Frank Gore is already #5 on the career rushing list, while Adrian Peterson is currently in 12th place (but two years younger). In recent months, I’ve compared Gore and Peterson, as their careers which have been both very similar and very different.  Both had severe knee injuries and might be the two best running backs to ever recover from ACL surgery, and both players are going to wind up very high on the career rushing list. Gore is now the favorite — surprisingly — to finish with more career rushing yards.  On the other hand, Gore is much more of a compiler and Peterson a shining star.  Gore ranks 34th in career rushing yards per game, while Peterson ranks 4th in that category.

So who do you prefer? The guy who ranks 5th in career rushing yards or 4th in career rushing yards per game?  Or, if you like, there’s LeSean McCoy. Gore and Peterson already have crossed the 12,000-yard mark, and McCoy is likely to do so as well; either way, they are the three active players with the most rushing yards, making them a natural source of comparison. And assuming McCoy gets there, they will also be the only three players from this era (not including Tomlinson or younger players) to hit the 12,000-yard mark.

McCoy’s highs weren’t as high as Peterson, but they were a little higher (two first-team All-Pro seasons, a third season as a top-three fantasy running back, six Pro Bowls in the last seven years) than Gore.  And his career volume probably won’t match Gore, but it will probably be higher than Peterson.  McCoy is currently 29th in career rushing yards and 22nd in career rushing yards per game.

Let’s compare the three players year-by-year, starting at age 21. [continue reading…]

Bill Barnwell wrote an interesting article where he tried to identify the best running back in football. His article made me wonder: which player will gain the most rushing yards over the next decade?

It probably makes sense to start with a look at history. I suspect you would have been able to guess that LaDainian Tomlinson had the most rushing yards from 2002 to 2011, but what about from 1982 to 1991? Or from 1960 to 1969? The table below shows each leader in rushing yards for every ten year period, along with their age and NFL experience during their first season during the relevant period.

Tomlinson entered the league in 2001, but he was so productive in his first nine years that he also led the league in rushing yards gained from 2000 to 2009. O.J. Simpson, Eric Dickerson and Barry Sanders each led the league in rushing yards for ten year periods … when they spent the first three seasons of those decades playing college ball. Jim Brown was even more impressive, as he led the NFL in rushing yards from 1953 to 1962, even though he was just 17 years old in 1953 and did not enter the league until 1957.

But Steve Van Buren has them all beat: he entered the league in 1944, but led all players in rushing from 1938 to 1947. As you may recall, he’s still the Eagles franchise leader in rushing touchdowns. We can also look at the leaders over the last nine seasons, although obviously the ten-year windows are not closed in these cases:

So what can we make of the results? The average running back was just a hair under 22 at the start of his ten year period. Nearly half of all running backs were not yet in the NFL at the start of their ten year run, although that is likely to change now. Those players were in other football leagues, serving their country, or in college, but all three of those factors are less prevalent now. Star running backs leave college a year or two earlier than they did a generation ago, which will make it slightly less likely that a player will not be in the NFL at the start of the next ten-year run.

Fourteen players were rookies at the start of their great stretch, and another 10 were second year players, making nearly 80% of the players having just one year or less of experience in the summer before the start of their streak. What does that mean for the stretch from 2012 to 2021? Trent Richardson is the ideal candidate, as the new Browns running back just turned 21. Last year’s Alabama running sensation, Mark Ingram, was 22 in 2011, while Dion Lewis and Jacquizz Rodgers were the top 21-year-old running backs last season.

No running back started his 10-year stretch atop the leaderboard at the age of 26, and only Hall of Famers Steve Van Buren, Joe Perry, Jim Brown, Walter Payton, Eric Dickerson and Emmitt Smith were 25 at the start of a streak. That makes it pretty easy to rule out Maurice Jones-Drew, Matt Forte, Adrian Peterson and Chris Johnson, all of whom will be 27 in 2012. Ray Rice (25 in 2012), Arian Foster (26), Marshawn Lynch (26) and Ryan Mathews (25) are probably suckers’ bets, too.

LeSean McCoy, Beanie Wells and DeMarco Murray all are entering their age 24 season, making them perhaps the best hope among the young runners with NFL experience. On the other hand, along with Richardson, Doug Martin, David Wilson, Ronnie Hillman and Lamar Miller made the 2012 draft strong at the position. In the NFC West, Isaiah Pead and Kendall Hunter (or LaMichael James) could be the future for their teams for the next decade. As always, it’s too early to say.

In the collegiate ranks, South Carolina’s Marcus Lattimore is expected to be the cream of the 2013 class, with Auburn transfer Michael Dyer and Wisconsin’s Montee Ball also in the mix. And based on past history, we can’t count out sophomores Malcolm Brown or De’Anthony Thomas. If you had to pick which player will lead the league in rushing yards from 2012 to 2021, Trent Richardson is the obvious choice. After him, I’d probably be pretty evenly split among McCoy, Martin and Lattimore.

Yesterday, we took a look at the franchise leaders in various passing categories. Let’s do the same for running backs today. The first list shows the leaders in career rushing yards for each franchise; the last column shows the last year that running back played for that franchise:

[continue reading…]