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I understand theirs a Emmit appreciation thread but after reading this article, I just want to know ya' take on it. I honestly can't say since I was very young while he was in his best years in Dallas & really only watched him while he played for the Cardinals.
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[h3]Emmitt Smith: great, but not the greatest[/h3]
At a position where most players burn out after about 1,500 career carries, Smith nearly tripled that number of attempts. It's truly amazing.
But beyond his survival factor, Smith's numbers were largely pedestrian, especially by the standards of the game's elite ball carriers. Certainly, his game lacked that certain thrilling explosiveness we've seen from many of the best.
An average running back on an average team, for example, will average 4.0 yards per attempt (YPA) on the ground -- pretty much the universal mean throughout football history. Smith, for his part, averaged a slightly above-the-norm 4.16 YPA. But that's well below the standards of the players we'd list as the greatest ever -- namely, Jim Brown (5.22 YPA) and Barry Sanders (4.99 YPA).
You can argue that Smith's lengthy career brought down his average. And it certainly had a minor impact. But even in his most explosive season, Smith averaged 5.25 YPA (1993) -- barely edging out Brown's average over his entire career. It was the only time in 15 seasons that Smith topped 4.7 YPA.
Brown, given Smiths' number of attempts, was on pace to produce 23,015 yards -- a mark that would have dwarfed Smith's rushing record.
Of course, those numbers are conjecture. More concretely, we see that Brown and Sanders were far more productive and more exciting than Smith in their peak seasons. Here's how each player stacked up in their signature campaigns:
[table][tr][td]
[/td] [/tr][tr][td] [table][tr][td]Player[/td][td]Year[/td][td]Attempts[/td][td]Yards[/td][td]TD[/td][td]YPA[/td][td]YPG[/td][/tr][tr][td]Smith[/td][td]1995[/td][td]377[/td][td]1,773[/td][td]25[/td][td]4.70[/td][td]110.8[/td][/tr][tr][td]Sanders[/td][td]1997[/td][td]335[/td][td]2,053[/td][td]11[/td][td]6.13[/td][td]128.3[/td][/tr][tr][td]Brown[/td][td]1963[/td][td]291[/td][td]1,863[/td][td]12[/td][td]6.40[/td][td]133.1[/td][/tr][/table][/td][/tr][/table]
It's not even close: Smith, at his peak, was merely ordinary compared with Brown and Sanders at their respective bests.
Brown, in 1963, was on pace for a record 2,129 yards projected over a 16-game season. Smith's career-best 1,773 yards in 1995, meanwhile, doesn't even crack the all-time Top 20.
Finally, there's the "explosion" factor -- the raw breakaway ability that makes the best running backs, for our money, a threat to score from anywhere on the field. We touched on this topic in great detail a couple weeks ago, with our look at Tennessee's amazing Chris Johnson.
Honoring Rice And SmithSource: SI[h6]Sports Illustrated's Mark Mravic and Dom Bonvissuto remember what made Jerry Rice and Emmitt Smith so great.[/h6]
Brown scored an incredible 17 touchdowns of 50 yards or more, on a mere 2,621 touches in his career. Sanders turned his 3,414 touches into 16 long-strike scores. Johnson scored seven 50-plus TDs last year alone, on a mere 408 touches. Smith exploded for just six touchdowns of 50 yards or more, despite his record workload of 4,924 touches.
But, as we said, Smith's greatness was not his production at any one time, but that he produced so consistently over such a long haul. The incredible figure of those 4,924 touches -- easily the most ever -- is Smith's signature statistic, the one that they should put right below his brand-new bronze bust. It's a figure we may never see again, at least not while mere humans play football.
Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/20...halloffame/index.html?eref=sihp#ixzz0vxak7kfQ