ashmire13 wrote:
I've been to check.... That's just not going to happen now!  

Although, I can't seem to find the previous 2 results, so I can then rib the team I have beaten already!  

Brits No-Hopers going all the way!  

Uh yeah that would be me you can rib..only because I thought the Titans D was okay this year so I switched out my QB.  We shall meet again though near the end of the season.  Prepare for the Legion to annihilate your no hoppers

ShaneG.

ashmire13 wrote:By which time the No-Hopers will have evolved into the complete fantasy team!  

Pfft. I'll make sure to make what ever form you evolve into apart of my Legion.  Already have a dracolich from this years battles.  Course I'm eying the chance to have a shark ghoul by the time we meet again.

ShaneG.

FormCritic wrote:
The early 90's Cowboys would have had trouble with the 1985 Bears defense.  They would have only scored enough to win as opposed to enough to humiliate.

The larger amount of scoring would have been by the Cowboys defense against Jim McMahon and the second-rate 1985 Bears offense.   A large part of the 1985 Bears legend was the luck of the draw in their opponents.

I wouldn't rate the 1985 Bears squad even in the top 10 overall.

Cmon man...only one loss? Four shutouts (including two in the playoffs)? Six wins over 20 pts (not including the three in the playoffs with the superbowl poinding of the Pats)?  And they beat a lot of good teams in the mix....49s at Candlestick, a good Redskins team (before Theisman's injury), and a (gulp) absolute shellacking of the boys 44-0, the worst loss in team history. That was a pretty salty squad.

The 1992-93 Cowboy teams were special...one of the best offensive lines in history, so many scoring weapons it was scary, the greatest RB in NFL history, a QB who while not prolific was one of the most accurate in NFL history, and a stiff defense (this was even before Deion came to town).  Sadly, league parity and the salary cap led to that team breaking up, otherwise I think you would have seen a NY Yankees type run in the 90s.

I think you're right though, the Bears offense even with Payton that year was far from great, and MacMahon was a spear carrier at best.   Might have been a low scoring affair with two great defenses, say 21-17 final with Cowboys on top.  I'd love to have seen it!

Mike B.

i hope to go down to the ntrpg next june to further discuss the issue, but for now this will have to do: emmitt smith is no better than the 4th best running back in nfl history and is probably 5th (brown,payton,sanders, simpson, smith). jim brown averaged 5.2 cards per carry(!) with the entire opposition poised to stop him. walter payton is along with marion motley, cookie gilchrist and marcus allen the best blocking rb in history in addition to the fact he did not have a pro bowl lineman until his 10th season. barry sanders averaged 5.0 ypc for his career again with mediocrities in front of him (and all around him). after his first season (when he fumbled 10 times) he only fumbled 31 times the rest of his career. simpson averaged 4.7 ypc while again playing for very poor teams. emmitt only averaged above 4.7 ypc once in his career (1993) while having a hall of fame QB, receiver, and one day linemen playing around him. he was a very tough player, great at the goal line, played forever, great team player, great guy. but an objective all-around assessment of him as a rb can't place him higher than 4th.

stratochamp wrote:i hope to go down to the ntrpg next june to further discuss the issue, but for now this will have to do: emmitt smith is no better than the 4th best running back in nfl history and is probably 5th (brown,payton,sanders, simpson, smith). jim brown averaged 5.2 cards per carry(!) with the entire opposition poised to stop him. walter payton is along with marion motley, cookie gilchrist and marcus allen the best blocking rb in history in addition to the fact he did not have a pro bowl lineman until his 10th season. barry sanders averaged 5.0 ypc for his career again with mediocrities in front of him (and all around him). after his first season (when he fumbled 10 times) he only fumbled 31 times the rest of his career. simpson averaged 4.7 ypc while again playing for very poor teams. emmitt only averaged above 4.7 ypc once in his career (1993) while having a hall of fame QB, receiver, and one day linemen playing around him. he was a very tough player, great at the goal line, played forever, great team player, great guy. but an objective all-around assessment of him as a rb can't place him higher than 4th.

Bill, as a Emmitt Smith fan and having seen every single one of the games he ever played in (until he went to the Cards), I have argued this many times.  Here is my take:

Jim Brown:  He had a ridiculous few years. But he only played 8 years. The NFL history books are littered with RBs who have a good run (i.e., Terrel Davis) and look destined to break every record, then either injury, ineffective offensive line, bad QB, etc take their toll. If Jim hadn't decided to leave the NFL for hollywood, who knows? If he had played, say, 4 more years, his numbers night have come down to earth.  Then there is the fact Jim was a strong, athletic black man in a white man's league....much like the case when Lew Alcindor (aka Kareem) and Bill Russell ruled the league vs soft white stiffs in the late 60s/early 70s. Not to take away Jim's accomplishments, which were incredible, but Emmitt did it twice as long against competition that was twice as good.

Walter Payton:  Sweetness, was great, but Emmitt broke all his records.  Nuff said. He never had the offensive line (or the QB) Emmitt had, which is true.  I wouldn't argue Payton is right there with Emmitt except for the post season records. I have no problem ranking him at or about Emmitt because I think he was screwed several years with having a inept offense around him.

Barry Sanders:  Probably better than Emmitt, and may have put every record out of reach, if he hadn't QUIT. Yes, he quit, pure and simple.  I have to put this as a negative to the man's entire career, that he simply didn't care enough about football to continue playing when things didn't go his way. But I have no problem putting him ahead of Smith even though Smith did finish the job when Barry, with the records in reach, chose to walk away. If i was  a Lions fan I'd be pissed to this day because of this.

OJ: The juice benefitted from being a stat machine because he was the entire offense for that team. Oj to the left, OJ to the right, OJ up the middle isn't really that funny if you saw him play and realize that really was the play calling for the Bills back then. Don't penalize Emmitt for having Irvin and Novacek stealing TDs and yards from him; if he had been driven into the ground like OJ not telling what his final tally would have been.  And yes OJ didn't have the O-line Emmitt had.

Now a few points:

For all the talk of the great O-line Emmitt ran behind, how many of them are going to the Hall of Fame? None except for Larry Allen, and he wasn't even there until midway through the 1994 season.  For all the hype of the best O-line in history, they aren't even going to put as many in the HOF as the Steelers of the 70s. So a lot of credit has to go to Emmitt for making it happen.

He was money in important games and crunch time, and especially in the playoffs. He holds the records for total yards and 100 yd rushing games in the playoffs, as well as rushing TDs. Like Michael Jordan, he didn't wilt when the spotlight was on him. He also had a superbowl MVP to show for that.

He has the record for most yards, most rushing TDs, is second to Jerry Rice for most TDs overall, is the only player with 11 consecutive 1000 yd rushing season, the only player ever with five consecutive 1400+ seasons, and the most 100 yds games in history for a RB. A lot of people don't remember what a good pass catcher he was, with over 3000 receiving yards in his career.  Everyone knows his yardage total is #1 but there is not an active player within 6000 yds (Ed James is the closest and he's winding down his career), and the one who is most likely to break it, LT, is not within 7000 yds and at this point looks done as a premier RB for the future. This record may stand for a long, long time. LT is withing 40 TDs of passing Emmitt, and MAY sniff this record, but no other active player is within 80 so if LT doesn't do it we may be in for a long, long wait until this one is also broken.

Emmitt also did not like to miss games, and often played hurt. He was a durable RB in a position littered with guys whose average lifespan is 5 years. The final season game of 1993 where the Cowboys won in OT to win the division is probably one of the greatest games by a RB in NFL history. Despite having a separated shoulder he ran for 186 yds, caught ten passes, and basically won the game by himself.  Most people forget he ended his career with 900+ yds rushing his last season, not going out with a whimper, but ending on a high note after he had been plagued with injuries the year before.  If he had chosen to stick around for nostalgia's sake and split time like a lot of great RBs did at the end of their careers (including Payton and Marcus Allen), he might have racked upa  few more 100 yds games and certainly tacked on perhaps another 1000 yds to his ridiculous yardage total and another 10+ TDs to his record there.

While I have no problem putting Emmit at #1, at worst, I think Emmitt is a solid #3 behind Sanders and Sweetness, and not more than #4 if you slip Jim Brown in there by virtue of a great 8 years.  But until someone breaks some of his records (is anyone even close right now?) he's definitely in the mix when you talk about best all time.

Mike B.

FormCritic wrote:
Do you remember the regular season game between the Cowboys and Lions that pitted Smith and Sanders against each other?

.

I wish I had taped that....!

I wonder if there could be anything comparable right now? Two hall of Famers going at it on the field?  Adrian Peterson vs LT?  Naaah, LT is done, and Adrian hasn't done it long enough yet to be a sure-fire HOFer.  On the QB side, maybe Bret Favre vs Tom Brady?  Both are going, but Bret is far past his prime. Peyton Manning vs Tom Brady is probably the closest we can get with two QBs.  Really, I don't think there is a matchup out there now to compare when you are talking Barry vs Emmitt.

Mike B.

FormCritic wrote:
We are close on the final score.  I have it 28-10 Cowboys, assuming a Chicago defensive touchdown.

That Super Bowl was actually decided earlier in the AFC playoffs when the L.A. Raiders stumbled early against New England and then lost on a stupid late fumble.  Take away that fumble and the story of the 1985 Bears is about how they rolled into the Super Bowl...and lost.  It was typical of the magical season the Bears enjoyed that they faced New England in the final game.

If you compare the numbers of the '85 Bears and the '92 Cowboys, they're actually quite comparable:

http://www.databasefootball.com/teams/t ... L#TeamStat

http://www.databasefootball.com/teams/t ... 2#TeamStat

The Bears scored more points, and their defense held their opponents to fewer points.

So I feel the bias (if any) against the '85 Bears is because, other than Walter Payton, there isn't any Hall of Fame calibre player on the offense. Clearly, Troy Aikman could run circles around someone like McMahon on a bad day.

stratochamp wrote:... a bunch of sweaty men, or a budding off-screen romance with Raquel Welch. Which would you have chosen?

I would prefer that everyone answer Raquel Welch, please and thank you....

stratochamp wrote:okay Mike, I'll take these one guy at a time. Jim Brown actually played 9 years. He DID break every record. He led the league in rushing 8 times. If he had played 4 more years I think he would have led the league in rushing 3 or 4 more times. Jim was a strong man. He is universally regarded as the greatest Lacrosse player ever. He retired with 12,312 yards. The number two man then was Joe Perry with 8378. The reason he retired was he was making the movie 100 rifles with Raquel Welch and he needed to miss some of training camp. Art Modell said no, so Jim Brown weighed his choices. Hot grueling training camp (in a sport were he had absolutely nothing to prove) with a bunch of sweaty men, or a budding off-screen romance with Raquel Welch. Which would you have chosen?

Sorry Bill you are NOT going to get me to say "bunch of sweaty men"!!!!!

And BTW, completely off the nut here, does anyone understand what a POS Art Modell is/was? I understand longevity, but idiotic decisions like this are what made the Browns into periennial has beens and losers...until they completed the screwing of the Cleveland fan by pulling up stakes and moving to Baltimore.  Firing Paul Brown, racist player personnel decisions, 30 years of no playoff appearances, sweetheart deals with the Cleveland Indians to make him money at the expense of the team, the same sweetheart deals in Baltimore that finally made the league direct him to sell his interest, etc. People that think Jerry Jones is a scumbag really ought to brush up on their NFL history of this criminal.

Mike B.