before the injury. Him and Greene in the backfield is gonna be nasty
Now that Sanchez is more comfortable as a QB, LW can be a much bigger weapon prior to his injury. Lets face it Sanchez was incapable for the majority of the season to adequately use Leon. If Sanchez can eventually use the checkdown option effectively Leon can be a force. Still Leon had a significant injury and lets see him come back first.
So would one say a broken leg is worse for a RB than a blown up knee (ACL, PCL, etc.)? I have no idea how this injury is to affect Leon's speed and agility but I'm hoping it's not as bad as torn knee ligaments, those are career killers for RBs. Enlighten me. I'm going to be optimistic and assume Leon comes back at full strength. I still consider him our biggest offensive threat.
Provided no one signs Leon to a RFA offer with a massive poison pill, Leon and Greene are going to be fuuuuuuun to watch next season.
Wouldnt that require some pretty high draft picks for us? And wouldnt that be pretty nice? LW is good, but getting extra top picks could outweigh that.
Broken bones are much easier for any athlete to come back from as opposed to a torn ligament. A bone bone is repaired by simply resetting the break, and at most placing a pin to stabalise it. The bone heals quickly and is stronger than ever, only rehab needed is to build back up the muscles around it, which is no big deal. A torn ligament often needs to be repaired by grafting tissues, and placing them along the tear. This ligament takes a long time to heal. And even after it heals may never be as functional as it originally was, just bc it is a foreign body. So in short leon's prognossis is much better than if it was a ligament issue.
