The answer may surprise you.  I suggested that Trent Richardson was the obvious favorite. Among the names I offered as potential candidates were Mark Ingram, Dion Lewis, Jacquizz Rodgers, LeSean McCoy, Beanie Wells, DeMarco Murray, Doug Martin, David Wilson, Ronnie Hillman, Lamar Miller, Isaiah Pead, Kendall Hunter, and LaMichael James. I said that we could not rule out college stars like Marcus Lattimore or Michael Dyer or Montee Ball or Malcolm Brown or De’Anthony Thomas.

I said Ray Rice and Ryan Mathews, at 25-year-old in 2012, were probably too old to consider.  That logic applied to 26-year-old stars Arian Foster and Marshawn Lynch.  And while they may have been stud running backs, a quartet of 27-year-olds in Maurice Jones-Drew, Matt Forte, Adrian Peterson and Chris Johnson were clearly too old to consider.

I did not include Ezekiel Elliott or Derrick Henry, as both players were still in high school.  As it turns out, barring injury in 2021, they will both finish in the top 5 of rushing yards from 2012 to 2021 despite both entering the league in 2016.  Ingram, who was a 2nd-year player in 2012, will fall to 6th when Henry and Elliott pass him.  The top 3?  In a big surprise, the 27-year-old Peterson — then still recovering from a torn ACL — will wind up third on the list, and just over 300 yards away from the decade-lead. I named the 24-year-old McCoy one of the top candidates, and he will wind up 2nd on the list.   But the leader in rushing yards from 2012 to 2021?

He was not on my initial list.  And that’s not because he was not yet in the NFL.   When I wrote that article, there had never been a player who was 26 years or older at the start of a 10-year period to lead the league in rushing for the upcoming decade.  To be safe, I looked at but eliminated the 26 and 27 year old running backs. I did not even consider including someone older than 27 years old, because if anything, the NFL had been gearing towards younger and younger running backs.  In other words, I made a rookie mistake: I counted out Frank Gore.

Gore led the NFL in rushing yards from 2005 to 2014; Peterson led the NFL in rushing yards for the 10-year periods beginning in 2006, 2007, and 2008.  McCoy was the king from 2009 to 2018 and 2010 to 2019.  But the tortoise could not be ignored: Frank Gore not only led the NFL in rushing yards from 2011 to 2020, but he will also go on to lead the NFL in rushing yards from 2012 to 2021, barring something very odd from happening over the next three months.

The table below shows the leader over every 10-year period, with AAFC, AFL, and NFL statistics all lumped together. The “Beg Exp” shows how much NFL experience had at the start of the decade, with rookie seasons being a 1. So Barry Sanders, a rookie in 1989, gets a -2 in ’86, a -1 in ’87, and a 0 in ’88, before his 1 in his rookie season of 1989.

There had been five players — HOFers Perry, Brown, Payton, Dickerson, and Smith — to lead the NFL in rushing yards for a decade during their ages 25 to 34 years. Nobody has ever done it during their age 26 to 35 years, but Gore has done it during his ages 27 to 36 and 28 to 37 years. Just remarkable. He will cede the crown from 2013 to 2022 to either Henry or Elliott next year, but Gore has pulled off one of the most unlikely feats in NFL history. He also became the first player to once again lead the NFL in rushing yards over multiple decades after losing the crown.

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.

You can spot Gore pretty easily, since he’s at the top of the graph in in 49ers colors. He was a very good back in his 20s, but his durability compared to even the all-time greats is astounding. Consider that Gore ranks 20th in career rushing yards through age 29. The 19 backs ahead of him rushed for an average of 10,758 yards in their 20s, and then 2,024 yards in their 30s. Gore rushed for 8,839 yards in his 20s, and is at 6,450 and counting in his 30s.

And one of my favorite Gore stats: he is leading the 2019 Bills in rushing yards, which would be the 15th time in his 15-year career that he’s been his team’s leading rusher. Nobody has done that, not even Emmitt Smith.