I’m not even sure when I saw Barry Sanders run the football for the first time. Actually, I thought Sanders was a little too short for the NFL when I first remembered him.
Hey, don’t judge a book by its cover.
It was Sanders’ 51st birthday on Tuesday. It’s not one of those landmark occasions where people get up to celebrate a decade’s perfect roundness or the fact that a man has survived 40 orbits of the sun.
51 is not a real number.
The number of games Sanders started for the Lions, the only team he played for in his ten-year career, is equal to 51 plus 100. Instead, add 48 to it, and you have the number of touchdowns he scored along the way.
You only need to tack on 15,218 on top of that 51 to get his total number of rushing yards throughout his career — good enough for third all-time despite having played fewer seasons than either first-place Emmitt Smith (15) or runner-up Walter Payton (13). Frank Gore may surpass him this season as he currently stands at 14,748 yards and will be suiting up for the Buffalo Bills for his 15th season in the league.
I may not remember the first time I watched Sanders run the football, but I can tell you I sure remember a lot of those yards he tallied. Being from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, you basically have the option of watching the Green Bay Packers or the Detroit Lions. While Sanders was suiting up in the Honolulu blue and silver, it wasn’t hard to find somewhere his game was being shown on television.
Wasn’t it always a sight to behold? The way he could simply alter direction by shifting his hips. The way his eyes seemed to be able to view glimpses of the field over his shoulder without having to turn his head. How effortlessly he picked up speed once he had the ball in his hands, and how quickly he discovered another gear after he located the gap he was searching for.
Arguably, the best running back to ever play in the NFL is Sanders. I know, I know—you can argue contrary and cite numbers all you want in the comments, but it won’t really alter my viewpoint. I have witnessed the majority of the greats. The only item in the top 20 all-time list that
players I didn’t get a chance to watch in a game were No. 11 Jim Brown, No. 15 Franco Harris, and No. 19 John Riggins.
There are so many amazing running backs on this list, including my all-time favorite LaDainian Tomlinson. But I would be hard-pressed to be swayed by any argument saying any of them were better than Sanders.
