Running backs of the 90s

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Bigger, Badder Means Better

Saturday, September 5, 1998

BY GEOFF HOBSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Corey Dillon Cincinnati Bengals 6-foot-1, 220 pounds (File photo) | ZOOM |

Dick LeBeau has been trying to stop the run in the National Football League since Nixon met Khrushchev in the kitchen and pro football dined on the meat-and-potatoes of the running game.

First as a cornerback for the 1959 Detroit Lions and most recently as the Bengals' defensive coordinator, and it's not lost on him the league's rushing numbers have increased in each of the the past three seasons for the first time since Dorsey was playing.

No, no. Not Green Bay running back Dorsey Levens. Tommy Dorsey, one of the kings of swing back in the late '40s.

"In terms of number of rushes, there hasn't been that much of a difference," says LeBeau, who studies these sorts of things each off season.

"So the quality of rushing yards has gone up. No. 1, I think the running backs are better. The rules have assisted in changing the blocking and teams are spreading out their formations, using three and four wide receivers."

But many NFL folk point their finger squarely at LeBeau when trying to explain how the staid, snub-nosed run has somehow flourished in this MTV generation of saucy, instant offense.

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The success of Emmitt Smith and Barry Sanders in the early 1990s had some people saying that the perfect size for an NFL running back was about 5-foot-9 and 200 pounds. Those thoughts are over; big backs are back. Here's what happened to some of the smaller running backs in the league: • Ki-Jana Carter, 5-10, 222 pounds: ACL tear ended his rookie year in preseason, but hasn't shown he's fast enough or big enough to consistently gain yards in the NFL. Lost starting job last season to bigger Corey Dillon, who rushed for 1,000 yards as Carter became a third-down and goal-line back. • Warrick Dunn, 5-8, 178 pounds: Rushed for 978 yards in an impressive rookie season, but Bucs won't make him the feature back. Fullback Mike Alstott gets a lot of carries, enough that Tampa Bay sometimes moves him to tailback and brings in another big body to play fullback. • Charlie Garner, 5-9, 187 pounds: Rib injury kept him out of first three games of 1994, his rookie season. He started games 4 and 5 and became seventh player in NFL history to rush for 100 yards in each of his first two games. Eagles were so impressed that they signed Ricky Watters in the offseason to be No. 1 running back. Watters went to Seattle after the 1997 season, so Garner finally gets his chance to show Philadelphia that he's big enough to be the every-down back. • Napolean Kaufman 5-9 185 pounds: Spent first season as a backup before starting nine games in 1996. He became feature back last season and rushed for 1,294 yards. Verdict still out on his durability. • Eric Metcalf 5-10, 188 pounds: One of fastest guys in NFL in early '90s but was moved to wide receiver because of his size. • Barry Sanders 5-8 203 pounds: Clearly, lack of size hasn't hurt him. Sanders is in the process of rewriting the NFL record book. He has rushed for 100 yards or more in a record 14 straight regular-season games. He is 2,949 shy of Walter Payton's career rushing record of 16,726 yards and has gained more than 1,500 yards in each of the past three seasons. • Emmitt Smith, 5-9, 209 pounds: Topped 1,450 yards six consecutive years, winning four rushing titles and leading the Cowboys to three Super Bowl victories and an NFL MVP award. Dropped to 1,204 yards in 1996 and 1,074 last year, while battling injuries to his knee, ankle and hamstring. • Robert Smith 6-2 212 pounds: Has height, but is he too skinny? Last year was first he didn't miss significant time because of injury. In 1996,he tore knee ligaments, in 1995 it was an injured ankle, in 1994 he missed two games because of hip injury, in 1993 he suffered season-ending knee injury in on Dec. 5 • Thurman Thomas 5-10, 198 pounds: Had stellar career rushing for at least 1,000 yards in eight straight seasons. Streak ended when he rushed for only 643 yards last season. People will always ask if he could have played longer if he were bigger. A few more productive seasons, and he would be in class with best ever.

It's LeBeau's zone blitz scheme that put the passing game in danger, some say, but it's vulnerable to the run.

The package consists of trying to blitz the quarterback with more rushers than he has blockers, and confuse him with zone pass coverages. That can expose holes for runners as defensive linemen and linebackers jockey between dropping into pass coverage and rushing the passer.

LeBeau tinkered with the scheme here in the 1980s during his first term, and then perfected the package with the "Blitzburgh," Steelers of the mid-1990s.

As the Steelers stormed to two straight AFC championship games on a pile of quarterback sacks, the rest of the league put elements of the zone blitz in their defenses to combat the pass.

"There are times you can catch that type of defense in a run," says Sam Wyche, the former Bengals' head coach who is now a CBS analyst. "You've got defensive linemen retreating into a zone at the snap of the ball and smaller linebackers and smaller safeties coming at the ball. You've got lighter people coming at full speed and you just have to nick them instead of block them to get them off stride."

LeBeau, in his polite, understated way, nods respectfully before pointing out his Steelers were always at the top of the league in rush defense.

"If it's executed correctly," LeBeau says. "All the zone blitz is, is a pressure defense. There's not a safe way to pressure. Are there seams in it? Sure. But one of the reasons the zone blitz caught on is because people realized it's as safe as you can get. You can't just play one coverage. The quarterbacks are too good. The running backs are too good. The receivers are too good."

Bill Walsh, like LeBeau, dropped the seeds of his creation in Cincinnati before taking the West Coast offense to bigger and better things with the 49ers. He tutored Wyche, mentored current Bengals coach Bruce Coslet, shaped Bengals offensive coordinator Ken Anderson and agrees the zone blitz has contributed to the rise in the running game.

But it's more than that, Walsh says.

"Defenses have caught up with the passing game," he says. "Pass defenses like the nickel package are more susceptible to the run. Teams are having a tougher time passing because of the pressure on the passer. They go multiple receivers and it's much tougher to complete a pass because you don't have enough blockers.

"You can just see it in the yard per catch," he says. "In Cincinnati, (tight end) Bob Trumpy had 21 per catch one year for us. With the 49ers, (receiver) Jerry Rice had 18. Now it's down to 10, 11."

Indeed, of the top 10 receivers in the NFL last season, only half had more than 15 per catch and no one had 18.

Surely, LeBeau can't take all the heat for this throwback to the run. There are other reasons:

• We're living in a golden age of running backs, who are not only better, but bigger.

• Thanks to expansion, there are three times the number of NFL-caliber backs compared to pure passers playing in a quarterback-starved league.

• With the lack of defensive linemen coming out of college, offensive lines have the weight and experience edge.

• The salary cap. The increase in rushing yards in 1995, 1996, and 1997 corresponds to the second, third, and fourth years of the cap, an age when many teams aren't tackling much in practice to avoid costly injuries.

"The biggest factor is a surplus of quality running backs," says LeBeau, who tackled Jim Brown and Gale Sayers. "There were great running backs in the '50 and '60s because there weren't as many teams and then as you went into expansion, there were good runners here and there, but not as many when you had 12 squads. Now every week you see a pretty good running back."

In the copy cat world of the NFL, Wyche believes the high profile commitment of Bill Parcells and Jimmy Johnson to the running game has won over other coaches. Indeed, they proved the best way to combat the pass is to keep the opposing quarterback on the sidelines while your running game eats the clock.

Brett Favre, meet Terrell Davis.

That's why Lions defensive coordinator Larry Peccatiello is bold enough to suggest the Bengals own Corey Dillon could be the best back in the league, "because he moves the chains. He keeps the clock running."

At 6-foot-1, 225 pounds, Dillon is also the prototypical late '90s back. Tall and heavy. Tougher to bring down.

In the last year of the '80s, six of the NFL's top 10 rushers were under 6 feet and only three - Kansas City's Christian Okoye, Indianapolis' Eric Dickerson and San Francisco's Roger Craig -- weighed more than 210 pounds. In 1997, Dillon was part of an NFL Top Ten featuring four backs who weighed 225 or more and five who were at least 6-foot-1.

Take away Okoye, the Nigerian Exception at 260 pounds, and the '97 leaders outweighed the '89 class, 215-206.

"There's always been great running backs, I just think more people are committing to the run with things like good blocking tight ends and getting tougher guys up front," Peccatiello says. "The running backs are bigger and stronger, bigger people who can find the seams north and south. But all players are bigger."

The players may be bigger and stronger, but the NFL has a dearth of pure passers. With so few competent quarterbacks, many teams are putting the burden on the runners and defense.

"I don't know if I can name eight top-notch quarterbacks who can carry you," Wyche says. "You start reaching after seven. If you don't have a passer, you want to go with your strength and it's easier to build them in the running game. You can use all the plays in a game. Traps. draws. Man blocking. Zone blocking. if one's not working, try the other. If you're relying on the pass and your quarterback has a bad day, you're in trouble."

Walsh blames the shortage of quarterbacks on the pressure of the position in the '90s. Physical and mental pressure.

"That's blackboard football," Walsh says. "You can draw diagrams for pass patterns that should work, that are unstoppable. But you can't protect the quarterback, he can't get it off in time. Quarterbacks are taking a lot more punishment and they have so much more to learn. Plus, I think the constant turnover in offensive coordinators has hurt them."

LeBeau played in the days when there were 12 teams and it seemed like every club had two good quarterbacks. Now with 31 teams in the league next year with the addition of Cleveland and everyone carrying three quarterbacks. . .

"It's hard to find 100 quarterbacks," LeBeau says. "Not every college chooses to throw the ball. Everyone's developing a running game and not everyone's developing an NFL-style quarterback."

College personnel has a lot to do with the rise of the run in the pros. Bengals' offensive line coach Paul Alexander, who worked at Penn State and Michigan in the 1980s, remembers ten years ago when the best athletes of the big guys went to defense. Now, it's the other way around. Those big athletic kids are on the offensive line.

Peccatiello, the former Bengals' defensive coordinator who covets big defensive linemen, has seen the impact. The big, athletic college defensive tackles are few and far between, which is why a guy like Dan Wilkinson can go No. 1 if he shows up with a pulse on Draft Day.

"As a result, a lot of the guys, particularly defensive ends, are in between sizes," Peccatiello says. "Not a true defensive end, not a true linebacker, but these are the people we have to play with, so there's a little imbalance size wise between the offensive and defensive lines."

So Peccatiello says defensive coordinators are trying to exploit those players with a gap scheme in which they try to use speed and angles to get defenders on the edge of a bigger player. But that opens up a running back's ability to cut back against the grain.

Plus, Alexander sees many teams playing 8- and 9-man fronts to stop the run, so when a back gets past the line of scrimmage, he's got a shot at breaking longer runs.

"You don't get hurt at the point of attack," Peccatiello says. "What hurts is that Veer type of running, where those guys have the good vision."

What you have now, as opposed to the '60s and '70s, is big people running at smaller, faster people. And not as much practice trying to tackle them. With the advent of the salary cap, teams don't want to be stuck with injured players hanging around with big salaries and not playing.

Many teams, like the Bengals, have eschewed two-a-days during training camp. Plus, Cincinnati has gone lighter during the season since the Dave Shula era ended in 1996, partly because of the 17-week grind and partly because of Coslet's philosophy.

But defensive coaches can't pass up taking a philosophical shot at their offensive counterparts.

Peccatiello, a 25-year veteran of NFL sidelines and press boxes, can't count how many times the offense would run the ball, get stopped for no gain, and coaches would grumble, "We can't run the ball."

"Yet if you throw an incompletion, there's five reasons why it didn't work," he says. "Bad pass, wrong route, missed block, dropped pass. More head coaches are taking charge of running the offense. It's been a rule if you had impressive stats, it leads to getting a head job. Sometimes (coordinators) threw the ball indiscriminately to get numbers that look impressive in their personal portfolios.

"I think coaches are realizing you have to run to win. But nothings changed. It's been like that for 50 years."

But now Dillon and Co. are making the NFL run back to the future for the first time since the games were on radio.

That's Corey Dillon, not Marshall Dillon.