February 03, 2005
Farewell Emmitt
He probably should have done this two years ago, but now Emmitt is retiring. Football Outsiders has a good look at where Emmitt ranks on the all-time rushing list. Personally, I'd place him a bit higher due to his consistency, but I'm also a Cowboys fan. I remember one time I was driving down Hulen Street in Fort Worth and saw a nice convertible (I don't remember the model) with a vanity plate that said "EMMITT." "Odd," I thought. Then I noticed that the man driving it was Emmitt himself. He's smaller than I expected. He ended up driving within a couple blocks of my parents house before he turned down Alta Mesa. It was cool.
I've gone around a bit on old Emmett.. hated him with the cowboys (niners fan) and partly believed that, "his O-line made him" argument. But that certainly wasn't the case in Arizona, and in the twilight of his career at that...
And he did play with two dislocated shoulders.
So I guess I'll have to settle for hating the other drugstore cowboys.. ;-)
And Curtis Martin won't catch him!
Certainly his O-line made a difference; it always does. Even so, he was definitely one of the greats. Plus, he was always such a classy, quiet guy. It seems like many RBs are like that, too, for some reason. Quiet, hard-working. Not all, of course, but the position isn't quite as plagued by prima donnas as WR.
I was watching a repeat of one of the Cowboys-49s championship games on ESPN a few months ago, at it really struck me how much effort Emmit would put into every carry, especially when everybody else was exhausted. He certainly wasn't as talented as Barry Sanders, and he certainly had a great 0-line, but Emmitt's sheer determination was something else.