The Underrated Greatness Of Emmitt Smith - Part 4
In Part 4 of this series I'll be covering 2001, the year when things really started turning bad for Emmitt, and what I believe to be the beginning of the end for him as a Cowboy. The biggest issue for the Cowboys that year was the continued decline of the team, which lead to them being more interested in evaluating players than winning games. As a result of that approach, a running back controversy was started.
Emmitt Smith/Troy Hambrick Controversy
Troy Hambrick was a practice squad player, and was discovered when the Cowboys were in the middle of consecutive 5-11 seasons. He got a lot of attention very quickly, as well as a lot of praise and a lot of people telling him he was ready. You can't fault him for wanting to play, but he was immature and classless in the way he handled it.
Here are some quotes from Troy Hambrick as evidence:
"If I've accomplished the things Emmitt has accomplished, I would have retired. What else are you playing for? I understand he wanted the record and he didn't feel like his career was over, but 3 Super Bowl rings and all of the things he's done. You know, this is like Michael Jordan still in the league tarnishing his name and he can't make an easy dunk."
"Emmitt doesn't have to prove anything anymore. I just think it's time to let a new generation come along. Everything ends at some point. I'm not trying to be disrespectful towards anyone. But I just feel it's my time to come in and show what I can do." (after he was called on the previous quote)
"This is my time. We've been waiting on Emmitt to retire or make his move. Of course, I see it as a breakout year. Every time I touch the ball, it's a breakout carry." (after he was promoted to starter)
This controversy seemed like Tony Dorsett/Herschel Walker in 1986 all over again. It looked to me liked everybody was trying to run Emmitt Smith out of Dallas the same way they did Tony Dorsett. That whole situation with Emmitt reminded me of when the Cowboys signed Herschel Walker from the USFL and eventually put him in the starting lineup ahead of Tony Dorsett. TD was highly upset about it, and eventually came to resent Herschel. Tom Landry's initial plan was to have a "Heisman Backfield" with TD and Herschel in the same backfield. After that backfired, they moved towards having Herschel start full time. TD was upset because he felt like he was being slighted and he didn't want to be a backup running back. He felt like he hadn't lost a step, or at least lost enough to be demoted to 2nd string. Even several of his teammates said they didn't see a drop off in talent. After the 1987 season, the Cowboys traded Tony Dorsett to the Broncos for a conditional 5th round draft choice. There were a lot of hurt people in Dallas after TD left, and I was really hoping that Emmitt wouldn't leave the same way.
The situation with Emmitt in 2001 was slightly different because the offense had reached a new low and was breaking futility records, but the running back situation was basically the same as it was in 1986. Emmitt was in his 12th season, and on the verge of breaking the most sacred record in the NFL, and the Cowboys had a young running back in Troy Hambrick who could take over for Emmitt in the near future. The biggest difference between the 2 controversies is that T-Ham was forced into the starting fullback spot when Robert Thomas was lost for the season.
Here is an excerpt from a piece I wrote about the situation back then:
It seems like the Cowboys are trying to speed up the future, but they would be foolish to let Emmitt get away. With the way the team is playing right now and the way things are going, people want to say Emmitt is too old and too beat up to still be in the NFL, they say he should forget about the record and retire at the end of this season before he embarrasses himself or he has to be carried off the field. It's easy to criticize players and talk bad about them in situations like this. If Emmitt was leading the NFL in rushing and the Cowboys were winning games, the bandwagon would be overcrowded.
Everybody now is quick to say Troy Hambrick is better and more productive than Emmitt. T-Ham might have 16 fewer yards than Emmitt on fewer carries, and they do run behind the same offensive line, but T-Ham and Emmitt don't face the same defenses. When Emmitt is in the game, he is a bulls-eye. teams stack the line and run blitz A LOT more often than they do when T-Ham is in the game. When T-Ham is in the game, Jack Reilliy calls way more running plays between the tackles than he does for Emmitt. When Emmitt is in the game, Reilly will try to send him outside on a pitch or some kind of sweep. Sometimes he'll run him out of the single back formation. When T-Ham and Emmitt are both in the game with T-Ham at fullback, defenses will overload to stop Emmitt, and T-Ham will take a quick handoff from the QB with the defense thinking Emmitt is getting the ball. Emmitt is getting the short end of things. It wouldn't be ridiculous at all to say that Emmitt has been misused the past few years, even a couple of years before Reilly came back to Dallas. It would be interesting to see what Emmitt would do if he ever got a passing game to take pressure off of him. He would have better stats, and more importantly, the Cowboys would have more wins.
I agree with everything Emmitt is saying about the Cowboys putting more emphasis on evaluating players than winning games. That's what training camp and preseason are for. When you lock and load for the season, you have to commit. The object of the game is to have your best 11 players on the field at all times. It was wrong of Dave Campo to tell Emmitt to retire if he didn't like it. To me, that was a slap in Emmitt's face, after all he had done for the Cowboys. They are both at different points in their careers, and that can put a strain on any relationship. I just hope everything gets fixed soon, and like I said earlier, I pray that Emmitt won't leave the Cowboys the same way Tony Dorsett did, and that he can finish his career as a Cowboy.
One thing I forgot to mention when I wrote that, is that teams also rotated their defensive personnel. T-Ham was lucky enough that lesser quality backups were rotated onto the field when he was in the game, making it easier for him to run. Also, it's possible that Emmitt and the offensive line wore down the first string defense, and T-Ham benefited from it. Teams also put an extra man in the box for Emmitt, but not for T-Ham. In so many words, Troy Hambrick got impatient with his backup role and said so out loud. He said at training camp in 2002 that he was the best running back on the team, and that it was time for Emmitt to move on after he broke the record. T-Ham got exactly what he wanted in 2003, and he had to be humbled. He quickly found out that it wasn't as easy as he thought it was. He admitted it when he said, "They didn't tell me once teams start game-planning against you that all those big runs stop." T-Ham also said that he thought he was "the next thing to O.J. Simpson. He ran for 972 yards and a 3.5 yards per carry average.
This story ends with an ironic twist. Emmitt Smith ended up signing with the Cardinals after he left the Cowboys, and Troy Hambrick ended up being his backup again. The Cowboys released T-Ham in 2004 after they drafted Julius Jones. He was picked up by the Raiders, and ended up gaining weight. The Cardinals traded for T-Ham, who was out of shape, after Marcel Shipp blew out his knee in training camp. He was supposed to give them the "power back" they lost when Shipp went down.
2001 - Running Into A Brick Wall
The 2001 season was a real struggle for the Cowboys as a team, but Emmitt Smith was the one who was feeling it the most because the running game was running into a brick wall. When it wasn't running into the wall, it was going backwards. Plain and simple: Emmitt had NOWHERE to run. He had to fight, bite, and claw for every yard that year. To put in perspective how tough that season was for Emmitt, I want to point out that the Cowboys started out 0-4, and Emmitt went into halftime with 2 or fewer yards in 3 of those losses.
Here are some of the elements from a long list of things Emmitt had working against him:
1.) Good Defenses
2.) Terrible Blocking
3.) Linemen Pulling Off Of Blocks Early
4.) Tentative Running (a result of all of the above)
5.) Offensive Scheme
6.) The Worst Passing Attack In The NFL
7.) No True Fullback
8.) Right Guard Struggling Badly (revolving door at the position)
9.) Joey Galloway and Rocket Ismail were injured again and missed significant time.
10.) Defenses were stacking the line and daring the quarterback to beat them.
11.) The offense went through 4 quarterbacks that season.
12.) Defenses used run blitzes and stunts to plug up the middle and force Emmitt to the outside.
13.) There seemed to be more emphasis on evaluating players that season than winning games.
Emmitt was stuck carrying the load as the star player on a team full of lesser players. He was still too good to retire, but with the team being so bad, he was no longer seen as a hero. With the offense as inconsistent as it was for most of the season, and with Emmitt being the oldest player on offense, everybody had a tendency to blame him for their struggles. When you have an offense with 4 different quarterbacks - a rookie, 2 undrafted free agents, and a failed #2 overall pick and and an offensive line that can't open holes, you have much bigger problems than your running back. It also didn't help that late in his career Emmitt played with a bunch of young players that were lazy and didn't have a good work ethic or a passion for football. When losses start to pile up, a player that was a major contributor to the team during the times where a win was much appreciated, no longer has a function.
It required a lot of endurance from Emmitt and Cowboys fans to see him break the NFL's all-time rushing record with that broken team. There were too many people that lived for the moment that wanted to run him out of Dallas. I personally saw a running back who was still capable of playing at an All-Pro level, even if he was stepping out of bounds a yard or two earlier and fighting less when he was being gang tackled. Even with all of that, Emmitt was still picking up yards with a line that was showing weakness in running situations. He was still productive running the ball with his quarterback constantly on his back after pass attempts.....AFTER a successful running down by Emmitt. Bottom line, he was still capable of Emmitt-like production if the rest of the offense was consistent.
As the last Triplet, Emmitt became the locker room spokesman and the player every team designed their defense to stop. Defenses had been selling out to stop Emmitt for years, but this time was different because the Cowboys didn't have a passing game. At this point, Emmitt wasn't a good fit on a bad Cowboys team. He could still run between the tackles with the quick, darting moves that he was famous for, but because he wasn't able to break the long runs the way he used to, defenses started cheating against the run because they didn't fear Emmitt taking it all the way. He would have been a better fit with a good line, where the long runs would have been frequent again. With a better line, the team could pound him for 3 quarters, wear down the defense, and allow him to put up big numbers in the 4th quarter. In Dallas, Emmitt's skills were being wasted.
Not having a passing game hurt the running game overall, and not having a dependable tight end hurt the runs inside. Without a threat at TE, linebackers could run blitz the Cowboys all day long, a lot of times hitting Emmitt in the backfield. The revolving door of inexperienced players at right guard meant that they could never develop any kind of consistency at that position. That hurt the offense because most of those blitzes came from between the right guard and center. With a decent threat at TE, at least one LB would be forced to cover him, instead of a defensive end (usually in a run blitz the DE pulls off to cover the TE). With a true threat like Jay Novacek was, it would require a linebacker AND a strong safety to cover him short and deep. That's a big part of why Emmitt was so successful when he was there. It took 2 players to cover Jay Novacek. Even though there might have been 8 or 9 in the box, by the time the play developed, 2 of them were off covering #84. The "lead draw" was the main play for the Cowboys' offense because it gave the defense time to react to the TE going out before the running play actually hit them. One or two seconds was all that was needed of the OLB and SS to start backpedaling to cover Jay Novacek, then Daryl Johnston came barreling through with Emmitt right behind him. The defense didn't have enough man power up front to account for all the blockers, so Emmitt would burst through for good yardage.
Even though his production was down by Emmitt standards in 2001, he still had a solid season by NFL standards. His 1,021 yards ranked 15th in the NFL and 7th in the NFC. Those numbers alone were enough to prove that at least half the teams in the league still would have coveted Emmitt's production. Everybody expected his 1,000-yard streak to end after he only had 9 yards on Thanksgiving Day against the Broncos, leaving him with 487 yards after 10 games. It seemed like the deck was stacked against Emmitt, considering that he needed to average 85.5 yards over the last 6 games, and at that point he had only gained more than that once all season. Then Emmitt had a stretch drive where he went over 100 yards in 3 of the last 6 games to reach 1,000 yards. He had 18 carries for 77 yards in the season finale vs the Lions to put him over 1,000 yards for the 11th straight season, breaking the NFL record set by Barry Sanders. The irony with this record, was that either way Emmitt would have passed Barry in some category to reach a milestone. The game up in Detroit got moved from Week 2 (because of 9/11) to the end of the season. If the game had been played in Week 2 as planned, Emmitt would have passed Barry for 2nd place on the NFL's all-time rushing list. Instead, he ended up breaking Barry's record for consecutive 1,000-yard seasons.
That season was all the more impressive when you think about the fact that Emmitt ran for 1,021 yards despite missing 2 games, being misused in the offense, having the NFL's worst pass offense, and playing on an offensive unit that went through 4 quarterbacks (5 if you count Tony Banks in the preseason). He also didn't have a lead blocker. After Robert Thomas went down for the season, the Cowboys moved Troy Hambrick to fullback. They even used a TE on occasion (Johnny Huggins), and sometimes they used a DT on the goal line as the lead blocker. All of those things made those 100-yard games hard to come by for Emmitt that season.......he only had 4 of them. It's hard enough for a running back to get 100 yards even without all of those elements working against him. Think about it: You have to average 25 yards a quarter, you don't always have the ball, you have 15 minutes, and you go against 8 and 9-man fronts often. It's 10 times harder when you have a QB that doesn't have the respect of opposing defenses.
At that stage in Emmitt's career, people failed to realize that his value came in 2-fold form - production and intangibles. The most important trait that he had that so few in the NFL did, was that he knew how to win. He knew exactly what it took to be a champion. The Cowboys had a roster full of young players who needed to learn that skill from him. If you need proof, just look at the 2 games that Emmitt missed with a sprained knee, against the Giants and Falcons, both away games. The Cowboys should have won both games, but didn't. The running game production wasn't the problem. Troy Hambrick ran for a respectable 77 yards against the Giants and a season high 127 yards against the Falcons, but the Cowboys gave both of those games away. What the team was missing was leadership in the huddle and a guy that could convert a crucial first down late in the game.
Emmitt, after 12 years in the NFL, was still the best running back in the league in close games when the game was on the line. He got stronger as the game went on, and always ran harder when something was on the line. Emmitt was a 2nd half player that wore teams down and them humiliated them late for game winning points. A good example of that would be the Oct. 15 Monday night game against the Redskins, where Emmitt carried the Cowboys to a 9-7 win. He had 25 carries for 107 yards for the game, and had 54 more yards called back because of penalties. He had a 13-yard run on the last play of the game to set up the game winning field goal. I was glad to see Emmitt have a game like that because a few days earlier Eric Dickerson, who was a sideline commentator for MNF at that time, made the statement "Father Time has caught up with Emmitt Smith." For more proof that Emmitt was still clutch, check out these rankings:
-1st in the NFL in total rushing yards in close games (200 yards)
-3rd in the NFL in yards per carry in the 4th quarter (5.3 YPC)
-6th in the NFL in yards per carry for carry 21 and up (4.3 YPC)
I also want to point out that the Cowboys passed for 2,218 yards in 2001, which was dead last in the NFL. It was also the team's 16-game single season franchise low. There were 28 quarterbacks all by themselves that threw for more yards. Emmitt by himself ran for more yards than any QB threw for individually. The Cowboys were ranked 3rd in the NFL in rushing offense behind the Steelers and 49ers, averaging 138.5 yards per game. The rushing and passing offense combined to give the Cowboys a 29th overall ranking in total offense. It would have been nice to see what Emmitt could do with a real passing attack and the defense not crowding the line of scrimmage looking for him with no regard for the forward pass. With all of the mess the Cowboys had going on that year, it would have been unbelievable for them to finish the 2001 season with an 8-8 record. They ended up being 5-11 for the 2nd straight year.
I'll pick up Part 5 with 2002, the year that Emmitt broke the record, and in my opinion his toughest season as a Cowboy.
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Sunday, October 6, 2013
The Underrated Greatness Of Emmitt Smith - Part 3
The Underrated Greatness Of Emmitt Smith - Part 3
For Part 3 of this series, I'll be going over 1998-2000, Emmitt's comeback years after having 2 straight seasons well below Emmitt standards.
With greatness comes backlash, and every great player in every sport has his share of critics and naysayers. I believe that Emmitt Smith has it worse than most. It seems to me like the majority of football fans and media thought Emmitt had it easy and that he wasn't all that great of a running back. The most common misconception is "Put him on any other team besides the Cowboys, and he would have been good, but not great." In the 3-year span from 1998-2000, the Cowboys, coached by Chan Gailey and Dave Campo, were one game under .500 and won ZERO playoff games. As much as I love Troy Aikman, he was done by then. All of those concussions had finally taken a toll on him. Michael Irvin also had to retire prematurely, after a spinal injury ended his 1999 season in the 4th game. Some of the famous names were still on the offensive line, but their best years were behind them at that point. During those seasons, Emmitt's age was 29, 30, and 31. He had taken a ridiculous amount of punishment in his first 28 years, at all levels of football. Usually in that situation, you would have a running back who is just above average struggling.
Emmitt rushed for 3,932 yards and 33 touchdowns during those 3 years, and he wasn't running on fumes either. He was at 4.2 yards per carry in 1998 and 1999, and at 4.1 in 2000. He was in the top 5 in the NFL in rushing yards in 2 of those 3 years. We don't even have to speculate on what Emmitt would do if he played for a mediocre to bad team. He did play for those kinds of teams from 1998-2000, and ran for the 3rd most yards from 29-31 in NFL history behind Walter Payton and Curtis Martin. Once again, most good-but-not-great running backs struggle to keep a job at age 30. Emmitt Smith was a top 5 rusher on a bad team. It would be easy to say that I picked out that particular 3-year stretch to make Emmitt look good, but the fact is, you can pick ANY 3-year strectch out of his career and he would be among the leading rushers in NFL history in that age group. Let's not forget that Emmitt has the NFL record for most rushing yards after turning 30. My point is that his supporting cast wasn't great in all of those stretches and was downright bad in others. I said in Part 2 that Emmitt's decline had much more to do with the team's incompetence than his declining skills.
Let's look at what Emmitt had going on in these 3 seasons:
1998
Emmitt had to make the following adjustments:
1.) Learning How To Run Without A Fullback
A lot of people tend to forget about this adjustment. In Emmitt's first 8 years, he spent about 60% of the time behind a fullback, and under Chan Gailey that number got cut in half. The adjustment also meant that Emmitt wasn't hitting the hole as fast. He had to wait another split-second to see how the play developed or see if the player in front of him was able to make the block.
2.) A New Zone Blocking Scheme
This scheme is based on the running back's ability to recognize where the hole is and make a cut to get up the field. This blocking scheme stretches the defense by moving the line, forcing the defensive linemen to move sideways, making them easier to block. The defenders also get tied up because they have to react, and that's where the running back can take advantage of the stretch. Zone blocking is not about blowing your man off the line, it's about staying in contact with him and letting the running back make the adjustment. This scheme was an adjustment for the whole offense, especially since the offensive line was better at man blocking than zone.
3.) Giving Up 3rd Down Responsibilities
The Cowboys signed Chris Warren to be their 3rd down back, as well as giving Emmitt an occasional breather to help lighten his load.
After back to back sub-par seasons full of injuries and having bone spurs removed from one of his ankles, Emmitt was healthy for the first time in 3 seasons. Under new head coach Chan Gailey, he bounced back in 1998 with 1,332 yards and 13 touchdowns, and also became the Cowboys' all-time leading rusher that season. Defenses were still keying on Emmitt because the Cowboys still didn't have a threat at TE, and the Cowboys were without Troy Aikman for 5 games after he broke his collarbone in Week 2. Jason Garrett didn't do a bad job stepping in for those 5 games, but Emmitt played a major role in keeping the team afloat during that stretch, with 90 carries for 390 yards and 3 touchdowns. Making those adjustments after doing things the same way for so long wasn't easy for Emmitt to do, which makes his 1998 season that much more impressive.
1999
Emmitt had an even better season in 1999 despite:
1.) Being the only reliable cog in an inconsistent offense.
2.) Running behind a converted linebacker at fullback.
3.) The Cowboys had 3 of their top 4 receivers out with injury.
4.) Troy Aikman was in and out of the lineup with concussions.
5.) Even more 8 and 9-man fronts.
6.) Missing 9 quarters of football because of hand and groin injuries.
This would be the year that Emmitt proved that he still had it. He was once again on his usual record-setting pace, even leading the NFL in rushing at one point- AT 30 YEARS OLD and supposedly washed up. He and Ricky Watters were the only two 30-year old running backs to rank among the top 10 in rushing in 1999. Emmitt also moved up a couple of spots on the NFL's all-time rushing list, passing Tony Dorsett and Eric Dickerson, moving into 3rd place all-time.
Who can forget that Monday Night game in Minnesota right after Walter Payton's death? Emmitt came out in his memory and had 13 carries for 140 yards and 2 touchdowns in less than a half, more like a quarter and a half. The Cowboys were completely dominating the Vikings, and then it all changed:
In what might be the most unfortunate moment in Emmitt's career, when he started getting close to the end zone on his 63-yard touchdown run, he stiff-armed Vikings cornerback Kenny Wright and got his fingers tangled in his face mask, breaking bones in the back of his hand. He also had a 24-yard touchdown run on his very next carry, after the Cowboys recovered a Vikings fumble of a kickoff, giving him the NFL record for fastest back to back touchdowns scored by one player.....18 seconds. By halftime, on a record-setting pace, Emmitt was done for the game, and even sat the next one out. The Cowboys' offense left when Emmitt did, and they started to fall apart after that. To cap it all off, Troy Aikman suffered a concussion early in the 3rd quarter that knocked him out of the game. I had A SICK FEELING in my body after hearing that Emmitt was done for the game. I really wanted to see him go after Walter Payton's then-NFL single game rushing record. I remember him saying that he was in a serious groove that night, and wasn't even tired yet.
Emmitt still ended up with 1,397 yards and 11 touchdowns, along with a healthy 4.2 yards per carry average. It was a very good season, but it was robbed by a broken hand of all it could have been. With the pace Emmitt was on before he got injured, there is no telling how many yards he would have ended up with. At the very least, I would say his total would have been in the 1,600-1,700 range, and at least 15 touchdowns. At the risk of sounding biased, if Emmitt would have kept up that pace and won the rushing title, he would have been my choice for MVP. Kurt Warner was the 1999 MVP, and there is no question that he deserved it. He took over the starting QB job after Trent Green blew out his knee in a preseason game, and led the Rams to a 13-3 record and Super Bowl win after going 4-12 in 1998.
Emmitt carried the Cowboys on his back in 1999, and he put those numbers and dragged the Cowboys to the playoffs with a beat-up Troy Aikman, Robert Thomas (a converted linebacker) at fullback, Rocket Ismail and Ernie Mills as the starting receivers, and David LaFleur at tight end as his supporting cast. You would think that losing Daryl Johnston to a career-ending neck injury in Week 1 and Michael Irvin to a career-ending spinal injury in Week 4 would have slowed Emmitt down, but he got stronger as the season went on, and the only thing that could stop him were the injuries. That's why I believe he would have won the MVP if he stayed healthy. More than anything, the 1999 season also proved that if Emmitt's talent and production didn't get slowed drastically after the 1995 season, he would have smashed the all-time rushing record much earlier than he actually did, and went over 20,000 yards, which was his goal.
2000
Durring Emmitt's last 3 years with the Cowboys, the Dave Campo era, he was surrounded by amazingly little talent (particularly on offense). The Cowboys finished 5-11 in every one of those seasons. By then, Emmitt was all the Cowboys had going for them, and he had even more obstacles to overcome.
Here is what Emmitt was up against in 2000:
1.) Joey Galloway and Rocket Ismail both out with a torn ACL.
2.) Troy Aikman in and out with concussions.
3.) Underachieving offensive line.
4.) Shuffling of the offensive line because of injuries.
5.) Defensive problems.
6.) Lack of time of possession (not having the football enough to establish a running game).
7.) Playing from behind.
8.) Coaches not utilizing everything.
9.) No commitment to be good at one thing.
Emmitt really had the deck stacked against him in 2000, but what makes it all worse, is that they would even go away from him sometimes when the running game was working. Here is a prime example:
The Cowboys gave away the November 5 game against the Eagles, losing 16-13 in overtime. I personally hold Jack Reilly (offensive coordinator) responsible for the Cowboys losing that game. Robert Thomas might have been the goat in that game, but he should have never been put in that situation in the first place. Why would a coach IN THE MIDDLE OF OVERTIME put the football in the hands of a 3rd year blocking fullback when you had an 11-year veteran halfback that's headed to the Hall Of Fame at your disposal?
Why would a coach decide in as hostile an environment as there is to give the ball to a man that hadn't carried it all day when the other guy had carried it 26 times for 134 yards? Why would a coach take that chance with a player that came into the league as a backup linebacker when the other choice was one of the top running backs in the history of the game at EVERY LEVEL he played?
To justify his decision, Jack Reilly said, "We needed a little bit of mixture in there." It didn't look that way from my TV. To me, it looked like all they had to do was give the ball to Emmitt. Michael Irvin was retired, Troy Aikman was on his way out, but Emmitt still worked about as well as he ever did. With the way he was running, how could he have 84 yards at halftime, 121 through 3 quarters, and only have 134 by the time the game was over? With that game going to OT, Emmitt probably should have had about 175 yards.
When the Cowboys got the ball for the first time in the 4th quarter, they had a 10-3 lead, and then the coaching staff all of a sudden decided to try something else. As a result, they ended up having their first possession of the game that ended without a 1st down, and then they had to punt. As a matter of fact, the Cowboys only ran the ball twice in their first 3 possessions of the 4th quarter. They stopped dominating time of possession and eating up clock to give their defense some rest, and that's what did them in. The next thing you know, the Eagles tied the game TWICE after struggling the whole game.......first with a touchdown at 10, then with a field goal at 13.
That day wasn't the first time Dave Campo and his coaching staff had abandoned Emmitt Smith, their only weapon, and one that rarely failed them. The offensive burden fell on Emmitt because Troy Aikman was in and out of the lineup with repeated concussions, and Joey Galloway and Rocket Ismail were both out for the year with knee injuries. On that particular day, with Randall Cunningham filling in for Troy and the team being short-handed at receiver, you would think it would have been all Emmitt all the time, with a little bit of Chris Warren mixed in.
In the December 10 game against the Redskins, Emmitt carried the Cowboys to a 32-13 win by running for a season-high 150 yards......against the NFL's No. 2 ranked defense. That was also the game that Troy Aikman suffered the concussion that ended his career, on a hit by Lavar Arrington in the 1st quarter. It speaks volumes about his character for him to go out and play like that when his QB was out, other key contributors injured, and the Cowboys being mathematically eliminated from the playoffs. The offensive line struggled to open holes for him in the first half, limiting him to just 39 yards on 12 carries, and then Emmitt just took over the game in the 2nd half. Emmitt also went over 1,000 yards in that game, for the 10th straight season, and it would have been 11 if David Shula would have seen fit to give him more carries in his rookie season. Emmitt only got more than 20 carries once in the first 10 games of that season.
I think Emmitt did well to put up 1,203 yards and 9 touchdowns, considering everything he had going against him. I believe he could have gotten 1,400-1,500 if they gave him the ball more often. Better yet, I wonder what the Cowboys' record would have been. Emmitt played on good teams early in his career and bad teams late. Walter Payton did the opposite. Jim Brown only played on good teams. During his career, Emmitt Smith's teams were a total of 12 games over .500, Walter Payton's were 28 games over .500, and Jim Brown's were 45 games over .500. With that being said, can somebody tell me again why Emmitt gets accused of gravy-training?
I'll pick up Part 4 with 2001, when things started to get even worse for Emmitt, especially the controversy with him and Troy Hambrick.
For Part 3 of this series, I'll be going over 1998-2000, Emmitt's comeback years after having 2 straight seasons well below Emmitt standards.
With greatness comes backlash, and every great player in every sport has his share of critics and naysayers. I believe that Emmitt Smith has it worse than most. It seems to me like the majority of football fans and media thought Emmitt had it easy and that he wasn't all that great of a running back. The most common misconception is "Put him on any other team besides the Cowboys, and he would have been good, but not great." In the 3-year span from 1998-2000, the Cowboys, coached by Chan Gailey and Dave Campo, were one game under .500 and won ZERO playoff games. As much as I love Troy Aikman, he was done by then. All of those concussions had finally taken a toll on him. Michael Irvin also had to retire prematurely, after a spinal injury ended his 1999 season in the 4th game. Some of the famous names were still on the offensive line, but their best years were behind them at that point. During those seasons, Emmitt's age was 29, 30, and 31. He had taken a ridiculous amount of punishment in his first 28 years, at all levels of football. Usually in that situation, you would have a running back who is just above average struggling.
Emmitt rushed for 3,932 yards and 33 touchdowns during those 3 years, and he wasn't running on fumes either. He was at 4.2 yards per carry in 1998 and 1999, and at 4.1 in 2000. He was in the top 5 in the NFL in rushing yards in 2 of those 3 years. We don't even have to speculate on what Emmitt would do if he played for a mediocre to bad team. He did play for those kinds of teams from 1998-2000, and ran for the 3rd most yards from 29-31 in NFL history behind Walter Payton and Curtis Martin. Once again, most good-but-not-great running backs struggle to keep a job at age 30. Emmitt Smith was a top 5 rusher on a bad team. It would be easy to say that I picked out that particular 3-year stretch to make Emmitt look good, but the fact is, you can pick ANY 3-year strectch out of his career and he would be among the leading rushers in NFL history in that age group. Let's not forget that Emmitt has the NFL record for most rushing yards after turning 30. My point is that his supporting cast wasn't great in all of those stretches and was downright bad in others. I said in Part 2 that Emmitt's decline had much more to do with the team's incompetence than his declining skills.
Let's look at what Emmitt had going on in these 3 seasons:
1998
Emmitt had to make the following adjustments:
1.) Learning How To Run Without A Fullback
A lot of people tend to forget about this adjustment. In Emmitt's first 8 years, he spent about 60% of the time behind a fullback, and under Chan Gailey that number got cut in half. The adjustment also meant that Emmitt wasn't hitting the hole as fast. He had to wait another split-second to see how the play developed or see if the player in front of him was able to make the block.
2.) A New Zone Blocking Scheme
This scheme is based on the running back's ability to recognize where the hole is and make a cut to get up the field. This blocking scheme stretches the defense by moving the line, forcing the defensive linemen to move sideways, making them easier to block. The defenders also get tied up because they have to react, and that's where the running back can take advantage of the stretch. Zone blocking is not about blowing your man off the line, it's about staying in contact with him and letting the running back make the adjustment. This scheme was an adjustment for the whole offense, especially since the offensive line was better at man blocking than zone.
3.) Giving Up 3rd Down Responsibilities
The Cowboys signed Chris Warren to be their 3rd down back, as well as giving Emmitt an occasional breather to help lighten his load.
After back to back sub-par seasons full of injuries and having bone spurs removed from one of his ankles, Emmitt was healthy for the first time in 3 seasons. Under new head coach Chan Gailey, he bounced back in 1998 with 1,332 yards and 13 touchdowns, and also became the Cowboys' all-time leading rusher that season. Defenses were still keying on Emmitt because the Cowboys still didn't have a threat at TE, and the Cowboys were without Troy Aikman for 5 games after he broke his collarbone in Week 2. Jason Garrett didn't do a bad job stepping in for those 5 games, but Emmitt played a major role in keeping the team afloat during that stretch, with 90 carries for 390 yards and 3 touchdowns. Making those adjustments after doing things the same way for so long wasn't easy for Emmitt to do, which makes his 1998 season that much more impressive.
1999
Emmitt had an even better season in 1999 despite:
1.) Being the only reliable cog in an inconsistent offense.
2.) Running behind a converted linebacker at fullback.
3.) The Cowboys had 3 of their top 4 receivers out with injury.
4.) Troy Aikman was in and out of the lineup with concussions.
5.) Even more 8 and 9-man fronts.
6.) Missing 9 quarters of football because of hand and groin injuries.
This would be the year that Emmitt proved that he still had it. He was once again on his usual record-setting pace, even leading the NFL in rushing at one point- AT 30 YEARS OLD and supposedly washed up. He and Ricky Watters were the only two 30-year old running backs to rank among the top 10 in rushing in 1999. Emmitt also moved up a couple of spots on the NFL's all-time rushing list, passing Tony Dorsett and Eric Dickerson, moving into 3rd place all-time.
Who can forget that Monday Night game in Minnesota right after Walter Payton's death? Emmitt came out in his memory and had 13 carries for 140 yards and 2 touchdowns in less than a half, more like a quarter and a half. The Cowboys were completely dominating the Vikings, and then it all changed:
In what might be the most unfortunate moment in Emmitt's career, when he started getting close to the end zone on his 63-yard touchdown run, he stiff-armed Vikings cornerback Kenny Wright and got his fingers tangled in his face mask, breaking bones in the back of his hand. He also had a 24-yard touchdown run on his very next carry, after the Cowboys recovered a Vikings fumble of a kickoff, giving him the NFL record for fastest back to back touchdowns scored by one player.....18 seconds. By halftime, on a record-setting pace, Emmitt was done for the game, and even sat the next one out. The Cowboys' offense left when Emmitt did, and they started to fall apart after that. To cap it all off, Troy Aikman suffered a concussion early in the 3rd quarter that knocked him out of the game. I had A SICK FEELING in my body after hearing that Emmitt was done for the game. I really wanted to see him go after Walter Payton's then-NFL single game rushing record. I remember him saying that he was in a serious groove that night, and wasn't even tired yet.
Emmitt still ended up with 1,397 yards and 11 touchdowns, along with a healthy 4.2 yards per carry average. It was a very good season, but it was robbed by a broken hand of all it could have been. With the pace Emmitt was on before he got injured, there is no telling how many yards he would have ended up with. At the very least, I would say his total would have been in the 1,600-1,700 range, and at least 15 touchdowns. At the risk of sounding biased, if Emmitt would have kept up that pace and won the rushing title, he would have been my choice for MVP. Kurt Warner was the 1999 MVP, and there is no question that he deserved it. He took over the starting QB job after Trent Green blew out his knee in a preseason game, and led the Rams to a 13-3 record and Super Bowl win after going 4-12 in 1998.
Emmitt carried the Cowboys on his back in 1999, and he put those numbers and dragged the Cowboys to the playoffs with a beat-up Troy Aikman, Robert Thomas (a converted linebacker) at fullback, Rocket Ismail and Ernie Mills as the starting receivers, and David LaFleur at tight end as his supporting cast. You would think that losing Daryl Johnston to a career-ending neck injury in Week 1 and Michael Irvin to a career-ending spinal injury in Week 4 would have slowed Emmitt down, but he got stronger as the season went on, and the only thing that could stop him were the injuries. That's why I believe he would have won the MVP if he stayed healthy. More than anything, the 1999 season also proved that if Emmitt's talent and production didn't get slowed drastically after the 1995 season, he would have smashed the all-time rushing record much earlier than he actually did, and went over 20,000 yards, which was his goal.
2000
Durring Emmitt's last 3 years with the Cowboys, the Dave Campo era, he was surrounded by amazingly little talent (particularly on offense). The Cowboys finished 5-11 in every one of those seasons. By then, Emmitt was all the Cowboys had going for them, and he had even more obstacles to overcome.
Here is what Emmitt was up against in 2000:
1.) Joey Galloway and Rocket Ismail both out with a torn ACL.
2.) Troy Aikman in and out with concussions.
3.) Underachieving offensive line.
4.) Shuffling of the offensive line because of injuries.
5.) Defensive problems.
6.) Lack of time of possession (not having the football enough to establish a running game).
7.) Playing from behind.
8.) Coaches not utilizing everything.
9.) No commitment to be good at one thing.
Emmitt really had the deck stacked against him in 2000, but what makes it all worse, is that they would even go away from him sometimes when the running game was working. Here is a prime example:
The Cowboys gave away the November 5 game against the Eagles, losing 16-13 in overtime. I personally hold Jack Reilly (offensive coordinator) responsible for the Cowboys losing that game. Robert Thomas might have been the goat in that game, but he should have never been put in that situation in the first place. Why would a coach IN THE MIDDLE OF OVERTIME put the football in the hands of a 3rd year blocking fullback when you had an 11-year veteran halfback that's headed to the Hall Of Fame at your disposal?
Why would a coach decide in as hostile an environment as there is to give the ball to a man that hadn't carried it all day when the other guy had carried it 26 times for 134 yards? Why would a coach take that chance with a player that came into the league as a backup linebacker when the other choice was one of the top running backs in the history of the game at EVERY LEVEL he played?
To justify his decision, Jack Reilly said, "We needed a little bit of mixture in there." It didn't look that way from my TV. To me, it looked like all they had to do was give the ball to Emmitt. Michael Irvin was retired, Troy Aikman was on his way out, but Emmitt still worked about as well as he ever did. With the way he was running, how could he have 84 yards at halftime, 121 through 3 quarters, and only have 134 by the time the game was over? With that game going to OT, Emmitt probably should have had about 175 yards.
When the Cowboys got the ball for the first time in the 4th quarter, they had a 10-3 lead, and then the coaching staff all of a sudden decided to try something else. As a result, they ended up having their first possession of the game that ended without a 1st down, and then they had to punt. As a matter of fact, the Cowboys only ran the ball twice in their first 3 possessions of the 4th quarter. They stopped dominating time of possession and eating up clock to give their defense some rest, and that's what did them in. The next thing you know, the Eagles tied the game TWICE after struggling the whole game.......first with a touchdown at 10, then with a field goal at 13.
That day wasn't the first time Dave Campo and his coaching staff had abandoned Emmitt Smith, their only weapon, and one that rarely failed them. The offensive burden fell on Emmitt because Troy Aikman was in and out of the lineup with repeated concussions, and Joey Galloway and Rocket Ismail were both out for the year with knee injuries. On that particular day, with Randall Cunningham filling in for Troy and the team being short-handed at receiver, you would think it would have been all Emmitt all the time, with a little bit of Chris Warren mixed in.
In the December 10 game against the Redskins, Emmitt carried the Cowboys to a 32-13 win by running for a season-high 150 yards......against the NFL's No. 2 ranked defense. That was also the game that Troy Aikman suffered the concussion that ended his career, on a hit by Lavar Arrington in the 1st quarter. It speaks volumes about his character for him to go out and play like that when his QB was out, other key contributors injured, and the Cowboys being mathematically eliminated from the playoffs. The offensive line struggled to open holes for him in the first half, limiting him to just 39 yards on 12 carries, and then Emmitt just took over the game in the 2nd half. Emmitt also went over 1,000 yards in that game, for the 10th straight season, and it would have been 11 if David Shula would have seen fit to give him more carries in his rookie season. Emmitt only got more than 20 carries once in the first 10 games of that season.
I think Emmitt did well to put up 1,203 yards and 9 touchdowns, considering everything he had going against him. I believe he could have gotten 1,400-1,500 if they gave him the ball more often. Better yet, I wonder what the Cowboys' record would have been. Emmitt played on good teams early in his career and bad teams late. Walter Payton did the opposite. Jim Brown only played on good teams. During his career, Emmitt Smith's teams were a total of 12 games over .500, Walter Payton's were 28 games over .500, and Jim Brown's were 45 games over .500. With that being said, can somebody tell me again why Emmitt gets accused of gravy-training?
I'll pick up Part 4 with 2001, when things started to get even worse for Emmitt, especially the controversy with him and Troy Hambrick.
Sunday, September 29, 2013
The Underrated Greatness Of Emmitt Smith - Part 2
The Underrated Greatness Of Emmitt Smith - Part 2
In Part 1 of this series, I talked about 3 of the biggest reasons why I believe that Emmitt Smith was underrated. The 3 reasons I gave are:
1.) The Supporting Cast Double Standard - Emmitt gets penalized for the teammates he had, while other all-time greats that played on stacked teams get a pass.
2.) The Offensive Line Cop-Out - As good as Emmitt's offensive line was, they got way too much credit for his success.
3.) Intangibles/Impact On The Other Units - Emmitt was the prototype for what championship caliber teams want from their running back......extend the drive, wear down the defense, score the touchdown to put the game away.
Starting with this piece, I'll be focusing more on what Emmitt did in his later years, after all the Super Bowl years were over. Before I get into that, I want to point out a couple of things:
-Most people don't realize that Emmitt actually racked up most of his yards post-1995, after the Cowboys started to decline and Jimmy Johnson was long gone. In that time, Emmitt put up 8 straight 1,000-yard seasons, including his NFL record (5,789 yards) for most rushing yards after turning 30. Only 2 other running backs have ever managed 5,000 yards after 30, and they were John Riggins with 5,683 yards, and Walter Payton with 5,101 yards. Out of all the intangibles that Emmitt had, the one that amazed me the most was his durability. In his 13 years with the Cowboys, Emmitt only missed 4 games due to injury. That kind of durability has only been matched by Walter Payton (missed 1 game in 13 years) and Jim Brown (never missed a game). You could even give Emmitt a slight edge over them if you take into account that he was the workhorse for his team every year on every level he played, as well as all of the NFL playoff games he played in. When you think about it, Emmitt played a little over 16 seasons in his 15 years in the NFL.
-What people that only pay attention to stats don't realize, is that before a set of significant injuries slowed down Emmitt's pace in his prime, he was on pace to SHATTER the all-time rushing record way before he actually did, along with every other major rushing record. Emmitt was about to rewrite the NFL record book for running backs. Barry Sanders wasn't the only running back that had a legitimate chance at 20,000 yards. Emmitt was also on pace for a 2,000-yard season through the first 9 games of the 1995 season, and had a decent shot at it until around Thanksgiving. There were a few games where he could have easily added to his totals if not for leaving early due to injury or the team putting the game out of reach early.
The Cowboys had a simple, but very efficient offense in the early 90's. If the defense had 7 in the box, then they would run Emmitt all day. If the defense had 8 or 9 in the box, then they would start throwing the ball to Michael Irvin. If the defense rolled a safety over the top to double team The Playmaker, then Jay Novacek would get some passes in his direction. If another safety was rolled over the top for him, then Troy Aikman would go deep to Alvin Harper. Once the Cowboys' passing game started clicking, then the opposing defense would back that extra man out of the box, leaving them with 7 again. Once they did that, the Cowboys would go right back to handing the ball to Emmitt. There was a little bit more to it than that, but that sums up how the Cowboys' offense operated back then.
I enjoyed watching the Cowboys so much because EVERYBODY, including the other team, knew what was coming and STILL couldn't stop it. I never got tired of watching that kind of dominance every week. Those were some of the best times of my early teenage years. Back then, I just knew the Cowboys would dominate forever.....but then I learned a lesson. When free agency came along, that was when I learned that pro sports are a business first. The biggest lesson that I learned was that it costs money to keep a good team together. That well-oiled machine took ALL parts to function properly. Once the first part went missing, the machine started to fall apart. Alvin Harper, the Cowboys' deep threat, left after the 1994 season and signed with the Buccaneers. Even with him gone, the machine could still function at a high rate. It was when Jay Novacek's bad back forced him into early retirement that the machine broke down. At that point, opposing defenses could put 8 in the box to stop Emmitt, roll a safety over the top to double team Michael Irvin, and leave 1 on 1 coverage on the backside receiver because the TE was no longer a threat. That makes the numbers those 2 players put up that much more impressive, because if the Cowboys had another true threat at TE, the machine would have kept rolling, and the Big 3 would have still been among the league leaders late in their careers.
We all know about the perception that Emmitt played only on stacked teams, with a powerhouse offensive line and All-Pros at every position, and that we don't know how he would have done without all of that. That's not true. As a matter of fact, nothing could be further from the truth. People that truly understand the game and don't have a bias against the Cowboys know very well how Emmitt would have done on a losing team, with a mediocre to bad QB and an average to bad offensive line, because those are exactly the kinds of teams that he played on after the Super Bowl years, up until the end of his career with the Cardinals. The deteriorating supporting cast along with a lot of injuries in his prime are what accelerated Emmitt's decline.
Here is what Emmitt had to endure after the Super Bowl years were over:
1996
Here are the things Emmitt had going against him in 1996:
1.) There was no cohesion in the offense whatsoever. They didn't even play together as a unit until the season opener.
2.) Several key players were out because of injuries and suspensions.
3.) The offensive line got older.
4.) Defenses were stacking 8 and 9 in the box to stop Emmitt.
5.) A long list of injuries: 2 sprained ankles, sprained left knee, strained back, bruised ribs, bruised shoulder, bruised and jammed neck, spinal cord contusion - Emmitt was hurting from the top of his head to his ankles. His ability to accelerate and cut was reduced by a half-step or split-second, which is enough to separate the best from the rest. Emmitt lost push-off speed and power, and his ability to start and stop, then restart in another direction became fractionally slower. By medical measurement, he lost 18% flexibility in his right ankle.
The 1996 season seemed like it was doomed from the start. In the preseason game against the Broncos, which was Emmitt's first game, he made a 5-yard run when Erik Williams was sideswiped and fell off-balance against the back of Emmitt's knee. He ended up suffering a sprained left knee and right ankle. The injury looked much worse than what it was, and Emmitt said that it felt like the worst injury of his career. I was nervous as all hell after seeing that happen, and you could hear a pin drop at Texas Stadium while Emmitt was being tended to. Even former Olympic gold medal sprinter Michael Johnson, who was a guest commentator that night, was worried about Emmitt's health. Things went from bad to worse after Michael Irvin was suspended for the first 5 games and learning that Jay Novacek wouldn't be able to play because of his bad back. The Cowboys had a mix-and-match lineup to start the season. For starters, Larry Allen was moved from RG to LT, and George Hegamin took his place. Because of this and all of the other switches on the offensive line, the run blocking was as coordinated as 3rd grade recess. Daryl Johnston played some TE, and even Deion Sanders played a lot of receiver with Michael Irvin being out.
In the season opener against the Bears, Emmitt was misused. The Cowboys didn't have Michael Irvin or Jay Novacek, and still decided to go pass-happy on early downs, ignoring Emmitt. He got 18 carries for 70 yards in that game, but that wasn't enough. For all I know, they might have been trying to lighten his load, but at the same time Emmitt Smith was the reason the Cowboys won so many games. They could have run him more to take some pressure off the passing game, which was obviously feeling those losses. Fewer people were open, and the receivers that were open were dropping the ball. Then add 9 penalties along with a couple of wasted timeouts because of things like people being in the wrong formations. It was also a close game until 4 turnovers finally did the Cowboys in.
This was also the game where it went from bad to worse for Emmitt, who was already playing with a bad knee and ankle. Here is how it went down:
The play was a bootleg right by Troy Aikman, which ended up losing yards. At the beginning, Troy faked a handoff to Emmitt, who tried to sell the fake by jumping over the pile as a decoy and ended up landing on his head and right shoulder. He laid motionless on the field for several minutes until he was finally carted off. I didn't get much sleep at all that night because I was worried that Emmitt was paralyzed and would never play again. It turned out that Emmitt suffered a spinal cord contusion, which would further limit his explosion, agility, and power for the whole season. Those skills were a big part of what made him "Emmitt". I remember hearing and reading about him waking up one night during that season, putting his feet on the floor to stand up and then crumpling to the floor because his legs went completely numb. Emmitt also developed bone spurs in both of his ankles because of a change in step to overcompensate for the spinal injury. He finished that season, just one year after his record-setting production in 1995, with 327 carries for 1,204 yards, a 3.7 yards per carry average, and 12 touchdowns. To me, that's amazing considering that he was never at 100% physically at any point of the season because of all those injuries he had to play through, along with defenses selling out to stop him every week.
In both 1996 and 1997, the sports world watched Emmitt's production dwindle down even more from 1,204 yards in '96 after a career season the year before, to 1,074 yards in '97. Everybody in the media was talking about how he looked like a RB that was quickly declining. They even predicted that for the rest of his career, that he could be a workman-like 800-yard back if he worked at it. A few of the all-time great RBs in NFL history thought Emmitt's workload had caught up with him. I even remember reading a Football Digest article in 1998 that talked about Emmitt Smith and Barry Sanders being equals up until 1996, and then Barry blew past Emmitt, and that his career even soared to new heights. They even said that Emmitt probably wouldn't even be in the NFL by the time Barry broke Walter Payton's record. Everybody said it looked like Emmitt was hitting a wall, basically pronouncing his career over and saying that he was washed up.
1997
Emmitt had another injury-plagued year in 1997. He had an ankle that was still bothering him, bruised ribs, a strained groin, a slightly separated shoulder, and he even played 1 game with the flu. Like I mentioned earlier, his decline was sped up by an aging and increasingly ineffective line. The Cowboys' offense was built around the power running game, which means that the middle of the offensive line has to be dominant and blow people off the ball. That wasn't the case in 1997, and it was the single most important reason for the decline of the Cowboys that season. They started a new undersized center (Clay Shiver), an out of shape and injured left guard (Nate Newton), and a left tackle who was never 100% (Mark Tuinei)......that's 3/5 of the offensive line. It's also the main reason that all 3 of The Triplets had bad years.
Here is what the power running game is designed to do:
1.) Keep Defenses Honest - They won't be so quick to blitz if you have a running back that's a threat to score on any play. That's why Troy Aikman had a bad year, and he was pressured more than any QB that I could remember.
2.) Give The Lead Receiver A Clear View To The QB - This goes especially for play-action passes because the weakside linebacker has to play up to the line for run support instead of dropping back into the slant zone. With the offensive line struggling, the linebackers were able to drop back more.
3.) Allows Elite RBs To Have 1,500+ Yard Seasons - Once again, I believe Emmitt Smith did an amazing job for a running back that was supposed to be washed up, especially with all those injuries and not having the line he had during the Super Bowl years. Emmitt's greatest asset besides his vision was his ability to make linebackers miss and/or grab their reaching arms and move them out of his way. He could still do that, but he had to have an offensive line that could give him a hole to run through. When teams started blitzing up the middle, it threw off the blocking schemes of the line, combined with the injuries and out of shape linemen, Emmitt couldn't find a hole. Not even Barry Sanders could have done much of anything under those conditions.
Execution wasn't the problem for the Cowboys offense, a lack of innovation is what cost them. Defenses started changing, and they stayed the same and got stale. It's bad enough that the Cowboys didn't have a threat at TE to replace Jay Novacek or a receiver to compliment Michael Irvin, but the coaches keep trying to force the running game inside where all the blitzes were coming from instead of running outside more. That wasn't where Emmitt was at his best, but the Cowboys did have Sherman Williams, who had that extra burst of speed to be effective on the outside. Every team in the NFL figured out that the way to stop Emmitt was to bring linebackers in the gaps between the tackles. That's the biggest reason why Emmitt wasn't himself and the Cowboys were being outschemed. Defenses were attacking Emmitt's strength, which was running between the tackles.
I also saw some hesitancy from Emmitt at that time. He wasn't attacking the line of scrimmage like he used to. There was a lot of uncertainty. It was a combination of his injuries and him being unsure of either his linemen or blocking scheme. He was also being held back by an old offensive line with Clay Shiver, a young overmatched center, and the left side of the line was old (Mark Tuinei, 37, Nate Newton, 35). In other words, the line was too old on the left side, too inexperienced in the middle, and a shadow of itself on the right. Also, since the Cowboys had become so predictable, defenses would just stack the line and wait on Emmitt. He wasn't even getting a chance.
There was a reason why Troy Aikman wanted the Cowboys to move up in the 1997 draft and take Tony Gonzalez (with all-due respect to Jason Witten). From time to time, I fantasize about how he likely would have almost instantly opened the offense back up and took the extra man out of the box for Emmitt. I'll even take it a step further. What if the Cowboys had also went on and drafted Randy Moss the next year like everybody expected them to, instead of Greg Ellis? That would have been one NASTY offense if they could have pulled that off. I won't even mention the line, because if they had all that talent on the offense, I believe they almost certainly would have bolstered the line. I believe the Cowboys would have been right back to winning Super Bowls with that offense, and Emmitt probably would have gotten a couple more rushing titles. I can't help but fantasize about that once in a while, but I guess it turned out the way it was supposed to.
I will say one last thing about 1997: If anybody had told me that a team with Emmitt Smith, Michael Irvin, Troy Aikman, and Deion Sanders on it would only win 6 games and not make the playoffs, I would have laughed in their faces and told them they were crazy. I don't think anybody saw that kind of season from the Cowboys. I'll be picking up with 1998 in the next installment.
In Part 1 of this series, I talked about 3 of the biggest reasons why I believe that Emmitt Smith was underrated. The 3 reasons I gave are:
1.) The Supporting Cast Double Standard - Emmitt gets penalized for the teammates he had, while other all-time greats that played on stacked teams get a pass.
2.) The Offensive Line Cop-Out - As good as Emmitt's offensive line was, they got way too much credit for his success.
3.) Intangibles/Impact On The Other Units - Emmitt was the prototype for what championship caliber teams want from their running back......extend the drive, wear down the defense, score the touchdown to put the game away.
Starting with this piece, I'll be focusing more on what Emmitt did in his later years, after all the Super Bowl years were over. Before I get into that, I want to point out a couple of things:
-Most people don't realize that Emmitt actually racked up most of his yards post-1995, after the Cowboys started to decline and Jimmy Johnson was long gone. In that time, Emmitt put up 8 straight 1,000-yard seasons, including his NFL record (5,789 yards) for most rushing yards after turning 30. Only 2 other running backs have ever managed 5,000 yards after 30, and they were John Riggins with 5,683 yards, and Walter Payton with 5,101 yards. Out of all the intangibles that Emmitt had, the one that amazed me the most was his durability. In his 13 years with the Cowboys, Emmitt only missed 4 games due to injury. That kind of durability has only been matched by Walter Payton (missed 1 game in 13 years) and Jim Brown (never missed a game). You could even give Emmitt a slight edge over them if you take into account that he was the workhorse for his team every year on every level he played, as well as all of the NFL playoff games he played in. When you think about it, Emmitt played a little over 16 seasons in his 15 years in the NFL.
-What people that only pay attention to stats don't realize, is that before a set of significant injuries slowed down Emmitt's pace in his prime, he was on pace to SHATTER the all-time rushing record way before he actually did, along with every other major rushing record. Emmitt was about to rewrite the NFL record book for running backs. Barry Sanders wasn't the only running back that had a legitimate chance at 20,000 yards. Emmitt was also on pace for a 2,000-yard season through the first 9 games of the 1995 season, and had a decent shot at it until around Thanksgiving. There were a few games where he could have easily added to his totals if not for leaving early due to injury or the team putting the game out of reach early.
The Cowboys had a simple, but very efficient offense in the early 90's. If the defense had 7 in the box, then they would run Emmitt all day. If the defense had 8 or 9 in the box, then they would start throwing the ball to Michael Irvin. If the defense rolled a safety over the top to double team The Playmaker, then Jay Novacek would get some passes in his direction. If another safety was rolled over the top for him, then Troy Aikman would go deep to Alvin Harper. Once the Cowboys' passing game started clicking, then the opposing defense would back that extra man out of the box, leaving them with 7 again. Once they did that, the Cowboys would go right back to handing the ball to Emmitt. There was a little bit more to it than that, but that sums up how the Cowboys' offense operated back then.
I enjoyed watching the Cowboys so much because EVERYBODY, including the other team, knew what was coming and STILL couldn't stop it. I never got tired of watching that kind of dominance every week. Those were some of the best times of my early teenage years. Back then, I just knew the Cowboys would dominate forever.....but then I learned a lesson. When free agency came along, that was when I learned that pro sports are a business first. The biggest lesson that I learned was that it costs money to keep a good team together. That well-oiled machine took ALL parts to function properly. Once the first part went missing, the machine started to fall apart. Alvin Harper, the Cowboys' deep threat, left after the 1994 season and signed with the Buccaneers. Even with him gone, the machine could still function at a high rate. It was when Jay Novacek's bad back forced him into early retirement that the machine broke down. At that point, opposing defenses could put 8 in the box to stop Emmitt, roll a safety over the top to double team Michael Irvin, and leave 1 on 1 coverage on the backside receiver because the TE was no longer a threat. That makes the numbers those 2 players put up that much more impressive, because if the Cowboys had another true threat at TE, the machine would have kept rolling, and the Big 3 would have still been among the league leaders late in their careers.
We all know about the perception that Emmitt played only on stacked teams, with a powerhouse offensive line and All-Pros at every position, and that we don't know how he would have done without all of that. That's not true. As a matter of fact, nothing could be further from the truth. People that truly understand the game and don't have a bias against the Cowboys know very well how Emmitt would have done on a losing team, with a mediocre to bad QB and an average to bad offensive line, because those are exactly the kinds of teams that he played on after the Super Bowl years, up until the end of his career with the Cardinals. The deteriorating supporting cast along with a lot of injuries in his prime are what accelerated Emmitt's decline.
Here is what Emmitt had to endure after the Super Bowl years were over:
1996
Here are the things Emmitt had going against him in 1996:
1.) There was no cohesion in the offense whatsoever. They didn't even play together as a unit until the season opener.
2.) Several key players were out because of injuries and suspensions.
3.) The offensive line got older.
4.) Defenses were stacking 8 and 9 in the box to stop Emmitt.
5.) A long list of injuries: 2 sprained ankles, sprained left knee, strained back, bruised ribs, bruised shoulder, bruised and jammed neck, spinal cord contusion - Emmitt was hurting from the top of his head to his ankles. His ability to accelerate and cut was reduced by a half-step or split-second, which is enough to separate the best from the rest. Emmitt lost push-off speed and power, and his ability to start and stop, then restart in another direction became fractionally slower. By medical measurement, he lost 18% flexibility in his right ankle.
The 1996 season seemed like it was doomed from the start. In the preseason game against the Broncos, which was Emmitt's first game, he made a 5-yard run when Erik Williams was sideswiped and fell off-balance against the back of Emmitt's knee. He ended up suffering a sprained left knee and right ankle. The injury looked much worse than what it was, and Emmitt said that it felt like the worst injury of his career. I was nervous as all hell after seeing that happen, and you could hear a pin drop at Texas Stadium while Emmitt was being tended to. Even former Olympic gold medal sprinter Michael Johnson, who was a guest commentator that night, was worried about Emmitt's health. Things went from bad to worse after Michael Irvin was suspended for the first 5 games and learning that Jay Novacek wouldn't be able to play because of his bad back. The Cowboys had a mix-and-match lineup to start the season. For starters, Larry Allen was moved from RG to LT, and George Hegamin took his place. Because of this and all of the other switches on the offensive line, the run blocking was as coordinated as 3rd grade recess. Daryl Johnston played some TE, and even Deion Sanders played a lot of receiver with Michael Irvin being out.
In the season opener against the Bears, Emmitt was misused. The Cowboys didn't have Michael Irvin or Jay Novacek, and still decided to go pass-happy on early downs, ignoring Emmitt. He got 18 carries for 70 yards in that game, but that wasn't enough. For all I know, they might have been trying to lighten his load, but at the same time Emmitt Smith was the reason the Cowboys won so many games. They could have run him more to take some pressure off the passing game, which was obviously feeling those losses. Fewer people were open, and the receivers that were open were dropping the ball. Then add 9 penalties along with a couple of wasted timeouts because of things like people being in the wrong formations. It was also a close game until 4 turnovers finally did the Cowboys in.
This was also the game where it went from bad to worse for Emmitt, who was already playing with a bad knee and ankle. Here is how it went down:
The play was a bootleg right by Troy Aikman, which ended up losing yards. At the beginning, Troy faked a handoff to Emmitt, who tried to sell the fake by jumping over the pile as a decoy and ended up landing on his head and right shoulder. He laid motionless on the field for several minutes until he was finally carted off. I didn't get much sleep at all that night because I was worried that Emmitt was paralyzed and would never play again. It turned out that Emmitt suffered a spinal cord contusion, which would further limit his explosion, agility, and power for the whole season. Those skills were a big part of what made him "Emmitt". I remember hearing and reading about him waking up one night during that season, putting his feet on the floor to stand up and then crumpling to the floor because his legs went completely numb. Emmitt also developed bone spurs in both of his ankles because of a change in step to overcompensate for the spinal injury. He finished that season, just one year after his record-setting production in 1995, with 327 carries for 1,204 yards, a 3.7 yards per carry average, and 12 touchdowns. To me, that's amazing considering that he was never at 100% physically at any point of the season because of all those injuries he had to play through, along with defenses selling out to stop him every week.
In both 1996 and 1997, the sports world watched Emmitt's production dwindle down even more from 1,204 yards in '96 after a career season the year before, to 1,074 yards in '97. Everybody in the media was talking about how he looked like a RB that was quickly declining. They even predicted that for the rest of his career, that he could be a workman-like 800-yard back if he worked at it. A few of the all-time great RBs in NFL history thought Emmitt's workload had caught up with him. I even remember reading a Football Digest article in 1998 that talked about Emmitt Smith and Barry Sanders being equals up until 1996, and then Barry blew past Emmitt, and that his career even soared to new heights. They even said that Emmitt probably wouldn't even be in the NFL by the time Barry broke Walter Payton's record. Everybody said it looked like Emmitt was hitting a wall, basically pronouncing his career over and saying that he was washed up.
1997
Emmitt had another injury-plagued year in 1997. He had an ankle that was still bothering him, bruised ribs, a strained groin, a slightly separated shoulder, and he even played 1 game with the flu. Like I mentioned earlier, his decline was sped up by an aging and increasingly ineffective line. The Cowboys' offense was built around the power running game, which means that the middle of the offensive line has to be dominant and blow people off the ball. That wasn't the case in 1997, and it was the single most important reason for the decline of the Cowboys that season. They started a new undersized center (Clay Shiver), an out of shape and injured left guard (Nate Newton), and a left tackle who was never 100% (Mark Tuinei)......that's 3/5 of the offensive line. It's also the main reason that all 3 of The Triplets had bad years.
Here is what the power running game is designed to do:
1.) Keep Defenses Honest - They won't be so quick to blitz if you have a running back that's a threat to score on any play. That's why Troy Aikman had a bad year, and he was pressured more than any QB that I could remember.
2.) Give The Lead Receiver A Clear View To The QB - This goes especially for play-action passes because the weakside linebacker has to play up to the line for run support instead of dropping back into the slant zone. With the offensive line struggling, the linebackers were able to drop back more.
3.) Allows Elite RBs To Have 1,500+ Yard Seasons - Once again, I believe Emmitt Smith did an amazing job for a running back that was supposed to be washed up, especially with all those injuries and not having the line he had during the Super Bowl years. Emmitt's greatest asset besides his vision was his ability to make linebackers miss and/or grab their reaching arms and move them out of his way. He could still do that, but he had to have an offensive line that could give him a hole to run through. When teams started blitzing up the middle, it threw off the blocking schemes of the line, combined with the injuries and out of shape linemen, Emmitt couldn't find a hole. Not even Barry Sanders could have done much of anything under those conditions.
Execution wasn't the problem for the Cowboys offense, a lack of innovation is what cost them. Defenses started changing, and they stayed the same and got stale. It's bad enough that the Cowboys didn't have a threat at TE to replace Jay Novacek or a receiver to compliment Michael Irvin, but the coaches keep trying to force the running game inside where all the blitzes were coming from instead of running outside more. That wasn't where Emmitt was at his best, but the Cowboys did have Sherman Williams, who had that extra burst of speed to be effective on the outside. Every team in the NFL figured out that the way to stop Emmitt was to bring linebackers in the gaps between the tackles. That's the biggest reason why Emmitt wasn't himself and the Cowboys were being outschemed. Defenses were attacking Emmitt's strength, which was running between the tackles.
I also saw some hesitancy from Emmitt at that time. He wasn't attacking the line of scrimmage like he used to. There was a lot of uncertainty. It was a combination of his injuries and him being unsure of either his linemen or blocking scheme. He was also being held back by an old offensive line with Clay Shiver, a young overmatched center, and the left side of the line was old (Mark Tuinei, 37, Nate Newton, 35). In other words, the line was too old on the left side, too inexperienced in the middle, and a shadow of itself on the right. Also, since the Cowboys had become so predictable, defenses would just stack the line and wait on Emmitt. He wasn't even getting a chance.
There was a reason why Troy Aikman wanted the Cowboys to move up in the 1997 draft and take Tony Gonzalez (with all-due respect to Jason Witten). From time to time, I fantasize about how he likely would have almost instantly opened the offense back up and took the extra man out of the box for Emmitt. I'll even take it a step further. What if the Cowboys had also went on and drafted Randy Moss the next year like everybody expected them to, instead of Greg Ellis? That would have been one NASTY offense if they could have pulled that off. I won't even mention the line, because if they had all that talent on the offense, I believe they almost certainly would have bolstered the line. I believe the Cowboys would have been right back to winning Super Bowls with that offense, and Emmitt probably would have gotten a couple more rushing titles. I can't help but fantasize about that once in a while, but I guess it turned out the way it was supposed to.
I will say one last thing about 1997: If anybody had told me that a team with Emmitt Smith, Michael Irvin, Troy Aikman, and Deion Sanders on it would only win 6 games and not make the playoffs, I would have laughed in their faces and told them they were crazy. I don't think anybody saw that kind of season from the Cowboys. I'll be picking up with 1998 in the next installment.
Friday, September 13, 2013
My Emmitt Smith Report From 9th Grade
I was doing some cleaning last week and came across an old report I did on Emmitt Smith in my 9th grade English class. Here it is in raw form, without any formal training in writing or the upgrades that I have made to my current writing style:
12/12/94
Emmitt Smith
Emmitt Smith is a superstar running back for the Super Bowl champion Dallas Cowboys football team. He is in his 5th year with the Cowboys. They drafted him in 1990 in the first round with the 17th pick overall out of the University Of Florida, where he set 58 school records. In his freshman year with Florida, Emmitt was only the second freshman to finish in the top 10 in the Heisman Trophy balloting. During his collegiate career, he only missed 2 games and ran for 100-plus yards in 25 of 34 games, and was the only Gator to earn first team All-SEC honors his first 3 seasons. In his junior year he had a college career-high 316 yards against New Mexico, had a 96-yard touchdown run against Mississippi State as a sophomore in 1988.
Emmitt is the Florida Gators' all-time leading rusher with 4,232 yards. In high school, Emmitt ran for 8,804 yards in 4 years at Escambia High in Pensacola, FL with a 7.8 yard average per carry and 106 touchdowns. He ran for 100-plus yards in 45 of the 49 games he played for Escambia, including the last 28, and he was never held to less than 71 yards, even as a freshman. The 8,804 yyards puts Emmitt 2nd on the all-time rushing list in the National High School Sports Record Book behind Ken Hall of Sugar Land, TX (11,232 yards from 1950 to 1953). In his first game in 1983, Emmitt ran for 115 yards against Pensacola Catholic High. By his sophomore year, he was already District 1's most feared back. Defensive units were taping his number 24 on their helmets. By his junior year, he had turned it up a notch with seven 200-yard games, and in a furious outburst against Milton High he had 28 carries for 301 yards. In 4 years Emmitt hit Milton for 855 yards.
The 1990 NFL Draft was the first in which juniors were allowed to pass up their final year of eligiblity and enter the draft pool. Emmitt and 37 other juniors came out early. He was an incredible yardage machine. But pro scouts are funny people. Size, vertical leap, speed -those are the things that get the exclamation points in their notebooks. In terms of speed -the burst and the breakaway ability, there was a question mark next to Emmitt's name. His time in the 40 while at Florida was 4.55, on synthetic turf. A New York Giants scout reportedly got him at 4.7. Too slow. The Cowboys weren't worried about the speed. They were coming off a 1-15 season and a last-place NFC ranking in team rushing.
Emmitt never misses a workout, not a nick or bump guy who'd miss a lot of practice time, and not a complainer. Emmitt held out in his rookie year for the whole training camp. Still, he was the Cowboys' starting running back by Game 2 of his rookie season. One big day, 121 yards against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, was about it for his first 11 games, and then he did a strange thing. he complained. Dallas was coming off 2 losses to the N.Y. Jets and the san Francisco 49ers in which he didn't score a touchdown. Emmitt had carried a total of 21 times in those games. He spoke to the backfield coach and then went public on a radio show, saying: "The ball, please, I'd like the ball." In the next 4 games, Emmitt had 88 carries for 374 yards and 7 TDs, and the Cowboys had 4 wins. He ran for 100-plus yards in 2 of the games.
In 1991, Emmitt rushed for over 1,500 yards. In game 2 in a loss to Washington, Emmitt had 11 carries for 112 yards, including a 75-yard touchdown run. In Game 4, he had 23 carries for 182 yards, and a 60-yard touchdown run. The 75-yarder is still his longest run ever. That season, Emmitt had 6 other 100-yard games including 112, 122, 132, 109, 112, 160. That year, Emmitt edged out Detroit Lions star running back Barry Sanders to win his first rushing title with 1,563 yards to Barry Sanders' 1,548 yards. He finished with 12 rushing TDs, and 1 receiving TD.
In 1992, Emmitt won his 2nd straight rushing title with 1,713 yards, his best season. He also lead the league in scoring, 19 TDs, a Cowboys record- 18 rushing, 1 receiving. His longest run was 68 yards. His best day was 174 yards against the Atlanta Falcons on December 21. On that same night, Emmitt's most spectacular run of his career came. When he got the ball, he ran up the middle, about 5 or 6 Falcons piled up on him, he broke out of the pile and ran about 40 yards for a touchdown. That year, Emmitt led the Cowboys to their first Super Bowl since 1979. The Cowboys blew out the Buffalo Bills 52-17. Emmitt had 22 carries for 108 yards and 1 TD. Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman was Super Bowl XXVII's MVP. Emmitt got his first ring.
In 1993, Emmitt held out the whole training camp and even missed 2 games. The Cowboys lost their first 2 games without him. Then he signed a contract worth $13.6 million over 4 years. When he came back, the Cowboys got a 12-2 record. The final record was 12-4. In Emmitt's first game back he had 8 carries for 45 yards against the Phoenix Cardinals. That season, Emmitt ran for a career-high 237 yards against the Philadelphia Eagles. In that game he got 1 TD when he broke his 62-yard touchdown run. In the other game the Cowboys played against the Eagles, Emmitt ran for 172 more yards. That year, Emmitt went on to win his 3rd straight rushing title with 1,486 yards, due to the knee injury of Barry Sanders of the Detroit Lions. Emmitt also won the league MVP. The Cowboys went back to the Super Bowl and beat Buffalo 30-13. Emmitt was the MVP of Super Bowl XXVIII. It was close between him and safety James Washington. Emmitt got his 2nd ring. Emmitt had 32 carries for 132 yards and 2 TDs. He is the only back in NFL history to win the rushing title and Super Bowl in the same season, and the trifecta (rushing title, NFL MVP, and Super Bowl MVP).
This year, he went over 7,000 career yards (7,109). Emmitt is in 2nd place as one of the Cowboys all-time leading rushers behind Tony Dorsett (12,036). Emmitt trails Tony Dorsett by 4,927 yards. He wants to break former Chicago Bear running back Walter Payton's all-time record of 16,726 yards. he trails Payton by 9,617 yards. The other record Emmitt wanted is held by former Cleveland Browns fullback Jim Brown, which is 5 rushing titles in a row. Emmitt has 3. It doesn't look like he will get his 4th. He is on the verge of being dethroned by Barry Sanders, unless a big miracle can happen. If he gets lucky, he will break Jim Brown's record in his 11th season if he is as good as he is now. If Emmitt was to get 300 yards in the last Cowboys' 2 games, the rushing title is his. He needs a BIG miracle. If it's 1 thing he wants for Christmas that would be it. Emmitt has 74 career touchdowns.
Clearly, Emmitt Smith is THE BEST running back in the NFL, and has the statistics to prove it. He has 3 straight rushing titles, 2 Super Bowl rings, an NFL MVP, a Super Bowl MVP, and 11 NFL records (7 or 8 of them are Cowboy records). Barry Sanders is the best pure runner in the NFL. Compared to Emmitt, he has 1 rushing title (on the verge of 2), the Detroit Lions' all-time leading rusher, and he won the Heisman Trophy in college. Barry Sanders is "poetry in motion". He makes more tacklers miss than any other back. He makes them look bad. He has speed, agility, and strength. He and Emmitt have it good because they are so small. Emmitt is 5-9, 209 lbs. and Barry is 5-8, 203 lbs. Emmitt has power, speed, and agility. He is a heads-up runner with outstanding vision. He has the ability to cut back and go all the way at any time.
I would like to know what exactly Emmitt is doing out there, a guy with a supposed lack of speed who gains all those yards. What is his style? Here are some descriptives: "Frantic hopscotching, barefoot, on a blistering sidewalk." One newspaper wrote "He darts, feints, shifts back and forth like a typewriter carriage." My descriptive is this: He stops in the hole - comes to a complete stop - looks unhurriedly for a seam and skates across the field like a hot dog wrapper. Emmitt has the same vision and awareness Tony Dorsett had. He'll thrill you with his strengths, not speed. He'll go into a pile and come out the other end. I've seen him leave the ground and have to do a hitch step, like a long jumper, and then burst through. He also has the ability to keep his legs clean - he very seldom gets hit with his feet on the ground. That's where you see people get hurt.The yards don't awe him, but he keeps track of them, as he has ever since high school. Every time he scores a touchdown, he keeps the ball.
In the off-season, Emmitt still lives at home in Pensacola with his parents, 3 brothers, and 1 of his 2 sisters. He has a store there called Emmitt, Inc that sells sports collectibles such as cards and jerseys. His parents and 1 of his sisters run the store. He also has a football camp in the off-season for boys ages 8-16. Emmitt, as an individual player, is a lot like the Cowboys as a team - inexorable, indomitable, bound for gretness. He'll take your breath away and you won't get it back until he scores. It is his total package. The thing that turns Emmitt on the most is his desire to be a tremendous player. That's refreshing. It's easy to look at his prolific performance so far and project him as one of the greats, taking into account that he has never had knee surgery and that Dallas has the perfect offense for a back to put up big numbers. Emmitt wants to make a mark on football that few players will ever equal.
Bibliography
The Emmitt Zone
by Emmitt Smith w/Steve Delsohn
Crown Publishing Group
September 6, 1994
25 Most Popular Players In 1994
by Harry Peterson
Collector's Sports Look
December 1994
A Man Of Vision
by Leigh Montville
Sports Illustrated
February 14, 1994
***I mentioned that the 1990 NFL draft was the first that allowed early entry for underclassmen, but it was actually the 1989 draft that was first. Barry Sanders left college after his junior year for the NFL.
***That spectacular touchdown run that Emmitt had against the Falcons in 1992 was actually 29 yards instead of 40 yards.
12/12/94
Emmitt Smith
Emmitt Smith is a superstar running back for the Super Bowl champion Dallas Cowboys football team. He is in his 5th year with the Cowboys. They drafted him in 1990 in the first round with the 17th pick overall out of the University Of Florida, where he set 58 school records. In his freshman year with Florida, Emmitt was only the second freshman to finish in the top 10 in the Heisman Trophy balloting. During his collegiate career, he only missed 2 games and ran for 100-plus yards in 25 of 34 games, and was the only Gator to earn first team All-SEC honors his first 3 seasons. In his junior year he had a college career-high 316 yards against New Mexico, had a 96-yard touchdown run against Mississippi State as a sophomore in 1988.
Emmitt is the Florida Gators' all-time leading rusher with 4,232 yards. In high school, Emmitt ran for 8,804 yards in 4 years at Escambia High in Pensacola, FL with a 7.8 yard average per carry and 106 touchdowns. He ran for 100-plus yards in 45 of the 49 games he played for Escambia, including the last 28, and he was never held to less than 71 yards, even as a freshman. The 8,804 yyards puts Emmitt 2nd on the all-time rushing list in the National High School Sports Record Book behind Ken Hall of Sugar Land, TX (11,232 yards from 1950 to 1953). In his first game in 1983, Emmitt ran for 115 yards against Pensacola Catholic High. By his sophomore year, he was already District 1's most feared back. Defensive units were taping his number 24 on their helmets. By his junior year, he had turned it up a notch with seven 200-yard games, and in a furious outburst against Milton High he had 28 carries for 301 yards. In 4 years Emmitt hit Milton for 855 yards.
The 1990 NFL Draft was the first in which juniors were allowed to pass up their final year of eligiblity and enter the draft pool. Emmitt and 37 other juniors came out early. He was an incredible yardage machine. But pro scouts are funny people. Size, vertical leap, speed -those are the things that get the exclamation points in their notebooks. In terms of speed -the burst and the breakaway ability, there was a question mark next to Emmitt's name. His time in the 40 while at Florida was 4.55, on synthetic turf. A New York Giants scout reportedly got him at 4.7. Too slow. The Cowboys weren't worried about the speed. They were coming off a 1-15 season and a last-place NFC ranking in team rushing.
Emmitt never misses a workout, not a nick or bump guy who'd miss a lot of practice time, and not a complainer. Emmitt held out in his rookie year for the whole training camp. Still, he was the Cowboys' starting running back by Game 2 of his rookie season. One big day, 121 yards against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, was about it for his first 11 games, and then he did a strange thing. he complained. Dallas was coming off 2 losses to the N.Y. Jets and the san Francisco 49ers in which he didn't score a touchdown. Emmitt had carried a total of 21 times in those games. He spoke to the backfield coach and then went public on a radio show, saying: "The ball, please, I'd like the ball." In the next 4 games, Emmitt had 88 carries for 374 yards and 7 TDs, and the Cowboys had 4 wins. He ran for 100-plus yards in 2 of the games.
In 1991, Emmitt rushed for over 1,500 yards. In game 2 in a loss to Washington, Emmitt had 11 carries for 112 yards, including a 75-yard touchdown run. In Game 4, he had 23 carries for 182 yards, and a 60-yard touchdown run. The 75-yarder is still his longest run ever. That season, Emmitt had 6 other 100-yard games including 112, 122, 132, 109, 112, 160. That year, Emmitt edged out Detroit Lions star running back Barry Sanders to win his first rushing title with 1,563 yards to Barry Sanders' 1,548 yards. He finished with 12 rushing TDs, and 1 receiving TD.
In 1992, Emmitt won his 2nd straight rushing title with 1,713 yards, his best season. He also lead the league in scoring, 19 TDs, a Cowboys record- 18 rushing, 1 receiving. His longest run was 68 yards. His best day was 174 yards against the Atlanta Falcons on December 21. On that same night, Emmitt's most spectacular run of his career came. When he got the ball, he ran up the middle, about 5 or 6 Falcons piled up on him, he broke out of the pile and ran about 40 yards for a touchdown. That year, Emmitt led the Cowboys to their first Super Bowl since 1979. The Cowboys blew out the Buffalo Bills 52-17. Emmitt had 22 carries for 108 yards and 1 TD. Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman was Super Bowl XXVII's MVP. Emmitt got his first ring.
In 1993, Emmitt held out the whole training camp and even missed 2 games. The Cowboys lost their first 2 games without him. Then he signed a contract worth $13.6 million over 4 years. When he came back, the Cowboys got a 12-2 record. The final record was 12-4. In Emmitt's first game back he had 8 carries for 45 yards against the Phoenix Cardinals. That season, Emmitt ran for a career-high 237 yards against the Philadelphia Eagles. In that game he got 1 TD when he broke his 62-yard touchdown run. In the other game the Cowboys played against the Eagles, Emmitt ran for 172 more yards. That year, Emmitt went on to win his 3rd straight rushing title with 1,486 yards, due to the knee injury of Barry Sanders of the Detroit Lions. Emmitt also won the league MVP. The Cowboys went back to the Super Bowl and beat Buffalo 30-13. Emmitt was the MVP of Super Bowl XXVIII. It was close between him and safety James Washington. Emmitt got his 2nd ring. Emmitt had 32 carries for 132 yards and 2 TDs. He is the only back in NFL history to win the rushing title and Super Bowl in the same season, and the trifecta (rushing title, NFL MVP, and Super Bowl MVP).
This year, he went over 7,000 career yards (7,109). Emmitt is in 2nd place as one of the Cowboys all-time leading rushers behind Tony Dorsett (12,036). Emmitt trails Tony Dorsett by 4,927 yards. He wants to break former Chicago Bear running back Walter Payton's all-time record of 16,726 yards. he trails Payton by 9,617 yards. The other record Emmitt wanted is held by former Cleveland Browns fullback Jim Brown, which is 5 rushing titles in a row. Emmitt has 3. It doesn't look like he will get his 4th. He is on the verge of being dethroned by Barry Sanders, unless a big miracle can happen. If he gets lucky, he will break Jim Brown's record in his 11th season if he is as good as he is now. If Emmitt was to get 300 yards in the last Cowboys' 2 games, the rushing title is his. He needs a BIG miracle. If it's 1 thing he wants for Christmas that would be it. Emmitt has 74 career touchdowns.
Clearly, Emmitt Smith is THE BEST running back in the NFL, and has the statistics to prove it. He has 3 straight rushing titles, 2 Super Bowl rings, an NFL MVP, a Super Bowl MVP, and 11 NFL records (7 or 8 of them are Cowboy records). Barry Sanders is the best pure runner in the NFL. Compared to Emmitt, he has 1 rushing title (on the verge of 2), the Detroit Lions' all-time leading rusher, and he won the Heisman Trophy in college. Barry Sanders is "poetry in motion". He makes more tacklers miss than any other back. He makes them look bad. He has speed, agility, and strength. He and Emmitt have it good because they are so small. Emmitt is 5-9, 209 lbs. and Barry is 5-8, 203 lbs. Emmitt has power, speed, and agility. He is a heads-up runner with outstanding vision. He has the ability to cut back and go all the way at any time.
I would like to know what exactly Emmitt is doing out there, a guy with a supposed lack of speed who gains all those yards. What is his style? Here are some descriptives: "Frantic hopscotching, barefoot, on a blistering sidewalk." One newspaper wrote "He darts, feints, shifts back and forth like a typewriter carriage." My descriptive is this: He stops in the hole - comes to a complete stop - looks unhurriedly for a seam and skates across the field like a hot dog wrapper. Emmitt has the same vision and awareness Tony Dorsett had. He'll thrill you with his strengths, not speed. He'll go into a pile and come out the other end. I've seen him leave the ground and have to do a hitch step, like a long jumper, and then burst through. He also has the ability to keep his legs clean - he very seldom gets hit with his feet on the ground. That's where you see people get hurt.The yards don't awe him, but he keeps track of them, as he has ever since high school. Every time he scores a touchdown, he keeps the ball.
In the off-season, Emmitt still lives at home in Pensacola with his parents, 3 brothers, and 1 of his 2 sisters. He has a store there called Emmitt, Inc that sells sports collectibles such as cards and jerseys. His parents and 1 of his sisters run the store. He also has a football camp in the off-season for boys ages 8-16. Emmitt, as an individual player, is a lot like the Cowboys as a team - inexorable, indomitable, bound for gretness. He'll take your breath away and you won't get it back until he scores. It is his total package. The thing that turns Emmitt on the most is his desire to be a tremendous player. That's refreshing. It's easy to look at his prolific performance so far and project him as one of the greats, taking into account that he has never had knee surgery and that Dallas has the perfect offense for a back to put up big numbers. Emmitt wants to make a mark on football that few players will ever equal.
Bibliography
The Emmitt Zone
by Emmitt Smith w/Steve Delsohn
Crown Publishing Group
September 6, 1994
25 Most Popular Players In 1994
by Harry Peterson
Collector's Sports Look
December 1994
A Man Of Vision
by Leigh Montville
Sports Illustrated
February 14, 1994
***I mentioned that the 1990 NFL draft was the first that allowed early entry for underclassmen, but it was actually the 1989 draft that was first. Barry Sanders left college after his junior year for the NFL.
***That spectacular touchdown run that Emmitt had against the Falcons in 1992 was actually 29 yards instead of 40 yards.
Saturday, August 31, 2013
David Robinson - The Reason I Became A Spurs Fan
David Robinson - The Reason I Became A Spurs Fan
Career Highlights And Awards
-Naismith College Player Of The Year (1987)
-AP College Basketball Player Of The Year (1987)
-Adolph Rupp Trophy (1987)
-John Wooden Award (1987)
-USBWA College Player Of The Year (1987)
-NABC Player Of The Year (1987)
-NCAA Silver Anniversary Award (2012)
-2x Olympic Gold Medalist (1992, 1996)
-2x NBA Champion (1999, 2003)
-NBA MVP (1995)
-NBA Defensive Player Of The Year (1992)
-10x NBA All-Star (1990-1996, 1998, 2000-2001)
-10x All-NBA Selection (4 First Team, 2 Second Team, 4 Third Team)
-8x NBA All-Defensive Team Selection (4 First Team, 4 Second Team)
-NBA Scoring Champion (1994)
-NBA Rebounding Champion (1991)
-NBA Shot-Blocking Champion (1992)
-NBA Rookie Of The Year (1990)
-NBA All-Rookie First Team (1990)
-NBA Sportsmanship Award (2001)
-NBA's 50th Anniversary All-Time Team
-Jersey #50 Retired (Spurs)
David Robinson started helping the Spurs the moment they won the lottery. They had such an uncertain future at the time, that some were advising him to use his 2-year Navy commitment to become an unrestricted free agent and go to a team with a higher profile. As a matter of fact, the Lakers even tried to steal him away from the Spurs to replace Kareem Abdul-Jabbar after he retired. Ownership flew The Admiral to San Antonio when his Naval career began and started giving him VIP treatment, including a parade along the San Antonio River and a pep rally in the parking lot of Red McCombs' car dealership. The Admiral had become sold on San Antonio, its pleasant climate, and open spaces. The Spurs did something they had never done.....paid big money, signing The Admiral to an 8-year $26 million contract, including a $1 million per year for each of his 2 years in the Navy, and got a clause that guaranteed that he would never be lower than the 2nd highest paid player in the NBA the 5th year of his contract. The hardest part wasn't the contract, it was convincing him to come to SA, because the Spurs had no leverage. David Robinson's commitment to the Spurs was also the key to the Spurs hiring Larry Brown as their head coach. Attendance and revenue also increased in anticipation of The Admiral's arrival in 1989. Let me paint a picture for you of the Spurs' situation before then.
Before David Robinson arrived, the Spurs were:
-playing in an outdated arena
-had no marquee players
-declining home attendance for several consecutive seasons
-last in the NBA in season ticket sales and most other measurements of success
David Robinson had the "Bill Russell 2.0" label attached to him coming into the NBA, and that was who Larry Brown wanted him to pattern his game after, but The Admiral didn't have that luxury because the Spurs didn't have the players around him that would allow him to focus primarily on defense. He had to carry the whole load on offense and defense. It was believed that The Admiral would become one of the 10 greatest players ever. It was even said that the Bulls were having internal discussions about offering the Spurs Michael Jordan for him straight up before the '92 and '93 seasons. That's how good everybody thought David Robinson would be. Here are a couple of quotes to support that:
"He's the spitting image of Bill Russell, only a better athlete."
-Pat Riley
"Bird, Magic, MJ......they're all MVPs, but this guy is more. He's the greatest impact player this league has seen since Kareem."
-Cotton Fitzsimmons
To paraphrase Bill Simmons (The Book Of Basketball), if we ever started cloning basketball players one day Wilt Chamberlain, Michael Jordan, David Robinson, and LeBron James would be 1-4 in some order. On paper, you couldn't ask for a better center than The Admiral. He had every conceivable tool you would want:
-Bill Russell's defensive instincts
-Wilt Chamberlain's strength and agility
-Wilt/Dwight Howard's leaping ability
-Hakeem Olajuwon's hand-eye coordination and footwork
-Robert Parish's ability to run the floor
In addition to all of the above, he was left-handed. The advantages for being a left-handed basketball player, especially a big man. For starters, it throws off opponents because you usually expect a guy to drive to your left (his right), so a defender is used to going left when they slide. When that happens, the lefty usually has a step in front of the defender since he's playing the wrong side of the drive. Natural lefties are also said to have better visual temporal skills. Left-handed big men have an advantage because they don't have to reach across their body to block the shot of a right-handed opponent. It also requires an adjustment to play with a lefty because his passing, footwork, and positioning are all different too.
The 2 biggest things that stood out to me about David Robinson were:
1.) He was a physical specimen.
2.) He was an athletic freak of nature.
A lot of people don't remember what kind of an athletic freak The Admiral was. I honestly believe that he's the most freakish athlete I have ever seen play basketball in my lifetime. There was no other 7-footer out there who could do what he did. For starters, he was a big man chasing down point guards, could jump through the roof and had hang time, rebounded like a machine, and blocked shots in bunches. He was the fastest man on ALL of his teams. Gregg Popovich has even confirmed that The Admiral was still faster than Tony Parker........at 37 years old in his last year in the league, with a bad back and all. Even against modern NBA players, it looked to me like he was running in a completely different gear than everybody else. This man had the explosiveness and agility of a guard, and his body didn't get slower as it got bigger like with most big men. I have even seen him do 360 dunks with 2 hands in games before. The Admiral also had incredible upper body strength, which was obvious by looking at how big and sculpted his arms were, and the fact that he could walk the entire length of a basketball court on his hands.....he competed in gymnastics when he was growing up. The Admiral was a 1-on-1 physical mismatch for any player in the league in his prime because there was no big man that was faster than him, Shaquille O'Neal was about the only man stronger, and he had very quick hands that enabled him to rack up on steals, becoming the Spurs' all-time steals leader. Plain and simple, at 7'1" The Admiral was doing things that were unheard of for a man his size.
It was believed that David Robinson lacked the dedication to become an extraordinary pro basketball player. Because he did so many things on the court so well and with such apparent effortlessness, he has always been considered an underachiever even though he had achieved so much. Once in a while I even catch myself wondering how much better he could have been if a few things were different. Here are the biggest issues that I believe kept him from reaching his full potential:
1.) Being A Late Bloomer
As a result of staying in college all 4 years and serving 2 years of active duty in the Navy, David Robinson's career got off to a late start, making him a rookie at 24 years old. He didn't play a whole lot of basketball before he got to the Spurs. With only one year of high school basketball and 4 years at the Naval Academy, a college that didn't play a whole lot of big games, The Admiral didn't have the same background as most NBA players. After going back and watching old Spurs games from his early years, you could see it. I noticed that there were some situations that came up where he looked awkward and didn't know what to do. As he continued to develop, those situations didn't happen as often. When he first got to the NBA, The Admiral had unlimited physical abilities, but limited basketball skills. Because he wasn't properly developed, it was much harder for him to develop a complete offensive game early in his career. He had next to no offense and was using his height, speed, and leaping ability to get away from his opponents. Once he put in the work and put together a package, he became even more dangerous, and the accolades just kept flowing in.
2.) Too Many Head Coaches
Another hindrance in David Robinson's career was a lack of continuity, playing for 5 head coaches in his first 6 years. Each coach asked him to do something different. One coach wanted defense, one coach wanted rebounding, and one coach wanted offense. It wasn't until the Spurs hired Bob Hill that The Admiral finally had a coach that wanted balance from him. Bob Hill required the whole package from him, including leadership. Here is a quote from The Admiral on that situation:
"I used to have the idea that I just had to come here and take care of my job. I thought that was what professional basketball was all about. I do my job. You do your job. If we all do our jobs, we win. I know now that I have to do more than that. My energy level fuels half the team. I tell these guys that if you prepare yourself physically, you'll be able to do well. If you don't, you won't."
3.) Supporting Cast
Like I mentioned earlier, David Robinson was supposed to be Bill Russell......but with a jump shot. Like Bill Russell, he could run players down from behind and block their shots, recover from the weak side to block a shot or grab a rebound, and he could even block shots to ignite fast breaks. The Admiral has led the league in blocks and rebounds, but he also had to lead the league in scoring because he was on a team without an offensive star. He didn't have a post game, but he had to score against Hakeem Olajuwon, Shaquille O'Neal, and Patrick Ewing, who were the best centers of that era and also selections of the NBA's 50 greatest players. Not only did he have to score against them, he had to keep them for scoring and lead the fast break. Here is a quote from The Admiral in 1999, basically admitting that he wasn't a scorer:
"I'm not a Michael Jordan-type player. I don't handle the ball. I can't go out there and take 30 shots a game. That's not my style. I had to figure out what is my style. That's part of what's great about being where we are right now."
Let's look at it this way:
What if Bill Russell came into the NBA in 1989 and went to a team with only one player besides him (Sean Elliott) who would ever make an All-Star team, and that was the case for the first 8 years of his career? And even though he is a defensive specialist, he has a supporting cast of sub-par offensive players, poor or limited range shooters like Avery Johnson and Vinny Del Negro, and a transcendent rebounder in Dennis Rodman who couldn't even make a layup. Now check this out: What if David Robinson came into the NBA in 1956 as a lean, athletic and intelligent young player that was only asked to do 2 things.....rebound and block shots? He has a supporting cast stacked with Bob Cousy, Bill Sharman, and Tommy Heinsohn, 3 of the greatest offensive players of that era who will make All-Star teams for many years to come, as well as the Hall Of Fame. The next year, he ends up getting Sam Jones, another HOFer, who would become one of the all-time great shooters in NBA history.
Which one of these men would have the 11 championships?
After giving that some thought, you can't help but wonder how much different things would have been for The Admiral if the Spurs had the pieces in place that would have allowed him to thrive as a defensive specialist. They had a GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY to make that a reality in the Summer of 1992, and almost did until Red McCombs blocked the move at the last minute. The Spurs and the 76ers had a trade worked out that would send Terry Cummings and Willie Anderson to the Sixers, and Charles Barkley back to the Spurs. Both teams had already agreed to the trade, but Red McCombs vetoed it at the last minute because he didn't want to pay Chuck. After the Spurs passed on that trade, Terry Cummings blew out his knee playing a pickup game in Chicago, and the Sixers traded Chuck to the Suns, where he went on to be the league MVP the following season and lead the Suns to the NBA Finals. Don't get me wrong, I couldn't be happier with the way things worked out for the Spurs to get Tim Duncan, but think about it for a second: The Spurs would have had a Big 3 of David Robinson, Charles Barkley, and Sean Elliott.........IN THEIR PRIMES!! If you have a chance to get a player like Charles Barkley without having to give up one of your best players, YOU HAVE TO DO IT. You just can't pass on that kind of opportunity to improve your team. Chances to get an MVP-caliber player for next to nothing don't come around too often.
When you have a franchise player like David Robinson, who had teams with a higher profile pursuing him, the way to show your appreciation for his loyalty is to build the best team possible around him to maximize your chances to win championships. That was too much to ask out of Red McCombs, because he was so cheap. It's hard to have anything more than mixed feelings about him. Not only did he fail David Robinson by not putting better players around him, he also feuded with Rod Strickland publicly, and let him leave in free agency. To add insult to injury, Red got tired of paying The Admiral all of the money he was paying him and started shopping him. There was even talk about a cost-cutting trade that would have sent The Admiral to the Knicks for Patrick Ewing. Fortunately, none of those trades ever came close to happening. If I were David Robinson, I would have felt insulted. How could you even think about trading the man that had that big of an impact on your franchise in such a short time, not to mention staying loyal to the team that drafted him? If you didn't want to pay him, why did you go through so much trouble to get him to play for you? I'll give Red McCombs credit for keeping the Spurs in San Antonio, but other than that he was a TERRIBLE owner. It's disappointing that somebody with his resources wasn't more aggressive in improving the team.
For just about David Robinson's entire prime, when the Spurs made the playoffs his supporting cast was usually weaker than the opponent's, making it easier to focus on him. And since he didn't have a post game, his offense was driving to the basket and dunking, but the driving lanes close in the playoffs and teams force you to beat them inside. That was the biggest killer for the Spurs because they didn't have anybody who could consistently make open shots to open up the lane. That allowed teams to double and triple team The Admiral and dare the other Spurs to beat them. It wasn't until his 9th season, when Tim Duncan became a Spur, that The Admiral was able to just concentrate on anchoring the defense. Once the Twin Towers got their chemistry together, it noticed that The Admiral seemed more comfortable in his new role. His last 6 seasons actually seemed to be his more meaningful seasons, and he was actually more valuable to the Spurs as a complimentary player than as a scoring champion and MVP. I also see some similarities in The Admiral with Wilt Chamberlain: They both were freakish athletes with huge bodies that put up ridiculous statistics for their respective eras. They both scored points in bunches. Both players were also a lot more well-rounded than people think. They both also came up short in the playoffs much too often for players with their abilities, usually against a rival at the same position. Eventually, both players were able to get redemption later in their careers when their roles changed and they gave up some of the scoring load. A great player is only as good as the teammates that compliment him and the role he is asked to play.
4.) Many Interests Outside Of Basketball
A lot of people interpreted David Robinson having many other talents and interests outside of basketball as proof that he didn't play hard. That wasn't the case at all. He always played hard and gave the Spurs everything he had, but at the end of the day, he knew that there was much more to life than basketball. The Admiral has said that he was always curious and wanting to learn a little bit about a lot of things. It was said all throughout his career until he retired that the same sense of duty that made him a noble man kept him from being an ever greater player. The knock on him was that he never developed a ruthless, cutthroat, and cold-blooded edge to him that was required to be a champion, and that he lacked the prerequisite leadership skills to carry his team. I have to slightly disagree with that last part......the man was an officer in the United States Armed Forces!! With me being ex-military myself, I know that there are not too many better places out there to develop strong leadership. What the media also fails to realize, is that leading troops in combat is not the same as leading a basketball team on the court. It takes different skill sets to do those 2 things. To me, that's a lot like being in a leadership position on your job and trying to use those management skills at home to raise your children.
David Robinson has admitted that it took him a lot longer than expected to become the player that the Spurs organization expected him to be. Another knock on him was that at certain points of certain games he didn't get involved. He said it was because of immaturity and mental lapses. He has also admitted that it took him a while to learn the game and what his coaches wanted from him. A big part of it was that his love for the game didn't match his talent level, and it took him a while before he understood what it was all about. It's true that he struggled early in his career to handle the pressure of the NBA playoffs, but at the same time, not having a 2nd All-Star did hurt his chances to compete with the best teams in the West. But no matter how hard The Admiral played and dominated, it was never enough until the Spurs got Tim Duncan. Before The Dream won those back-to-back championships, The Admiral was regarded as the best center in the NBA. The failings of his teammates lessened the perceptions of his contributions, and the media is notorious for ignoring the strength of teammates when they evaluate an individual player's standing in history.
One other misconception about David Robinson that I want to address is the "soft" label that was put on him. He was different than most athletes because he wasn't defined by basketball.....he had a strong identity, unflappable pride, and an unmatched soul before he even became a basketball player. The Admiral knew that at the end of the day, basketball was just a game, and that was how he approached it. Because he didn't eat, sleep, and breathe basketball, people took that as him treating it like a hobby. Then, there was the the criticism that he played a soft style of basketball (see point #1 above), and that's not necessarily true. It's just that the NBA wasn't used to a man The Admiral's size with his athleticism shooting 15-foot jumpers. There were constant questions about why he never camped out in the paint like most centers. That doesn't make him the least bit soft. Anybody that has closely followed the Spurs for at least the past 15 years knows that The Admiral had no problems playing physical basketball against somebody like Shaq, and hold him to numbers well below his averages up until the very end of his career. The fact the he won DPOY, rebounding and shot-blocking titles should prove that he was dominant around the basket. Soft players don't become stars on defense, especially if they are stationed in the paint.
The problem with how David Robinson was perceived stems from people taking "nice" and "soft" to mean the same thing. It's all because of how our culture views sports. We have a tendency to want players to be responsible and stay out of trouble, but also play their sport mean and angry. A "sports slang" was even developed based on violent and military terms. For example, when a team blows another team out, we say they "killed" or "murdered" them. We describe a good shooter or accurate quarterback as a "marksman". We say a quarterback with a strong arm has a "gun" or a "cannon". We describe a 3-point shot or a deep pass in football as a "bomb". Bottom line, we take a GAME, make a life or death event out of it, and expect the players to play that way. David Robinson didn't see it that way, which is why he went and served his first 2 years of the Navy on active duty before he joined the Spurs. Once again, he understood that there were bigger things in the world than basketball. One example I can give for that, is that he once said in an interview that he got himself ready to play by thinking about the troops that gave their life in war so his family could prosper in a free America. The Admiral also didn't look for vengeance because foul play was beneath him. The Admiral is most definitely a winner, he just didn't respond to controversy the same way most athletes do, and his reactions didn't meet expectations that had been set by other great athletes. With that being said, David Robinson can't be called soft. He had his faults like every other player, but he didn't take plays off or shy away from physical contact.
I personally think David Robinson is TOUGH AS NAILS.......a true warrior!! For starters, he could have went to any college he wanted to, but instead he picked a military school, and it takes a certain level of toughness to graduate from an institution like that. Also, it's awfully hard to call a man soft that has credentials in Taekwondo and boxing, along with other defense skills and tactics that he learned in the Navy. I definitely wouldn't want to mess with him. David Robinson played basketball through a lot more pain than people realized, and gave everything he had to the Spurs organization. Here is a list of the biggest ailments that I know of that he played through:
-sprained wrist
-sliced pinkie
-torn thumb ligament
-pinched nerves in his shoulder
-shoulder contusions
-hernia
-hip pointer
-cervical spasms
-chipped disc
-nerve damage in his back, legs, and foot (from the chipped disc)
-floating particle in his back
-synovitis in left knee
-chondromalacia in right knee
By David Robinson's last year, his back bothered him so bad, it hurt him just to sit. He was so used to playing with pain that he blocked it out, and even forgot sometimes to tell his team when he was hurting. His last 2 seasons were the most painful for him, mostly from all of the back problems. The Admiral's troubles all started when he first suffered his hernia close to the end of the '95-'96 season. Then, the hernia flared up again in the middle of one of the games in the Olympics......and he PUSHED IT BACK IN AND KEPT PLAYING!!! HE COULD HAVE DIED FROM THAT!!! Even after his days in the Navy he was still putting his life on the line for his country. The Admiral went on to lead Dream Team II to a gold medal in the 1996 Olympics, as their top scorer. He put off having surgery on the hernia until after the Olympics, allowing his stomach and back muscles to deteriorate, increasing the vulnerability of a back injury, which happened in the Olympics. After the hernia surgery, The Admiral wasn't able to work out while he was recovering, causing his back to deteriorate even more. The back problem had gotten so bad, that when the 1996 training camp started, he couldn't even run. The Admiral made an appearance in a preseason game and ended up straining his back, causing him to miss the first 18 games of the season. He made his comeback on December 10 against the Suns, only to play 6 games before he broke his left foot in a game against the Heat. I believe that the broken foot came as a result of him trying to compensate for the bad back. Another contributor might be the had poor jumping mechanics that The Admiral had developed, using his lower back for lift instead of using his legs more.
With The Admiral on the shelf, the Spurs went 20-62 for the season, and of course winning the 1997 NBA Draft Lottery for the right to draft Tim Duncan. The rest is history. When The Admiral came back the next season from the back and foot injuries, he might have been 80% at best, which was still better than a lot of other players at 100%. The Admiral at 100% along with The Big Fundamental would have been NASTY.......I'm talking about total dominance!!! He was still pretty good for having numbness and pain from a chip floating around in his spinal column. In 2002, it was suggested that The Admiral have surgery to remove the floater in his back. He felt like the risk wasn't worth it. He didn't want the surgery for 2 reasons:
1.) Back surgery guarantees nothing.
2.) It could have forced him to miss the next season, in effect ending his career.
Another thing David Robinson should get props for is his loyalty. Loyal athletes are a dead breed, and have been for over 20 years now. Just to show you how much things have changed, I want to point out that the 1975 Dallas Cowboys only had 1 player (Preston Pearson) who had been with another team. Today, less than 2% of players who go into pro sports stay with the team that drafted them. There is no sense of loyalty with athletes with anything other than money. As soon as free agency was started, athletes have had less motivation to stay with the same team for their whole career. Sometimes you might have a player that might want to stay with his team, but then he'll have an agent in his ear telling him that he can get a better deal somewhere else. If The Admiral had played for another team, it wouldn't have been his first choice, and it even came close to happening late in his career.
Here are the 3 "close-calls" we had with the possibility of David Robinson leaving the Spurs:
1.) As mentioned above in detail, at one point, Red McCombs got tired of paying The Admiral the money he was paying him and started shopping him.
2.) In 1999, the Spurs struggled to a 6-8 record to start the season, and there were fans wanting Gregg Popovich fired and The Admiral traded. The rumored trade at that time was The Admiral to the Seattle SuperSonics for a package with Vin Baker as the centerpiece, which a lot of Spurs fan supported.
3.) In 2001 when Chris Webber was a free agent, the Spurs reached out to him to gauge his interest, making a lowball offer to David Robinson at the same time while they waited on C-Webb to get back to them. Coach Pop was an assistant coach for the Warriors during C-Webb's rookie season, and that might have been part of the reason for the intrigue besides finding a long term replacement for The Admiral. Anyway, C-Webb never called the Spurs back when they reached out to him. He ended up re-signing with the Kings, and later admitted that he was tempted to sign with the Spurs. The day after that went down, a lot of angry callers blew up the Spurs' phones demanding that they re-sign The Admiral, which they did for a 2-year $20 million contract to end his career.
Even in 2002, there were letters to the San Antonio Express News from fans demanding that the Spurs get rid of David Robinson and his "fat contract". Most of them said that he was either on the injured list or on the court screwing up. I couldn't believe what I was reading. I felt like The Admiral deserved every penny he got and earned the right to finish his career with the Spurs on his terms. I don't even want to know what things would have been like if he did leave. I just know that Coach Pop would have felt the kind of heat he had never felt, and I believe that San Antonio would have been one angry city. I wouldn't have been surprised to hear about a riot breaking out. If the Spurs would have let David Robinson leave in any of those situations I just mentioned above, it would have been disrespectful to the man that saved the team from relocation, helped the team win enough games to make them financially viable, and gave the city a recognizable face of dignity.......a man that represents what pro sports is truly all about. Did I mention how much time and money he donated to the city? The Spurs did the right thing and let him retire in his own city with full appreciation for what he did for them, which is something that James Silas and George Gervin didn't get to do.
To sum it all up, here is David Robinson's impact on the Spurs in a nutshell:
-Saved the Spurs from relocation with his commitment to the team
-A 35-game turnaround during his rookie season (then NBA record)
-Altered his game to accommodate Tim Duncan's game
-Cut his vacation short to go back and talk Tim Duncan out of leaving, saving the Spurs a 2nd time
-2 championships
-A new arena
-Announced his retirement plans a year ahead of time to allow the Spurs to prepare for Summer 2003
Taking all of this into account, I personally believe that David Robinson is underrated historically. Bill Simmons has him ranked at #28 in The Book Of Basketball, but I feel like he should be somewhere inside the top 20. I think his impact on the Spurs organization alone should be enough for him to be ranker higher. Once again, without his signature in 1987, there is no pro basketball in San Antonio. Without him taking a lesser role to Tim Duncan, there is no championship. Without a championship, there is no approval for the AT&T Center. Writing this blog has made me appreciate and respect The Admiral even more than I already did.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)