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Terrell Davis is WAAAY TOO HIGH.
I guess my biggest arguement would be with Terrell Davis. He was beast when he was in his prime, but you're looking at a prime that lasted all of 4 years really, and even then only 3 were super quality. Don't get me wrong, but if you're gonna have him on that list with 4 top years, where's Jamal Anderson?I agree with 1, I'd put Faulk #2, because he, like Barry, did a lot of his dirty work when he wasn't on a great team (minus the late years with the Rams). 3 would be Emmitt, 4 would be Bettis/Martin (interchangeable IMO) I think you could probably argue the rest till you're blue in the face. It depends on wether you are going to focus on how good they were in their prime, or longevity over 15 years. I think Corey Dillon definately deserves a shot at this list though if you're looking at sustained performance.
10 is so few...guys like Portis,Edge not even mentioned yet in this thread.
Somehow I don't think a guy who only managed to break 4ypc twice in 9 seasons belongs on that list.
Solid point...but you gotta give an RB credit for playing 16 games/yr for like 8 years, and rushing for over 1000 yards in each (except 2001) He's the definition of work horse. I guess it just goes back to what your definition of "good" is.
Eddie is like CuMart to me. How much value do you put on a workhorse reliability. CuMart lasted longer but neither was that flashy..and Eddie was a punishing runner that was his teams identity. Neither would make my Top 10 list but they deserve to be mentioned for solid play.
Longevity and consistency is the definition of Ricky Watters. Dude was never "the best" but what he did do was rank in the Top 10 RBs for 8 years straight (I believe... it's somewhere along those lines. Someone on staff could help.).I agree that Priest and TD were great in their primes, but their primes didn't last very long. Ricky "Running" Watters is about as underrated as it gets.
Jamal Lewis is nowhere *NEAR* Terrell Davis's level. Neither is Jamal Anderson. To compare: Jamal Lewis, outside of 2003, never managed more than 4.4 ypc. Davis, in his 4 seasons, had 4.7, 4.5, 4.7, and 5.1. Jamal Lewis, outside of 2003, never had more than 1364 yards. Davis had 1538 and 1750 yard seasons to go with his 2000 yarder. Jamal Lewis, outside of 2003, never had more than 7 TDs (and even in 2003 only had 14). Terrell Davis had 7, 13, 15, and 21 in his four productive seasons.Even if you want to be generous and throw out Lewis's season last year (which I don't think you can do), then here are his season-by-season ypg averages.
If its from a FF perspective, take a lot of these guys off the list.Faulk, TD, T.Allen, Holmes, and Emmitt all won you FF championships if you had them and any other average players on you roster during their exception years.
That's a pretty bad example. By at least one measure, Barry was the third best fantasy RB since 1970. (The study was from 2002, but I'm pretty sure that Barry still ranks third.)
As someone who has watched pretty much ever single Denver game since before TD came along, I can assure you that Davis was no product of the system. Obviously, a bunch of really smart people agree with me, because he's being talked of as a possible Hall of Famer. Dr. Z, who I'm sure most people agree has forgotten more about football than most people will ever know, has stated that he thinks TD is a hall of famer. How many people do you suppose would consider Jamal Lewis a Hall of Famer based on his body of work right now? I certainly don't think there would be many.Saying that Lewis has already equalled Davis' career is in my opinion, way off base. Let's compare Lewis's 5 seasons just to Davis's first 4.
Terrell Davis's ypc was never that high because he was never that fast. That is a weakness in his game, true, but it's not fair at all to compare Davis's YPC to that of Portis or Anderson or Bell. The example I'm going to use is Mike Anderson vs. Tatum Bell last year. Bell averaged a full yard more per carry, but Mike Anderson was so much more consistant and successful running the ball (See the chart in this article) that he had a drastically better season.Not only did Terrell Davis have a better ypc than Jamal Lewis, he also has a much better success rate. Jamal Lewis has ranked 38th, 24th, 25th (in his 2000 yard season), and 18th in SR (which measures how boom-or-bust an RB is) over the past 4 years. That means that while he's getting a lot of long runs, he also gets stuffed at the LoS or gets tackled for a meaninglessly small gain more than the majority of other RBs. I don't have the SR numbers for Terrell Davis, but I know that he far outpaces Jamal Lewis (as well as the vast majority of subsequent Denver RBs) in that metric.
That 100 was a minimum. Sure, you could say "well, this many times he almost did it", but that'll be true of everyone. If I changed the threshold to 90 yards (which would give him five 90+ yard games against top-10 defenses, iirc, which still is not an impressive amount), then would you say "well this time he got 85 yards, which was close"?No matter what the threshold is, Jamal Lewis reached it fewer times against good defenses than other "elite" RBs. He's always been the kind of RB who feasts on horrible defenses and disappears against quality opponents. I'm not saying he's a BAD RB, I just think he's a surprisingly average NFL RB who gets drastically overrated based on one very good season.
I still feel like that's an awful lot of excuses and explanations for why a guy didn't make the pro bowl. It's not like it's even that HARD to make the pro bowl- at least 6 RBs make it every season, and over 7 make it on average (including a whopping 9 in '04). All a runner has to do to make the pro bowl is finish in the top 25% of the league (as opposed to All-Pros, which is the list that really means something). Now, Jamal Lewis might have been close a couple of times, or snubbed a couple of times, but even then- that means that he was right on the top 25% border. Not a compelling arguement that he's one of the top 10 RBs of the last 15 years.Another arguement- I don't know if you're familiar with Football Outsiders, but they rank players based on a fancy stat called DVOA that basically measures how you perform on every play, adjusted for the quality of the defense you're facing and the situation in the game and all that fancy stuff. According to FO, Jamal Lewis has never ranked higher than 13th in the NFL on a per-play basis- and that was back in his rookie season. Since then he's ranked 29th, 21st (in his 2000+ yard season), 20th, and 49th. Again, like I've been saying- not an elite runner, just a whole lot of an average runner.
Jerome Bettis is another player who has been pretty overrated- although not as much as Eddie George. He's been consistantly above-average, but never really great (compared to George, who was consistantly average, or even slightly below).Not just agree to disagree..your playoff point made me put TD ahead of Jamal for now. Only way I'd put Jamal even with TD after this year is if he has another big year say 1300+ and playoff run or 1600+ without playoff run. With McNair on board gotta think Jamal has an opportunity..if he doesn't cash in he isn't in TD argument. Still both aren't Top 10 to me. Not too far fetched he could go 1300 as he's done it 3 times in 5 years and without the suspension he was on 1300 yard pace in a 4th year too. So only year he wasn't a 1300 yard runner was last season when he couldn't rehab properly. I think he could go either way this year..one of the more interesting players to see how they respond this fall.I think Jamal,Bettis,Eddie George type get rated a bit higher because of the style they run. They really pound a defense...they aren't always attacking the edges..All kinds of runners have value from Power backs to all around Backs to Scat back types. But the power runners can set up unique things and are so rare to find one that can actually run not just do goal line work that they can have an offense built around what they do. Not to mention if your Defensive backs have to tackle these guys they might not be 100% the next down to cover receivers. Again I wouldn't rate any of these 3 Top 10..just saying they are a bit more than their stats to an offensive game plan..at least in some coaches minds.I still feel like that's an awful lot of excuses and explanations for why a guy didn't make the pro bowl. It's not like it's even that HARD to make the pro bowl- at least 6 RBs make it every season, and over 7 make it on average (including a whopping 9 in '04). All a runner has to do to make the pro bowl is finish in the top 25% of the league (as opposed to All-Pros, which is the list that really means something). Now, Jamal Lewis might have been close a couple of times, or snubbed a couple of times, but even then- that means that he was right on the top 25% border. Not a compelling arguement that he's one of the top 10 RBs of the last 15 years.Another arguement- I don't know if you're familiar with Football Outsiders, but they rank players based on a fancy stat called DVOA that basically measures how you perform on every play, adjusted for the quality of the defense you're facing and the situation in the game and all that fancy stuff. According to FO, Jamal Lewis has never ranked higher than 13th in the NFL on a per-play basis- and that was back in his rookie season. Since then he's ranked 29th, 21st (in his 2000+ yard season), 20th, and 49th. Again, like I've been saying- not an elite runner, just a whole lot of an average runner.
I think you're making some decent arguements, and providing some good numbers, but you aren't going to change my mind on this one. Agree to disagree?
Fair enough. I have to say, you're a pretty pleasant fellow to argue with. Lots of well-reasoned responses, an open mind, and just enough stubbornness to continue belaboring a point after most sane people would have just given up and moved on.
To belabor this point even more, though, I still can't see leaving Terrell Davis off the list. He's one of 4 RBs to win a league MVP during the time frame (Marshall Faulk, Emmitt Smith, and Thurman Thomas were the others). He's one of 7 RBs to win the Offensive PoY award (Faulk x 3, Davis x 2, Sanders x 2, Alexander, Lewis, Holmes, Thurman Thomas). If we're just talking fantasy football, he's one of 4 players to finish in the top 3 in season-ending VBD for 3 straight seasons (Faulk, Holmes, Davis, and Emmitt Smith, who had a 4th straight top-3 season to boot). If you expand the criteria to include top-5 seasons, Tomlinson slips in, too.
Curtis Martin...Not t op 14?Cleaned up my list dropping priest after thinking about perspective longer term.
1- Emmitt
2 Barry
3- LT
4- Faulk
5- Portis
6- Salex
7- RickyWatters
8- Thurman
9- TD
10- Priest
Honorable mention many but Top 4 just missing would be
11- Bettis
12- Tiki
13 -EDGE (TOP 10 if can get the Cards a playoff run)
14 Jamal
That's my story and I'll stick with it till end of this season.
