Absolutely. In any particular game, in which he might have been credited with, say, 150 yards rushing, he probably actually carried the ball for 250 or 300 total yards of moving. He was astonishingly elusive, and never gave up on a play.
That’s pretty typical for a running back. They are usually built like bulldozers because they have the same job as one.
I’m a fairly short guy but I wouldn’t be particularly short if I was a RB in the NFL. Being low to the ground is often an asset for that position.
There are also finesse running backs that try to avoid contact, slip through holes, and use evasion and speed rather than power, but they are the exception. Most of the time those players act as much as receivers than anything anyway.
Worth mentioning, regarding Sanders, is how he behaved after he just finished a monster run or scored a touchdown. He simply tossed the ball to the nearest official.
mmm
I was in attendance at the Cowboys-Lions game in 2010 at AT&T Stadium when Emmitt Smith was presented with his Hall of Fame jacket. One Lions fans bellowed sadly, “BARRY SANDERS!!!” during the ceremony and the entire crowd section nearby laughed.
But yes, purely off of skill/ability alone, I’d rank Barry a bit higher than Emmitt.
You’re probably right about that.
I don’t think there’s any “probably” about it. Emmitt Smith was a great player but he played on great teams, with some of the finest offensive lines you could have assembled. Barry Sanders played for the Lions. Smith, in his first ten years, accumulated 13963 yards rushing; Sanders, in the only ten years he played, rushed for 15269 yards in substantially fewer attempts.
Closest MLB equivalent would be the Chicago White Sox, who have won a postseason series in only one of the 64 seasons since 1957. But on that one occasion they won three series including the World Series.
Of course during much of that time period baseball lagged the other sports in the percentage of teams making the post-season. If it’s harder to get in the playoffs, then it’s harder to win a game or series.
Barry Sanders, if a lifelong Cowboy, behind the 1992-1995 Dallas offensive line, might have finished his career with 20,000 yards.
If the Lions are such perennial losers, why does the NFL insist on scheduling a Detroit game every Thanksgiving? I’m guessing the answer is “tradition”, but that seems like a really flimsy reason.
(Personally I can’t think of two teams I’m less interested in watching than Dallas and Detroit, but that’s who we get stuck with year after year.)
That explains how the tradition started, but doesn’t explain why the NFL continues to schedule a Detroit game every year. On the other hand, Detroit’s Thanksgiving record is better than I would have thought - they’ve only lost five more games than they’ve won (37-42-2).
As an aside, the article mentioned the St Louis Cardinals being awarded Thanksgiving day games in '75 and '77 instead of Dallas. I remember my dad taking me and my brother to the game in '77, against the Miami Dolphins. The Cardinals got clobbered, and we wound up leaving the game around the middle of the 3rd quarter.
Tradition really is the primary reason for it, as well as both the Lions and the Cowboys (as organizations) historically being very happy and willing to play on that day.
Generally speaking, NFL teams hate playing on Thursdays – teams have a very detailed weekly schedule, which includes both game planning for the next game, as well as treatments for injured players (and, once you get a few weeks into the season, it is safe to assume that nearly every player is nursing some level of injury). Playing on Thursday cuts several days out of that preparation schedule, meaning that the game plan has to be completed and installed much more rapidly, and players have even less time to recover from the previous game.