The End Of A Wave?

With the Eagles releasing Brian Westbrook today we are seeing the final throes of what has been an amazing decade for running backs. Whether through luck, modern medicine, more creative offenses or (more likely) a combination, the first decade of the millennium has seen a surprisingly powerful core of runners who proved to be both productive and durable, the latter a particularly rare quality in NFL running backs.

13 running backs who joined the league from 1998 - 2004 have rushed for at least 6000 yards. Willis McGahee and Westbrook are all but certain to join that group this year. Four of those running backs (Freddie Taylor, Edgerrin James, Jamal Lewis and LaDanian Tomlinson) have rushed for over 10,000 with Clinton Portis (9696) and Thomas Jones (9217) likely to join them eventually, if not this year.

None of these guys will challenge the all-time rushing leaders but Tomlinson will finish in the top 10 with James, Taylor, Lewis and Portis likely finishing in the top 20. The wild card is Steven Jackson who has 6700 yards at age 26. Tomlinson is 26 rush TD behind Emmitt and has a narrow shot of finishing as the all-time record holder. Other than Alexander at 7th, the others again are further down the list.

To be honest, when I started this I thought I might have noticed something, but on reflection, maybe not. 1997 was a huge rookie year for running backs with 3 10,000 yarders (Dunn, Barber, Dillon) along with two more 6,000 yarders; Holmes and Antowain Smith. 1996 saw 10k Eddie George and 8k Stephen Davis. 1995 14k (!) Curtis Martin and 7k Terrell Davis. More recently the league has added Gore (5561) in '05, Jones-Drew (3924) in '06, Peterson (4484) in '07, and a number of promising backs (Johnson, Rice, Stewart, Mendenhall, Charles, others) in '08.

I guess it is more of a continuum than a blip.

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