With no need for award analysis in this space until mid-February 2025, we usually just take on whatever subjects come to our attention. Last week’s piece on football movies led us to this week’s subject matter: Chicago Bears legend Gale Sayers. Despite playing in just 68 NFL games (the equivalent of four 17-game seasons today) and never in a playoff game, he is in the Hall of Fame due to the impact he on the sport.

Look at what he accomplished, in such a short time: Rookie of the Year (1965); two-time NFL rushing champion (1966, 1969); three-time all-purpose yards leader (1965-1967); two-time kickoff return average champ (1965-1966); three-time rushing yards per game leader (1966, 1968-1969); and legend of the gridiron in more ways than we can enumerate here. There’s more to him than just the numbers, but we do numbers.

The final four games of his career, two in 1970 and two in 1971, should be forgotten, as his multiple injuries had turned him into a shell of his former self. In those four games, he gained just 90 yards on 35 carries (2.6 yards per carry), far below his career 5.0 YPC mark. He retired after making a brief appearance in the 1972 preseason. He was just 29 years old, and one can’t help but wonder how he would have fared today, overall.

Modern medicine would have improved his recovery from injuries, and Sayers probably could have played effectively into his mid-30s. Sometimes, players are just born at the wrong time. That’s Sayers, in more ways than one: he joined the Bears in 1965, after they’d won a title in 1963 but immediately regressed to just 5-9 in 1964. He was their reward at No. 4 overall in the draft, byetut Chicago did little to improve with him.

The Bears only had two winning seasons with Sayers at his peak: 9-5 in 1965 and 7-6-1 in 1967. The first team remains a mystery in the sense it was so statistically dominant—but ended up in third place after losing four games by a combined 23 points. One of the reasons the team struggled in those four losses was turnovers: Chicago coughed up the ball nine times in those four defeats. It was pretty ugly at times.

Sayers was kind of a fumble machine himself, in truth, due to the way he carried the ball in a single hand quite often. It’s his great weakness, statistically: 34 fumbles in those 68 games, including a league-worst mark (8) in 1967. But that didn’t stop him from posting 65 AV in his first 64 games played. If he had been able to keep up that pace and improve his ball handling, he may have been part of our NFL GOAT discussion.

Alas, we are reduced to a lot of “what if?” thoughts; maybe we were lucky to have Sayers around at all.