Hall of Fame running back Emmitt Smith took notice recently when a couple of rankings of the greatest running backs in NFL history put him lower than he thought he deserved.
When former Cowboys personnel man Gil Brandt ranked the top running backs, he listed Smith 10th. When Peter King assembled a panel of experts to draft their own all-time teams, Smith was the 16th back taken.
But Smith says that his legacy is secure, thanks to two all-time records: Smith ran for 18,355 yards and 164 touchdowns, both the best in NFL history.
“You always have to go back to, ‘What is the criteria for the greatest running back of all-time?’ ” Smith told the Dallas Morning News. “And if you really want to have a legitimate conversation about the best running back in National Football League history, or the best player in NFL history, then you have to create the criteria. And if you create the criteria, then anybody who’s chiming in can give you their true opinion. Because now you have something you can actually gauge it against. Everything else is so arbitrary. So I think they are just doing it to create a conversation in the marketplace. I’m not going to overly concern myself with it. Because at the end of the day, eighteen three fifty-five speaks for itself. One hundred sixty-four speaks for itself.”
Smith is obviously right that his career numbers stack up with anyone, although he also put together his numbers running behind a great offensive line that some of the other top backs in NFL history could only dream of. He also kept compiling yards and touchdowns when he was well past his prime, which put his totals out of the reach of players who retired earlier. And Smith’s yards per carry average of 4.2 is a full yard behind Jim Brown’s 5.2.
Smith is justified if he considers himself the best of them all, as are others who look at the totality of NFL history and don’t put Smith in the company of the 10 best running backs ever.