NEW ORLEANS — Maybe it’s time to say something that, had you said it three years ago, might have gotten you laughed out of the sports bar. It’s the sort of pronouncement guaranteed to provoke debate like a cute baby provokes smiles. The statement is this: Marshall Faulk is the most complete running back who has ever played the game.
THAT’S NOT THE SAME as saying the Rams’ MVP is the best running back ever, because that’s like asking what’s the best flavor of ice cream. It’s a matter of taste and a matter of how you define “running back.” There are power backs and slashing backs and open-field runners, I-backs and fullbacks and halfbacks and tail backs. Then there’s the problem of comparing backs across eras, which is like the eternal baseball debate about who was the greatest player, Babe Ruth or Ty Cobb?
Jim Brown remains the standard for many people, and, having seen him play when I was relatively young and as impressionable as wet clay, I can still say I’ve never seen anyone like him. But Brown was a freak of nature, a 232-pounder with a 32-inch waist and a 46-inch chest who could run 100 yards in about 9.8 seconds playing in an era when linebackers weight 210 and 250 was a pretty good-sized lineman. Brown had advantages today’s players don’t, namely that he was the strongest, fastest, and darned-near the biggest man on the field. He was Babe Ruth, one-of-a-kind, a man playing with boys.
But Brown didn’t block and Walter Payton didn’t catch 80 passes a season and Barry Sanders couldn’t move a pile and O.J. Simpson and Eric Dickerson piled up yardage but never got to the Super Bowl or won a championship. Then there’s Gale Sayers, who might have been the best ever in the open field, but that’s just part of the job.
Top performers for the 2001-02 St. Louis Rams
Faulk does it all. He’s got power and finesse, great hands and astonishing vision. He blocks, he leads the team in receptions and rushing. He can run over you, around you, or past you. If you were to ask a committee of coaches to describe the ideal running back, they’d probably just hand you Faulk’s picture.
A lot of people do say he’s the best ever, and it’s not surprising that the opinion is unanimous on the Rams. Just ask Robert Holcombe, the guy with one of the most anonymous jobs in the world: back-up running back on the Rams: “Marshall Faulk is without a doubt the greatest running back past or present. No one’s done what Marshall’s done.”
With that, no one can argue. Faulk has 200-yard rushing games and a 200-yard receiving game and on Oct. 15, 2000, he had a combined 286 yards rushing and receiving against the Falcons. For four straight seasons, he has had more than 2,000 combined yards, and in 1999 he both rushed for over 1,000 yards and had more than 1,000 yards receiving. For three straight years Faulk has averaged better than 5 yards a carry. Did I mention he works for a law firm in the off-season and is thinking about becoming a lawyer?
Faulk won’t tell you if he thinks he’s the best ever, and he can’t tell you how he does what he does. He was told this week that offensive guard Adam Timmerman says, “He has the ability to sense where he is on the field. He’s making this cut and setting up the next cut while thinking about the third cut. He sets up people so well.”
Faulk listened to the quote, shrugged, and said, “The things that happen on the field, I don’t think about it. It just happens. I just go out and play.”
Indeed, to do what he does, you can’t think about what you’re going to do. It is all instinct and reaction. Bill Parcells, who used to think that everything can be coached, finally admitted when he was in New England that you can’t coach the ability to hit holes and make cuts, and no great running back can explain how he does what he does.
A few things you can say about Faulk, though. One is that he is uncommonly intelligent and understands the game as few others. Another is that the game moves more slowly for him than it does for everyone else. He simply sees things that other people don’t and reacts to them with unerring instincts.
Faulk has an almost ethereal aura of calm around him, as if nothing can bother him, which is amazing when you consider that he grew up with five older brothers in a bad section of New Orleans. Until he straightened himself out, he was just another street thug where such people were as common Enron investigations in Congress. Faulk doesn’t talk about those days, either, other than to say he had bad times as well as good times growing up, and, “As far as I knew, everybody lived in the projects like I did.”
One subject he will talk about, and that’s the idea of his being a receiver as well as a running back. “I’m a running back,” he says with finality. “They ask me to catch the ball and I try to do it to the best of my ability. But I’m a running back.”
In high school, Faulk played wide receiver, running back, quarterback, and defensive back, and when it was time to pick a college, no one seemed to know where to play him. Most schools that recruited him wanted to make him a cornerback, and he wouldn’t accept that. He went to San Diego State because that was the only school that agreed to give him a shot at running the ball.
Faulk did it so well that it’s hard to figure what the other coaches were thinking, breaking school records and contending for the Heisman Trophy all three years he played. He came out after his junior year, went to Indianapolis, became a star, had a falling out over his contract with management and was traded to the Rams in 1999. The Colts did OK with Edgerrin James, and the Rams made out like bandits, getting the most complete running back in the business.
The Patriots will key on stopping him, and maybe they will. In the first round of the playoffs, Faulk collected what for him was a modest 82 yards on 16 carries against Green Bay.
Ticked off by what he saw as a sub-par effort, Faulk told his teammates after the game, “I’m going to take the game over next week.” He then went out against a tough Philly defense and amassed 159 yards on 31 carries.
That’s greatness, the greatness of the most complete back who’s ever played the game.
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