1985 Chicago Bears, #72 William “Refrigerator” Perry.
The guy was as big as a house.
Hand him the ball in short yardage situations, and he would simply crush the defense, gaining 1-3 yards before falling over.
Once he proved he could single-handedly flatten an entire defensive line, he became a great decoy for play-fakes.
I’ve never seen anyone else try to copy that. Why not?
Lots of reasons.
First, Perry was in many ways a very rare specimen. While he was simply enormous for his era, he was also insanely athletic for a guy that big. He could run, accelerate, and leap unlike any other men of his size of the period.
One could compare Warren Sapp’s early athletic skills to him. Most other 325+ lb. guys were fairly slow and clumbsy.
Secondly, Ditka’s decision to use him was somewhat revolutionary. As a result, other teams didn’t know what to do about it. That’s not to say they couldn’t stop him, just that they hadn’t sorted out how yet. You will notice, when watching old Bears film, that he often had him in the backfield as a diversion or even as a receiver after play action. The reason for this is that if they’d simply tried to use him as a battering ram every time, teams would have been able to stack the middle and stop him using their own big strong guys.
Basically, he wasn’t unstoppable. But, if you weren’t prepared for it, he was pretty close to it.
Also, teams did copy it. They still do on certain occasions with the right personel. Nowadays teams will put massive D linemen in the back field, though usually as lead blockers under the same premise. After Perry, some full-time running backs were almost as big. Iron-head Heyward, Barry Word and a couple other guys specialized as battering rams.
The biggest reason you don’t see it in the pure form these days is ude to the incredible speed employed by most defenses. A guy like Perry, even with his relatively impressive speed, simply couldn’t move fast enough to isolate a weak spot before 250 lb linebackers and 210 lb safeties crash the hole.
Even a guy like Gilbert Brown at close to 400 pounds with some agility would be stuffed pretty easily by the combo Ray Lewis, Ed Reed and whoever else gets into the gap.
However, I think it might be interesting to see a coach give it a try against some defenses.
My question is why you don’t see more running backs trying to leap over the pile on goalline like Payton and Marcus Allen.
I agree that Perry was more athletic than other guys his size.
If you follow rugby, Jonah Lomu stood out in a similar way.
He stood 6ft 5" tall, weighed 19 stone and could run the 100 metres in 10.8 seconds.