In yesterday's article, we looked at Jamal Lewis' place in history. We analyzed some of the top seasons by RBs of all time. However, there were a few players that were, at least to me, notorious by their absence. Marshall Faulk never ran for over 1400 yards with the Rams, despite three straight seasons when St. Louis finished first in passing yards AND passing yards per attempt. Thurman Thomas? His top four rushing seasons were the Super Bowl years, and he's in the top ten all time in rushing yardage. Thomas' Bills finished second in yards per attempt in 1990 and 1991, tenth in 1992, and eight in '93. In passing yards, the Bills led by Jim Kelly finished 3rd, 5th, 11th and 13th. With a great passing attack to complement him, Thomas still never topped 1,487 rushing yards in a season. Edgerrin James played with Peyton Manning and Marvin Harrison, giving the Colts a star-studded offense. While they finished in the top five in both yards and yards per attempt each of his first two years, AND James averaged 378 carries in 1999 and 2000, he averaged only 1,631 rushing yards.

Of course, the most notorious absence is that of the all time rushing leader, Emmitt Smith. For half a decade, Emmitt Smith played with a great QB, WR, offensive line and defense. Their average rank from 1991-1995, was 20th in passing attempts, eleventh in passing yards, and fourth in yards per pass. This is the classic case of a team that throws the ball well, but relies heavily on the running game. Combined with a strong defense and a great offensive line, it's at least mildly surprising that the top rusher in NFL history doesn't have a top ten year in the books. Of the top thirty rushing seasons of all time, Smith owns just the fourteenth and eighteenth best years. He certainly had the carries (he averaged 371 carries for the four years he played sixteen games), but his yards per carry were never that high.

Is there an explanation? Some might use this space to simply say that "Emmitt was never really that good". I won't get into that here, but I think there's a more logical explanation: With superior passing and rushing offenses along with a very good defense, the Cowboys were running the clock out of many games those years. Emmitt probably piled up a lot of carries late in games just gaining a yard or two, which explains the high carries but not the extremely high yardage totals. If that's not the case, then well I'm stumped. One would likely consider his situation picture perfect for setting some rushing records.

While it's interesting to look back at past runners, let's look to the future-what's in store for Jamal in November and December? There are three big numbers in his sight:

1800 yards (91.4), something that's only been achieved thirteen times
2000 yards (113.7), a milestone that's been eclipsed just four times
2106 yards (125.4), which would set a new NFL record

In parenthesis are the yards per game Lewis would need to average the rest of the season to hit that number. How likely is Lewis to do that? Here are his rushing yards per game for his career:

It's pretty clear that none of those three marks are going to be easy to attain. Prior to this season, Lewis had never really been a statistical machine.

However, he does have some excuses:

In 2000, he split times with Priest Holmes. Holmes' role started declining after their week six bye, but to make Lewis look good let's look at his second half stats: 927 rushing yards, or 115.8 yards per game. In the playoffs, Lewis averaged over 25 carries per game, but only compiled 84.5 yards per game. In 2002, he was recovering from his torn ACL, and presumably wasn't at full strength until this year. Now nothing in his performance would have suggested a start to the year like this, but it's silly to consider it a fluke-he is a premier RB. Now how would things look without that 295 yard game? In their other six contests, Lewis averaged 113.6 yards per game. That's a number that would put him right on 2000 for the year.

How about the competition Lewis faced? Here's how his opponents to date, and for the rest of the year, along with their current rank against the run:

The schedule gets more difficult for Lewis, but it's not too much harder. He still gets a game against the lowly Raiders, as well as the Browns (who he rushed for 295 yards against last time). There are three games against strong run Ds the rest of the way, and how he does the next three weeks will go a long way to determining his chances at breaking the record. Considering his last week is against the Steelers, I doubt he's going to have much success if he needs 120 yards. The last two 2000 yard rushers had some help at the end: Both Barry Sanders and Terrell Davis faced the twenty-first ranked run defense to end their season, and they ran for 178 and 184 yards respectively. Both needed big weeks to hit the milestone, and both achieved it. While it's nothing more than an educated guess, I'd predict Lewis to finish the year in the 1800s. While that's nothing to laugh at, he'll likely fall far short of the record. Prior to this season Lewis had never rushed for 100+ yards in more than two straight games-how long until his current streak ends? It WILL end in the next three weeks, and I'd wager that the Jaguars end it this week at Ravens Stadium.

Kindly direct questions and comments to [email protected].
As always, thanks to Doug Drinen's wonderful website www.pro-football-reference.com.
Additional thanks to http://www.nflarchives.com/index.htm.