Tonight ESPN aired You Don’t Know Bo, another excellent documentary in its 30 for 30 series. It’s often said that Bo Jackson’s greatness can’t be captured by statistics. While that’s undoubtedly true, there are still some ways to use Jackson’s numbers to give a glimpse into the type of player he was. A few years ago, Jason Lisk talked about Bo in this podcast and noted that Bo had the longest rush in the NFL in three of the four seasons he played. Jackson and O.J. Simpson remain the only two players to record the league’s longest rush in three different NFL seasons.

There are other ways to capture what Bo did in his brief career. Because he was busy being a baseball player, Bo missed the first third of the season each year. If we look at the data starting in week 7, from 1988 to 1990, Bo compares pretty favorably to the elite running backs of his day. Over that span he ranked third in rushing yards while averaging over five yards per carry:

Bo rushed for a 90-yard touchdown in a game… twice in his career. Ahman Green is the only other player in NFL history to accomplish that feat. But the former Raider was more than just two runs or some highlight films. In 1987, 1989, and 1990, Jackson averaged at least 5.5 yards per carry and rushed for at least 70 yards per game; the great Jim Brown and Dan Towler, another one of the game’s great power/speed backs, are the only two other players to ever have three such seasons (and no one has had four).

He only played in the NFL for four years, from the ages of 25 to 28. To level the playing field, let’s compare him to every other running back in league history, but only at those ages. Among players with at least 500 carries, Jackson averaged the most yards per carry: