Pro Football 101: Rams running back Eric Dickerson is No. 92 on the all-time list

By Joe Posnanski
Special to FOX Sports

Editor's Note: Throughout the 2021 NFL season, Joe Posnanski will rank the 101 best players in pro football history, in collaboration with FOX Sports. Posnanski will publish a detailed look at all 101 players on Substack. The countdown continues today with player No. 92, Eric Dickerson.

What’s left now is the explosion. 

Bill James likes to say that in baseball, it’s the statistics that survive. As the years go on, people remember less and less of the specifics, the daily battles, the Tuesday nights in Milwaukee, the trade rumors, the practical jokes, the little things that make up a legendary player. Instead, over time, players merge with their numbers, their achievements, the back of their baseball cards … they become 300-game winners, lifetime .300 hitters, three-time MVPs and so on.

This is because baseball is a counting game. Football statistics do not work like that. You might be a giant football fan without having memorized a single statistic. 

Oh, it’s certainly possible that you know off the top of your head Eric Dickerson’s now 37-year-old record for rushing yards in a season — though 2,105 surely never seemed as magical a number as Maris’ 61 or Gibson’s 1.12. Being honest, it never even seemed as magical as O.J. Simpson’s 2,003.

But Dickerson is not 2,105. 

No, what survives in football is movement and the jaw-dropping awe that it inspires — Gale Sayers turning a defender inside out, Aaron Rodgers making a football jump out of his hand like it’s a living thing, Barry Sanders stopping and starting and stopping and starting like he has his own pause button, Randy Moss rising to the sky for the football, Lawrence Taylor turning the corner.

Nobody ever ran a football more explosively than Eric Dickerson.

And this is what survives. This is what Eric Dickerson is forever. He’s wearing goggles and oversized shoulder pads, and he’s running upright like a sprinter, and it barely looks like he’s trying, and nobody can catch him. This was the wonder of Dickerson … he ran with such ease, such effortlessness, that his Los Angeles Rams coach John Robinson used to scream at him, "Damn it, Eric, you’ve got to run faster!"

He said this so many times that Dickerson finally said, "Coach, if you think I’m not running fast, come out and run with me." Robinson couldn’t. Nobody could. Well, nobody until Washington’s Darrell Green chased Dickerson down in a 1986 playoff game, but Darrell Green was world-class fast. And Darrell Green wasn’t carrying a football.

Dickerson was just a beautiful runner, so utterly graceful, DiMaggio in football cleats. 

"The smoothest runner I’ve ever seen," Robinson called him. But Dickerson was also 6-foot-3, 220 pounds, pure power, pure force. Yes, that’s what survives. There has never been a more explosive runner than No. 29, Eric Dickerson.

And as for the rest …

"One of the most overrated players in the history of the sport," writer Pete Axthelm called him.

"He is as talented as any running back ever," Jim Brown said. "But he doesn’t always show heart."

"Money was more important to him than anything," Mike Downey wrote in The Los Angeles Times after the Rams traded Dickerson to the Colts. "More important than the contract he endorsed, more important than the men he played with … Dickerson is gone and the Rams are better off."

… as for the rest, it’s complicated.

Eric Dickerson returned the first kickoff he ever saw for a touchdown. That was in the seventh grade in Sealy, Texas. When people used to ask Dickerson how he developed his running style, he would shrug. Born with it. Never thought about it.

In the offseason before 1984, the season he broke the rushing record, he never even worked out. "Running," he would say, "is so natural to me." Natural. 

Dickerson was a high-school superstar both in football and in track. He was recruited by everybody. He originally committed to Texas A&M and was soon driving around in a Trans Am that became unofficially known as a Trans A&M. But then, suddenly, the Trans was gone, and he was off to SMU, and though he refuses to say if he got paid for the switch, SMU was given the death penalty a few years later, so you can make your own judgments.

He teamed up with Craig James at SMU — they were known as the "Pony Express" — and even playing only half the time, Dickerson finished third in the Heisman voting. He was the No. 2 overall pick behind John Elway in the 1982 draft. 

Right away, Dickerson was a phenomenon. Ran for 1,808 yards and scored 20 touchdowns as a rookie. Broke the all-time rushing record in his second season. Just as an aside, it is remarkable that though the record has been challenged multiple times — by Adrian Peterson, Jamal Lewis, Barry Sanders, Derrick Henry, Chris Johnson, Terrell Davis — nobody has gotten there yet.

Peterson came closest; he went into the last game of the 2012 season against Green Bay needing 208 yards to break the record. Peterson ran for 199, and the Vikings kicked a field goal with no time on the clock to win the game.*

*The win put the Vikings in the playoffs, so they really didn’t have the option of playing for overtime and trying to get Peterson the record. The Vikings played the Packers again the next week in the wild-card game and lost 24-10; Peterson didn’t break 100 yards in that one.

That 1984 season — it’s almost beyond belief. Dickerson averaged 5.6 yards per carry, but it wasn’t an average skewed by a lot of long runs; he had only two 50-plus-yard runs in 1984, and his longest was 66 yards. No, his season was made by 8-yard runs, 9-yard runs, 10-yard runs. Time after time, he found daylight, sprinted through, fell forward. 

The run that broke Simpson’s single-season record was typical — it was Dickerson’s favorite play, 47 gap. On the play, both the left guard and left tackle pull right, and Dickerson always had the option to either follow his blockers wide right or cut back toward the middle.

Dickerson took the handoff, saw his opening right, ran upfield as only he could, stumbled a touch as he broke more to the right, pulled through a tackle and fell forward for nine yards and the all-time record.

"It’s shocking how good he is," Robinson said.

It was, indeed, shocking. 

There would be many more great runs in Dickerson’s career … but in so many ways, this was as good as it ever got.

* * * * * * 

"Eric has had the taste of the easy life on the West Coast with all those pretty palm trees. He’s going to come in here and see nothing but bare trees." — Walter Payton before the 1986 NFC Championship Game between the Rams and Bears in Chicago

One week before the 1986 NFC title game, Dickerson ran for an astonishing 248 yards and two touchdowns against the Dallas Cowboys. It was another NFL record for Dickerson, the playoff rushing record, and everybody was in awe. The Cowboys had prepared only to stop him; nobody in Dallas was even slightly worried about the Rams' passing game with 34-year-old rookie quarterback Dieter Brock, a Canadian Football League star. (Brock completed six of 22 passes for 50 yards in the game.)

"Eric Dickerson," Robinson said, "just played as great a game as I’ve ever seen a man play."

It was a welcome moment for Dickerson because the season had been less than ideal. For the first time in his career, things weren’t quite right. He couldn’t find a way to break his long runs. People were criticizing his toughness. 

"The media said I lost my desire," Dickerson said after the game. "They said I wasn’t running the same way. But I love football, and every time I go out there, I give it my best."

With that, Dickerson had carried his team to the shadow of the Super Bowl.

It would be the only time Dickerson would get close to the Super Bowl.

And, in that moment of promise, he had the misfortune of going up against the 1985 Bears.

"It’s going to be a long day for him," Bears defensive lineman Steve McMichael said going in.

It was indeed a long day. Nothing went right for Dickerson. He got the ball eight times in the first quarter, before the game got out of reach. He gained 14 yards. Of the 17 times he carried the ball, five were for zero or negative yards. The Rams got the ball to him at the end of the first half, their only realistic chance to score, and he stayed inbounds, and the clock expired even with the Rams still having a timeout.

The first time he carried the ball in the second half, he fumbled.

Dickerson was furious after the game because he didn’t get the ball more. He knew the Rams’ only chance was to just keep giving him the ball, and instead they let Dieter Brock throw it 31 times (he completed 10 for 66 yards).

"We never established a running game," Dickerson said. "We were going to wear them down and run the football. We didn’t get a chance to run the football, and we didn’t wear them down … A running game doesn’t mean, ‘run, run, pass, run, run.' It means, ‘run, run, run, run, run run.'"

In the end, I suspect, those Rams could have played those Bears 100 times and never won. The Bears, for the month of January 1986, were the greatest defensive team in the history of professional football.

But something about Dickerson’s career was altered in that game. The Rams wore him out in 1986, running him 404 times, making him just the second player in NFL history to carry the ball 400 times.*

*Do you know who was the first player to carry the ball 400 times in a season? I certainly didn’t – it was James Wilder with Tampa Bay in 1984. Wilder was a powerhouse, 6-foot-3, 225-pound back from Sikeston, Missouri — he was sometimes called "the Sikeston Train" in college. Lawrence Taylor once called him the toughest back he ever hit. Anyway, that year, Wilder carried the ball 43 times against Green Bay and offered the classic quote: "By Monday night, I’ll be so sore it will hurt to smile."

Dickerson led the NFL in rushing again in '86, third time in four years, and he became the first player to run for 1,800 yards in three different seasons. But it didn’t feel the same to him or anyone else. He seemed to be growing tired of the whole scene. He fumbled 15 times; Dickerson always fumbled a lot, but now it was all anybody seemed to be talking about. In the Rams’ playoff game, Dickerson ran for 158 yards against Washington. But he also fumbled the ball three times.

"We talked about his fumbling all week," Washington’s Darryl Grant said. "We didn’t know if he’d do it, but we thought we’d give him a little encouragement by hitting him as hard as we could."

After the game, Dickerson was philosophical about it all.

"Now, I know what you’re all trying to get at," Dickerson said to the press. "You’re going to say we lost because of me. But I’m not going to let you place all the blame on my shoulders. … There has always been a tendency to make me out to be some Superman. Whatever I do — if it’s good, it’s larger than life. If it’s bad, it’s a lot worse than it really is."

He would be gone from Los Angeles within months.

* * * * * *

On Halloween 1987, Jim Gray — who was then an announcer at ESPN — came to visit Eric Dickerson. By that point, Gray was the only reporter Dickerson would even speak with. The season had been an utter fiasco. Dickerson had decided he was grossly underpaid … which, to be fair, he probably was. He threatened to hold out. He called Rams vice president John Shaw "an eel." He pointed out that Robinson made more money than he did and suggested, "Let him run the 47 Gap."

It was an ugly scene. Dickerson felt like criticism was coming at him from all directions. And again, to be fair, he wasn’t wrong. Newspaper columnists savaged him. Fans called him greedy. 

When his hero, O.J. Simpson, said that Bo Jackson was a better running back, Dickerson bristled. When Jim Brown said in repeated interviews that Dickerson lacked heart, he lashed out. "That’s a joke," Dickerson said. "I’ve played hurt my whole career. Jim Brown played when guys were 170 pounds. Now they’re 280 and running 4.5 40s. Jim Brown ran about a 4.8 40. Jim Brown was great in his day, but his day is gone."

By Halloween, it was clear that the status quo simply was not sustainable. Jim Gray called Dickerson to set up the evening, and Dickerson said: "You better get over here right away."

"Why’s that?" Gray asked.

"I’ve been traded to the Colts."

It was one of the most stunning deals in NFL history — a three-way trade right in the middle of the season that sent Dickerson to the Colts, Pro Bowl linebacker Cornelius Bennett to Buffalo and a whole bunch of draft picks and running back Greg Bell* to the Rams. The Colts immediately announced they had made Dickerson the highest-paid running back ever. 

"I’m satisfied," Dickerson said after he called the Rams "stupid" one last time.

*Bell led the NFL in rushing touchdowns in 1988 and 1989. Dickerson met this fact by calling Bell "a dwarf."

But Dickerson was not built to be satisfied. His time with Indianapolis was decidedly mixed. The Colts did make the playoffs in ’87, losing to Cleveland in the divisional round (Dickerson ran for 50 yards but did catch a touchdown pass). And Dickerson led the league in rushing again in 1988, going for 1,659 yards and scoring 14 touchdowns. 

But the Colts began declining as a team, and by 1991, they were 1-15. Dickerson began wearing out as a player, and by age 30, his body had more or less given out. This is the trouble with being a running back in the NFL; time is short. Throughout, Dickerson kept holding out and fighting for money, fighting for what he was sure he was worth.

The Colts traded him to the Raiders in 1992, and the Raiders traded him to Atlanta in 1993, and the Packers wanted him, but Dickerson failed a physical, and anyway, there’s nothing too good to say about any of that. There rarely is anything good to say about the end of a great running back’s career.

Dickerson retired in 1993 — "He didn’t announce his retirement, he conceded it," Dallas columnist Kevin Sherrington wrote — and the retirement stories mostly focused on what might have been had he stayed in Los Angeles. When he retired, he was the second-leading rusher in NFL history. And yet, there was this powerful feeling that he could have been more.

"I’m not sure what happened to Eric," said Steve Endicott, who recruited Dickerson to Southern Methodist. "It’s just such a shame."

Dickerson was defiant to the end. "I don’t really play for glory," he said when asked about his legacy. "It’s just not that big of a deal to me."

But maybe it is — Dickerson has a book coming out in January called "Watch My Smoke," so he can tell his story. Again, it’s a complicated one. 

But what isn’t complicated is the way Eric Dickerson ran. All you have to do is go back and look at a few highlights; it’s vividly there. He was the most explosive runner that ever was.

Joe Posnanski is a New York Times bestselling author and has been named the best sportswriter in America by five different organizations. His new book, "The Baseball 100," comes out Sept. 28.