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.
All three had big, All-Pro type years at age 23 and strong years at age 24, with McCoy probably being the worst of the three. At ages 25 and 26, McCoy was even better while the other two declines; at ages 28, 29, and 30, McCoy and Gore had nearly identical rushing numbers, while Peterson was all over the map, but all three averaged between 1075 and 1150 rushing yards during those years.
We can also look at them on a career basis by age, and how many rushing yards each players had through age X.
Through age 28, Peterson had an enormous lead on the group, particularly in terms of rushing yards per game. And McCoy had a lead of over 1,000 yards on Gore, mostly due to playing more games.
But Gore hasn’t really slowed down, which is why he’s probably going to end up with the most rushing yards in this group. McCoy is probably more similar to Gore than Peterson, especially when it comes to consistency: in their active seasons in the NFL, Gore’s standard deviation in rushing yards is 236 rushing yards, McCoy is at 236 yards, and Peterson is at 620 yards.
What do you think of these three? How will history remember them? Is McCoy a better or worse Hall of Fame candidate than Gore, although the honest answer to that is likely “it depends how the rest of McCoy’s career unfolds.”