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Christian McCaffrey vs. Barry Sanders
Why everyone needs to settle down just a little bit on Christian McCaffrey’s record-breaking season ... at least compared to what Barry Sanders did in 1988.
January 5, 2016
Why everyone needs to settle down just a little bit on Christian McCaffrey’s record-breaking season.
Christian McCaffrey’s record-setting season was good, but …
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Sorry if this blurb sucks, it’s not my fault …
I ran for 2,061 yards and 25 touchdowns while leading my team to the College Football Playoff and all I got was this lousy Heisman.
”Barry, you’re over 30 years old. You owe it to yourself, to your friends, to your parents, NOT to play in a band called Sonic Death Monkey!”
Seriously, America? You’re going to turn me into the anti-McCaffrite guy?
McCaffrey carried his team to the Rose Bowl. Derrick Henry helped carry his team to the national title game.
I know, I know, I know, the Alabama defense had an eensie-weensie, teeny-tiny thing to do with it, and the Crimson Tide offensive line was a key part of the puzzle, too, but it was Henry who had the bigger and more important performances than McCaffrey in the bigger and more important games.
That Stanford offensive line, by the way, is full of NFL talent, too.
But I did this already and I’m not going to rehash the merits of why Henry got my vote for the Heisman – McCaffrey 12 carries for 66 yards in the loss to Northwestern, and with the whole world watching, 27 carries for 94 yards against Notre Dame – because McCaffrey deserved it, too. There’s no real argument against McCaffrey as much as there is an argument for Henry as the signature player of the 2015 college football regular season, but that’s so four weeks ago.
My issue is with McCaffrey’s season being placed anywhere near the same zip code as what Barry Sanders did in his 1988 season.
I tried making the argument last year that Melvin Gordon’s Heisman runner-up campaign was at least worthy of being compared to what Sanders did 27 yards ago, at least in terms of running the ball. And now McCaffrey is being hailed for breaking Sanders’ single-season all-purpose yardage record.
Two problems. 1) Yeah, he did, but not in yards per game and 2) kickoff return yards are a bit misleading in terms of overall greatness. Any mediocre kick returner averages 20 yards per pop. Return ten kicks, 200 yards – boom.
A yard is a yard, and McCaffrey finishing 73 total yards per game ahead of San Jose State’s Tyler Ervin is amazing, but 1,070 of the all-purpose yards were on kickoff returns. McCaffrey more than earned his stripes running the ball cranking out a 2,019-yard season, but he did this in 14 games to get to 3,864 yards.
The NCAA didn’t count bowl stats with Sanders, but even though his yards per game went down with a 222-yard rushing, 270-all-purpose-yard day against Wyoming in the 1988 Holiday Bowl, stretch out his season to 14 games and he blows past the 4,100-yard mark – and he didn’t even play the fourth quarter.
Sanders was an All-America kickoff returner in 1987 when the Oklahoma State running game was owned by Thurman Thomas, and he came up with 421 kickoff return yards in 1988, but counting the bowl game the 2,820 rushing yards – and 48 total touchdowns – are simply more impressive than what McCaffrey did this season. If you want to throw in return yards, Sanders averaged 294 yards of total offense per game – a whopping 17 more per game than what McCaffrey did.
The kickoff return stat matters, and McCaffrey was tremendous, but it’s also because he got a lot chances with just three other players returning more kickoffs and with two more gaining more kickoff return yards.
Again, not arguing against McCaffrey, but you had to see Sanders in college to get the whole other level he was on for an entire season. Go to the 40 minute mark of this …
