Frank Gore keeps inspiring these posts. Yesterday, Frank Gore rushed for 65 yards, which gives him 19,155 yards from scrimmage for his career, moving him into 4th-place on the all-time list.

This was also his 149th game with at least 50 rushing yards, which moved him alone into 2nd place in that category, too.

Gore is 17 touches away from 4,000 touches, and 20 touches away from moving ahead of Curtis Martin into third place on that all-time list, too. But the stat that everyone is talking about now is that Gore moved ahead of Barry Sanders into third-place on the all-time rushing list.

And while Gore was not as dominant as Sanders or Smith or Payton, in some ways that makes what he’s done more remarkable. The graph below shows the career rushing yards, after game X, for each of the players who rank in the top 5 in career rushing yards. Nobody but Hall of Fame running backs can keep producing after 150 games, but that’s what Gore has done. He was never as talented as Sanders or Payton, but his durability, toughness, and consistency is just as remarkable as the talent that those two backs had.

Prior to Gore, only three running backs — Emmitt Smith, John Riggins, and Walter Payton — rushed for over 5,000 yards in their 30s. All are Hall of Famers, as are two (Marcus Allen, John Henry Johnson) who came up just short of the post-30, 5K mark. Gore had an excellent career in his 20s, and then became the best running back in his 30s in NFL history. The graph below shows the 100 leaders in rushing yards in history. The X-Axis shows career rushing yards in a player’s 20s; the Y-Axis shows career rushing yards in a player’s 30s. [continue reading…]

In 1977, the Kansas City Chiefs went 2-10. This was during one of the worst passing seasons in NFL history, the season that encouraged the 1978 rules changes. Quarterback Mike Livingston went 1-10 as the starter and he was about as bad as his record. Kansas City brought him back as the team’s starter in 1978, but changed coaches, bringing in Marv Levy. The future Bills coach inherited a terrible team in Kansas City that was particularly inexperienced on defense: all three starters on the defensive line were rookies, as was one of the linebackers; two other starters were ’77 draft picks, and another two starters were 24-year old players drafted in 1976.  That’s 8 of 11 starters on defense that were 24 or younger, to go with a a bad passing attack centered around Livingston, and WRs Henry Marshall and Larry Dorsey.

So what did Levy do?  He decided to install the Wing-T offense, centered around three halfbacks, a tight end, and Marshall at split end.  Kansas City had Tony Reed as the starting halfback, Arnold Morgando as the fullback, and Ted McKnight as the Wingback as part of a ball-controlled offense designed to keep the young defense (and weak passing game) off the field. But on October 1st, 1978, it was veteran backup Macarthur Lane — with the emphasis on veteran — that powered the offense.  Lane rushed 17 times for 144 yards in a game where Livingston and backup Tony Adams combined to complete 9 of 21 passes for just 83 yards.

So why is this noteworthy today? Well, on October 1st, Lane was 36 years and 199 days old. Playing in that Wing-T offense, he became the oldest player to ever rush for 100 yards in a game. And yesterday, Frank Gore nearly matched him. The ageless Gore rushed 17 times for 109 yards in a Bills loss to the Patriots. He wasn’t aided by a Wing-T offense, but the 36 year, 138-day old back did his best to keep the Bills alive on a day where the passing attack was a disaster (averaging 1.22 ANY/A).

And historians, take note: Gore will be 36 years and over 200 days old for the Bills four games in December, making him eligible to set the new record for the oldest player to rush for 100 yards in a game. [continue reading…]

Frank Gore has had a remarkable career. He’s averaged at least 60 rushing yards per game in 12 different seasons, second only to Emmitt Smith. But it’s also been somewhat remarkable in how unremarkable each season has been: Gore averaged a nondescript 43.4 rushing yards per game as a rookie and then an eye-popping 105.9 rushing yards per game in his second season; since then, for 11 straight years, Gore has averaged between 60 and 80 rushing yards per game. No other player has more than 7 such seasons in their career, let alone consecutive, with Warrick Dunn, Franco Harris, and Ricky Watters tied for second place on the list.

So far, Gore has rushed for 14,026 rushing yards in his career.  But I wanted to try to identify similar — and dissimilar — rushers to Gore.  So here’s what I did: for each running back, I identified his rushing yards in each season of his career.  For seasons where the league had fewer than 16 team games per season, I pro-rated that player’s production as if the league had 16 games.  So players in a 14-game season get their rushing yards bumped by 14.3%, regardless of how many games they played.  Then, I gave a player 100% credit for their best rushing season, 90% credit for their second best rushing season, 80% credit for their third best rushing season, and so on.  Doing this gives Gore just 6,824 rushing yards, just under half of his actual total.

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Frank Gore is already #5 on the career rushing list, while Adrian Peterson is currently in 12th place (but two years younger). In recent months, I’ve compared Gore and Peterson, as their careers which have been both very similar and very different.  Both had severe knee injuries and might be the two best running backs to ever recover from ACL surgery, and both players are going to wind up very high on the career rushing list. Gore is now the favorite — surprisingly — to finish with more career rushing yards.  On the other hand, Gore is much more of a compiler and Peterson a shining star.  Gore ranks 34th in career rushing yards per game, while Peterson ranks 4th in that category.

So who do you prefer? The guy who ranks 5th in career rushing yards or 4th in career rushing yards per game?  Or, if you like, there’s LeSean McCoy. Gore and Peterson already have crossed the 12,000-yard mark, and McCoy is likely to do so as well; either way, they are the three active players with the most rushing yards, making them a natural source of comparison. And assuming McCoy gets there, they will also be the only three players from this era (not including Tomlinson or younger players) to hit the 12,000-yard mark.

McCoy’s highs weren’t as high as Peterson, but they were a little higher (two first-team All-Pro seasons, a third season as a top-three fantasy running back, six Pro Bowls in the last seven years) than Gore.  And his career volume probably won’t match Gore, but it will probably be higher than Peterson.  McCoy is currently 29th in career rushing yards and 22nd in career rushing yards per game.

Let’s compare the three players year-by-year, starting at age 21. [continue reading…]

Since turning 28 years old, Frank Gore has rushed for 6,651 yards. That’s the 4th most rushing yards from age 28+ in NFL history.  Gore has also hit the 1,000-yard mark in 5 seasons since turning 28, tied with Emmitt Smith for the most ever.   Here’s Gore’s year-by-year rushing totals:

[continue reading…]

Before we get to my preview, I feel the need to point you to some excellent Super Bowl previews I saw this week:

• Bill Barnwell at Grantland with his excellent Super Bowl preview
• Chris Brown on the Ravens defense against the 49ers offense and the Ravens offense against the 49ers defense, both also at Grantland
• Aaron Schatz brings his Super Bowl Preview to Football Outsiders
• Sam Monson at Pro Football Focus also previewed the 49ers offense (and how to stop it) and the Ravens plan of attack
• Scott Kacsmar picked the Ravens in an upset and updated his impressive library of career playoff drive stats for quarterbacks
• Brian Burke is a big Ravens fan, but his model gives them only a 38% chance of success
• Last but not least, my old comrade Jason Lisk has been chronicling all things Super Bowl at the Big Lead

The Ravens can stop the zone read, but at what cost?

In Colin Kaepernick’s nine starts, the 49ers have averaged 159 rushing yards per game on 4.9 yards per rush and have rushed for 14 touchdowns; at the same time, they’ve averaged 8.1 ANY/A through the air. That makes them close to unstoppable, much like the Seahawks when Russell Wilson and Marshawn Lynch were dominating defenses over that same stretch.

For San Francisco, their dominance starts up front, and their offensive line needs only sustained success to rival what the lines of the ’90s Cowboys or ’00 Chiefs delivered. According to Pro Football Focus, left tackle Joe Staley is the best tackle in the league, while right tackle Anthony Davis is the second best run-blocking tackle in the league (behind only Staley). PFF ranks both Mike Iupati and Alex Boone as top-five guards in the league, and places both of them in the top three when it comes to run blocking. Center Jonathan Goodwin also ranks as an above-average center, and the 34-year-old veteran is more than capable of anchoring a line filled with Pro Bowl caliber players. As if that wasn’t enough, Vernon Davis is one of the top two-way tight ends in the league, while TE/H-Back/FB Delanie Walker and FB Bruce Miller provide excellent support in the run game.

Without any schematic advantage, the 49ers have enough talented beef up front to have a dominate running game. But add in what Jim Harbaugh and Greg Roman have been able to do with the Pistol formation and the zone read, and you have a running game that borders on unstoppable.

We saw that against the Packers, as Colin Kaepernick broke the single-game rushing record by a quarterback. The beauty of the zone read is that it gives the offense an extra blocker, an advantage the 49ers didn’t need. After the Packers were shredded by Kaepernick, the Falcons focused on containing the quarterback. Take a look at the photograph below, courtesy of Ben Muth of Football Outsiders.
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