Jim Brown, Walter Payton … Ricky Watters? What makes an RB Hall of Fame worthy?

When Jim Brown took time out from filming in London for “The Dirty Dozen” to announce his retirement from the NFL, news reports called him the greatest running back in league history.

Ten others have supplanted Brown atop the all-time rushing list since that day in 1966, but Brown remains the standard for the position because of his elite production. He led the league in rushing eight times in nine seasons. He topped 1,500 yards with 21 total touchdowns in his final season — totals that would have ranked second and first, respectively, in the NFL last year despite teams now playing three additional games per season.

What should Hall of Fame statistical production look like for a running back? I solved for that question regarding wide receivers recently and will do the same for running backs here, using data from Pro Football Reference.

There might never be another Jim Brown, but the Week 4 game Sunday between the Tennessee Titans and Indianapolis Colts delivers two of the best backs today. Tennessee’s Derrick Henry led the league in rushing in 2019 and 2020. Jonathan Taylor, in his third season and still only 23, rushed for more yards in his first two seasons (2,980) than all but six others in NFL history.

It’s this elite production we are seeking to measure more than yardage compiled well past players’ primes.

In evaluating wide receivers, I averaged percentiles for where each player ranked in receiving yardage during his eight best seasons, after requiring at least 7,000 career yards for inclusion. Jerry Rice and Don Hutson came out on top, with Randy Moss next and a few surprises mixed in. By comparing players against their peers in each season, we adjust for eras.

With running backs, who generally have shorter windows of elite production, I settled on six seasons instead of eight. Quite a few top backs did not even have a seventh season to evaluate, but all of them had at least six, affirming that the six-year cutoff was optimum. To qualify, players had to rank among the top 100 running backs in all-time rushing yardage.

To account for receiving production among these top rushers, I averaged percentiles for where each ranked in scrimmage yardage, not just rushing yardage, during their six best seasons from scrimmage. Versatile backs such as Marshall Faulk, Tiki Barber, Ricky Watters, Matt Forte and Roger Craig climbed as a result. Others, like Joe Perry and Jim Taylor, would have ranked higher if only rushing yards were considered.

Brown came out on top with a 1.000 average percentile, a reflection of the fact he led the league in scrimmage yards six times. Barry Sanders, Walter Payton and Eric Dickerson were next, followed by Thurman Thomas and Faulk.

As the league trends away from singular workhorse running backs, it’s getting tougher for running backs to put up Hall of Fame numbers. Jonathan Taylor and Cleveland’s Nick Chubb are two current players young enough to still have hope for producing at least six elite seasons. Henry would need to bounce back from his injury-shortened 2021 and sustain excellence past age 30. None has enough career production for inclusion below, where we unveil the top 100 running backs for six-year elite scrimmage production.

Note: Including only the top 100 all-time rushers at running back eliminates from consideration some long-ago Hall of Famers, including Lenny Moore, who would have been 18th, and Steve Van Buren (35th), Clem Daniels (36th) and Marion Motley (48th). Lowering the cutoff would have included these greats, but it also would have complicated the comparison for everyone by welcoming onto the list players without six seasons of production, including Chubb (44th) and Billy Sims (45th).

1. Jim Brown*

Brown led the NFL in rushing eight times in nine seasons. He led the league in scrimmage yards six of those seasons and went out on top as league MVP. His 104.3-yard average per game rushing ranks best in league history by nearly five yards per game.

2. Barry Sanders*

Sanders ranks second to Brown in rushing yards per game. Others were better on passing downs, but it seems safe to say no back could match Sanders’ running style, especially his ability to stop, start and repeat the process.

3. Walter Payton*

Payton amazingly led the NFL in rushing just once and in scrimmage yards twice, but his 10 seasons with at least 1,200 yards reflected a level of consistent excellence few have achieved. His career-high 1,852-yard season in 1977, headlined by a then-record 275 yards against Minnesota, came during the 14-game scheduling era.

4. Eric Dickerson*

Dickerson led the NFL in scrimmage yards three times and tied with Craig for the top spot another time (1988), which is why his fourth-best season reads as 0.996 instead of 1.000. His record for rushing yards in a season, set in 1985, still stands at 2,105 yards. His 3,913 yards rushing through his first two seasons is an NFL record by nearly 700 yards (Edgerrin James had 3,262 over his first two seasons; Jonathan Taylor stands seventh at 2,980).

5. Thurman Thomas*

Thomas’s production as a receiver pushed him up this list. He would rank 12th if we were measuring only each player’s six best seasons for rushing yardage instead of their six best for yards from scrimmage. Thomas led the league in yards from scrimmage four successive seasons from 1989-1992 but never led the league in rushing.

6. Marshall Faulk*

Faulk peaked across the 1998 and 1999 seasons with 2,700 yards rushing, 1,956 yards receiving and 22 total touchdowns. He ranks ahead of Kellen Winslow, Julian Edelman and Cris Collinsworth on the all-time receiving yardage list, with Tyreek Hill passing Faulk just this season. If we excluded receiving yards from consideration, Faulk would stand 23rd on this list. No back has more than his 6,875 yards on receptions.

T-7. Adrian Peterson

Peterson led the league in rushing three times and in scrimmage yards twice. His 2,097-yard season in 2012 nearly broke Dickerson’s record. His 296-yard game against the Chargers that season set the single-game record. Peterson owns six 200-yard games but wasn’t a prolific receiver.

T-7. LaDainian Tomlinson*

Beyond his prolific production as a rusher and receiver, Tomlinson also was a scoring machine. He had double-digit rushing touchdowns in each of his first nine seasons and scored 78 rushing touchdowns over a four-year period from 2004-2007.

9. Emmitt Smith*

The NFL’s all-time rushing king put together 11 consecutive seasons with at least 1,000 yards. He led the league in rushing yards four times and in scrimmage yards twice. His sustained production over such a long period of time isn’t captured here in a measure of each player’s six best seasons, although his six best were plenty good.

10. O.J. Simpson*

Simpson sandwiched a five-year run of dominance between three so-so seasons to start and end his career. His 7,699 yards rushing from 1972-1976 were 2,566 more than runner-up Franco Harris over that period. He would rank fourth behind Brown, Dickerson and Sanders if this were a measure of each player’s five best rushing seasons only.

11. LeSean McCoy

Sometimes changing teams can dilute perceptions of a player, but elite production is elite production, and McCoy was an elite producer in both Philadelphia and Buffalo. His top qualifying season was 2013, when he led the league in scrimmage yards (2,146) with the Eagles.

12. Tiki Barber

Some running backs wear down late in their careers. Barber posted his three highest totals for scrimmage yards to finish his career. Barber’s elite production places him in Hall of Fame company.

13. Curtis Martin*

Martin rushed for at least 1,094 yards in each of his first 10 seasons. He led the league in rushing once, at age 31, in his second-to-last season.

14. Ricky Watters

Watters and Barber are the two highest-ranked Hall-eligible players not yet enshrined in Canton. Watters could do it all and also had memorable playoff production, including a five-touchdown game against the Giants and a three-TD Super Bowl against the Chargers.

15. Tony Dorsett*

Dorsett surprisingly never led the league in rushing yards or scrimmage yards. He was third in MVP voting in 1981, when he set career highs for rushing yards (1,646) and scrimmage yards (1,971). That season and his 1978 season, when he led the league in Pro Football Reference’s Approximate Value metric, were Dorsett’s top two qualifying seasons here.

16. Clinton Portis

Portis topped 1,500 yards rushing three times and had three other seasons with between 1,262 and 1,487 yards. He retired following the 2010 season and hasn’t gained much Hall of Fame traction yet. Why is that? His career was odd in that he rushed for 3,099 yards in his first two seasons, a figure that ranks sixth in NFL history, then was traded to Washington as part of the Champ Bailey deal. Perceptions surrounding that trade, coupled with Portis playing for more than one franchise, could work against his narrative, but this study suggests the elite production was there.

17. Edgerrin James*

James produced his top four qualifying seasons with Indianapolis before finishing his career with Arizona. He led the league in rushing during each of his first two seasons. As noted earlier, only Dickerson rushed for more yards over the first two seasons of a career than James’ 3,262-yard total.

18. Marcus Allen*

Allen ranks quite high for having only three seasons with more than 890 yards rushing, thanks partly to how Al Davis curtailed his usage with the Raiders. Allen also led the league in yards from scrimmage during his rookie strike-shortened 1982 season.

18. Matt Forte

Forte ranks 33rd on the all-time rushing list, one spot below Portis. He’s 11th among running backs in career receiving yardage, which helps boost him into the top 20. For example, his 2014 season ranks high despite a relatively modest 1,038-yard total on the ground. Forte’s 808 yards receiving were a huge part of his production that year.

20. Ottis Anderson

Anderson’s late-career revival with the Bill Parcells-coached Giants pushed him into the top 20. He exceeded 1,000 yards rushing and had 1,291 yards from scrimmage in his age-32 season (1989), which became his sixth-best qualifying season for this evaluation. Anderson won a Super Bowl with the Giants the next year.

Nos. 21-30

Valuing receiving yards for running backs was critical for assessing Craig, who would rank 60th if rushing yardage were the only measure here. He’s famous for topping 1,000 yards in both receiving and rushing during the 1985 season.

21. Roger Craig
22. Ezekiel Elliott
23. Lydell Mitchell
24. Joe Perry*
25. Larry Brown
26. Herschel Walker
27. Leroy Kelly*
28. Chuck Foreman
29. Ahman Green
30. Steven Jackson

Nos. 31-40

Frank Gore played 16 seasons and finished third on the all-time rushing list, but his most productive seasons lagged behind the most productive seasons for others. He was more of a steady producer.

31. Jim Taylor*
32. Frank Gore
33. Eddie George
34. Chris Johnson
35. Earl Campbell*
36. Franco Harris*
37. Neal Anderson
38. Fred Taylor
39. Marshawn Lynch
40. Wilbert Montgomery

Nos. 41-50

Shaun Alexander had Dorsett-level production in his four best seasons but could not sustain it after winning MVP in 2005.

41. Maurice Jones-Drew
42. Jerome Bettis*
43. Jamal Lewis
44. Thomas Jones
45. Earnest Byner
46. Shaun Alexander
47. Corey Dillon
48. Freeman McNeil
49. John Riggins*
50. Floyd Little*

Nos. 51-60

Curt Warner topped 1,400 yards as a rookie, suffered a torn ACL in the first game of his second season and rebounded for a career-best 1,481 yards two years later, but seven seasons on the artificial turf of the Kingdome might have limited his longevity.

51. Warrick Dunn
52. Ricky Williams
53. James Brooks
54. Chuck Muncie
55. Ken Willard
56. Chris Warren
57. Brian Westbrook
58. Curt Warner
59. Rodney Hampton
60. James Wilder

Nos. 61-70

John Henry Johnson spent his first season in the CFL before joining the “Million Dollar Backfield” with San Francisco, where Y.A. Tittle, Hugh McElhenny and Joe Perry were, like Johnson, all future Hall of Famers.

61. John Henry Johnson
62. Le’Veon Bell
63. Wendell Tyler
64. Todd Gurley
65. DeMarco Murray
66. Priest Holmes
67. Melvin Gordon
68. Terry Allen
69. Jamaal Charles
70. Gerald Riggs

Nos. 71-80

Csonka left the Dolphins for the World Football League in 1975 and never enjoyed his previous production after returning to the NFL with the Giants a year later.

71. Ray Rice
72. Garrison Hearst
73. Mark van Eeghen
74. Lawrence McCutcheon
75. Lamar Miller
76. Charlie Garner
77. Larry Csonka*
78. Calvin Hill
79. Willis McGahee
80. DeAngelo Williams

Nos. 81-90

George Rogers led the NFL in rushing as a rookie with New Orleans and led the league in rushing touchdowns with 18 after being traded to Washington, but he suffered injuries that limited his career to seven seasons.

81. Mark Ingram
82. Mike Pruitt
83. George Rogers
84. Don Perkins
85. Stephen Davis
86. William Andrews
87. Derrick Henry
88. Robert Smith
89. Michael Turner
90. Arian Foster

Nos. 91-100

Terrell Davis proves that six elite production seasons aren’t required for Hall of Fame enshrinement. His postseason career played a significant role in his candidacy.

91. Jonathan Stewart
92. Terrell Davis*
93. Cedric Benson
94. Larry Johnson
95. Antowain Smith
96. Deuce McAllister
97. Travis Henry
98. LeGarrette Blount
99. Rudi Johnson
100. Alfred Morris

(Photo illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; photos: Courtney Culbreath, David Madison, Wesley Hitt / Getty Images)

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