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Originally Posted by djnemo65
The only thing that gives me pause is the beating that Portis has taken the last several years. Heavily used runningbacks tend to burn out after a couple seasons. Smith's record career statistics owe more to his anomalous ability to avoid injury than to his brilliance as an athlete.
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That, and the fact that it's not even a done deal that Emmit Smith is the greatest of all time. Unlike baseball, the game of football changes a great deal from year to year so that it's difficult to compare numbers. Is Emmit Smith flat-out better than Jim Brown, O.J. Simpson, and Walter Payton? The only thing about Emmit Smith you can say is that he's in that elite class of all time backs that includes Brown, Simpson, Payton, Marcus Allen, and Barry Sanders.
And as much as I love Clinton Portis, I would take any of those guys over him. And I think Joe Gibbs would too.