He hasn’t played a game
since 1965. Some of his records have been surpassed. And yet he is the gold
standard for professional football running backs.
It is silly to use words like always,
never or ever when talking about sports records because they can all be broken.
But I always say there will never be a back like Jim Brown again. Ever.
I like Browns’ running back Trent
Richardson, the rookie from Alabama. Hard runner, productive on a team that has
struggled. He recently broke the team record for touchdowns by a Browns rookie,
scoring his 11th TD in his 14th game. Brown shared that record,
having scored 10 TDs as a rookie in 1957.
The NFL played 12 games a year when
Brown broke in.
No disrespect meant toward Richardson.
He is a tremendous football player and would, no doubt, be much more productive
on a better team. But if you compare the numbers as a whole, Jim Brown’s rookie
season is amazing. In those 12 games, Brown rushed for 942 yards (Richardson
has 897 to date), averaged 4.7 yards per carry (to Richardson’s 3.5), averaged
78.5 yards per game (to Richardson’s 64.1) and did all that on 56 fewer
carries.
When OJ Simpson became the first
rusher to top the 2,000 yard mark for a season, he did so during a 16-game
season. The single season record had been Brown’s 1,863 set in 1963, when the
league played a 14-game schedule. Brown’s 1963 numbers seem astonishing, even
now. In 291 carries, Brown scored a dozen touchdowns, averaged 133.1 yards per
game and 6.4 yards per carry. If you give Brown his average per game and give
him two average games, he has another 266 yards. That adds up to 2,129 yards,
which would surpass the current record.
Adrian Peterson, the Minnesota Vikings
back who is threatening the current NFL single season mark, seems unlikely to
reach 2,129 yards this year.
For his career, Jim Brown carried the
ball 2,359 times. He averaged 5.2 yards per carry, a first down every second
carry. He averaged 104.3 yards per
game. This in a career that spanned the 12-game era (first four seasons) and
the 14-game era.
So you can do the math or read it
here: Over his nine seasons, Brown could have played in 26 more games had the
schedule been 16 games long. Multiply his 104.3 yards per game by 26 games and
you add (rounding down) 2,711 more yards to Brown’s career total of 12,312
yards. That total would be 15,023 yards.
The all-time career rushing mark? Emmitt’s
18,355, produced over 15 seasons with the Cowboys and Cardinals. Brown’s
projected career mark would put him third behind Smith, Walter Payton (16,726
yards) and Barry Sanders (15,269).
As it is in the real world, Brown is
still ninth on the all-time list.
In the four decades since he played,
the game has changed. Even the playing fields have changed. But Jim Brown’s
numbers don’t change. They remain the best of all time.
No comments:
Post a Comment