Applying ANY level of common sense to my statement would clearly tell you that I wasn't "knocking him for making plays", I was knocking him for the plays where his dancing in the backfield led to negative yardage. Obviously I don't think his long runs were a negative. YPC doesn't tell the whole story when it can be so easily skewed by one big run. I'd much rather take a guy that was going to consistently get me 4-6 yards instead of a guy who 4 out of 5 times won't get out of the backfield. Even if that 5th time is a 60 yard run. Consistent gains on the ground keep drives alive and win games.
How many games has Barry Sanders won this year? 0 How many games has Leon Washington won this year? 1 /junc'd
Barry was the goat, I don't care what anybody says. If he didnt quit the game early due to the lions being terrible, he would have shattered Walter Payton's record. Emitt was a great player no doubt, but certainly not in the same way as Sanders. The guy was unbelievable.
He had a 7 time Pro-Bowler at LT and a 3 time Pro-bowler at C for the majority of his career. Obviously the line wasn't as good as the Cowboys' line, but it wasn't exactly terrible either. Sanders holds the NFL record for runs for a loss. My opinion is that I'd rather have a guy I can count on to gain yards consistently than a guy who will lose yards as often as Sanders did. Obviously Sanders was insanely talented, more so than Emmitt, but his style of running led to a lot of negative plays and no gains.
But he would make that 60 yard run. Over. and over. and over again. Averaging over 4.5 ypc in all but two seasons of your career is the definition of "consistent". Never not having 1000 yards in your career is consistent. He also didn't have a HOF supporting cast around him. Sanders > Smith. End of discussion.
Not really. He averaged 20 carries a game and just under 100 yards per game. He'd get that 60-80 yard run and the rest of his carries would average about 2 yards. That doesn't help your team win games. It leads to a long TD or two and a whole lot of punts because you can't keep a drive going.
That was until you started using guarantees in thread topics, but that happened on the Jets forum so I could see how you could miss the reference.
I think Rebel Mike was before my time. The only reason I used "guarantee" was because biologically Barry Sanders Jr. was the next Barry Sanders.
