Last week, we took a look at QB rating for evaluating quarterbacks, historically, and this week we want to think about running backs. Like all positions affected by eras and trends in the sport, RBs have seen their usage and value rise and fall over the last few decades. What stands out across all periods, however, are two key data points: yards per attempt and yards per game. The first discards volume, and the second uses it.

Put them together, and you have a good idea of what a back has contributed to a team’s success. Throw in the concept of Approximate Value (AV) as a “tiebreaker” of sorts, and you’d have a decent picture of which backs have proven themselves to be the better ones across NFL history. So, let’s look at the Top 10 lists all time in professional football for YPC and YPG, as noted above. This is what we have to work with here.

YPC (RBs only):

  • Marion Motley: 5.7
  • Jamaal Charles: 5.4
  • Nick Chubb: 5.3
  • Jim Brown: 5.2
  • Mercury Morris: 5.1
  • Aaron Jones: 5.0
  • Joe Perry: 5.0
  • Gale Sayers: 5.0
  • Barry Sanders: 5.0
  • Jonathan Taylor: 5.0

Because there are 5 quarterbacks in the official Top 10 here, all these RBs above still represent the Top 15 all time. Some are active; most are not. But they all have YPC marks at approximately 5.0 or above, which is impressive. Of course, some of them played more seasons than others on the list—and carried the ball a lot more times, too. That is where the all-time yardage list come in handy, too, which we will discuss below.

YPG (RBs only):

  • Brown: 104.3
  • Sanders: 99.8
  • Terrell Davis: 97.5
  • Eric Dickerson: 90.8
  • Walter Payton: 88.0
  • Clinton Portis: 87.8
  • Taylor: 86.5
  • Billy Sims: 85.1
  • Chubb: 84.6
  • Curtis Martin: 83.9

Four names are on both lists, and for context, Brown played in 118 regular-season games, while Sanders competed in 153 regular-season games. Taylor has played in just 53 games, and Chubb has suited up for 77 games. Clearly, as discussed here a long time ago, Brown and Sanders are quite above the rest when we combine the data from these two lists and even start factoring in AV as well. Taylor and Chubb are young.

They may be able to stay on these lists, or they may go the way of players on either of these lists who saw their careers fade away quickly from injuries and other circumstances that are occupational hazards in this sport. Both Brown and Sanders walked away from the game while they still had life in their legs, and Payton stuck it out for a longer time. Notice the one name absent from both these lists? Emmitt Smith. Interesting.

AV on its own isn’t enough, so we prefer to use the AV/game measurement to establish greatness, which we did for our NFL GOAT analysis from 2020. Using that data, Chubb (50 AV in 70 games) and Taylor (39 in 50) are already way behind Brown (122 in 118) and Sanders (149 in 153)—with virtually no chance to catch up. Does this change much when we bring in the all-time yardage list leaders? Not really, and here is why.

Brown has now fallen to 11th all time on the rushing yards list, but again, he achieved his career total in just 9 seasons. Of the Top 10 now, the average length of career in terms of seasons—again, many of which vary to due to games played rules changes over time—is 12.6 seasons, with only Sanders (fourth on the yardage list) coming close to Brown’s 9 seasons by playing 10 himself. This is why YPC and YPG matter more here.

Volume is good if quality is maintained, as we have discussed in basketball analyses many times. Brown and Sanders bring that, while most other RBs did not. Payton, Martin, Dickerson are on the Top 10 all-time yardage list, too, so they have some of that quality along with their quantity. But only Brown and Sanders truly stand above the crowd here, and maybe they do so because they retired early. There’s a caveat there.

Brown and Sanders may have dropped a bit if they had played longer, as Payton did because he put in 13 seasons. The same might be said of Smith, who played 15 seasons. The longer you play, the more the quality drops. We could argue that Brown and Sanders found the right combination of quality and quantity to reach crazy heights, with Brown retiring as the all-time leader at the time, and Sanders finishing second.

Now, they’ve dropped on the all-time yardage list to lower spots, due to the quantity-over-quality crowd, although again, Dickerson, Martin, and Payton did pretty darn well with their combinations. That would be our group of the five best RBs in NFL history, regardless of AV/G marks. Can Chubb and Taylor play long enough while maintaining quality, too, to crack this upper echelon? Time will tell, but we are guessing no.