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 Originally Posted by BananaStand
He didn't carry his team very far. I remember a playoff game in the mid 90's where Barry logged -1 yards of rushing against Green Bay. The Lions were never considered "good", and were never considered better than second best within their own division during any of the years Barry played.
I'm really not trying to knock Barry Sanders, I'm just not creaming my panties over him the way you are. I mean, even compared to his peers from the time, he doesn't measure up that well. He didn't play long enough, and he didn't win anything, and if he made his team better....it was only marginally so. And in the biggest games, he played his worst.
By any tangible measure, and many intangible measures, Emmitt Smith was better.
Also, there was another back whose agility and explosive running style was often talked about with far more accolades than Barry Sanders. The NFL historians and certainly those who followed the college game knew that even though Barry Sanders was great, he couldn't hold a candle to OJ Simpson. Then, for some reason, everyone stopped talking about OJ around 1993.
Other variables. Even the best player gets creamed if the other variables don't work right. I remember laughing at how often Emmitt Smith had holes the size of the Grand Canyon opened to him by his amazing line that he just ran straight through. Barry rarely go those holes. He made his own holes. Put Smith on the Lions back then and nobody would even remember his name. The Lions had one great offense player, Barry. That Barry's results far worse than they would have been since he couldn't build off of teammates success as well and defenses allocated more resources to stop Barry than they would otherwise. The Cowboys from then had the opposite problem. With several great offense players, each could build off the results created by the others, and the defenses against them couldn't allocate resources so directly against any individual.
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