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A Closer
Look: Eric Dickerson
By
Edward Andresen
For
those of you who have read my summaries of the Seahawks and the Cardinals
you will have noted that I have taken an approach of letting the stats
speak for themselves and then I have offered up my opinion of what those
two teams would need to do to be play-off contenders this coming season.
This article is a deviation from the style of my four previous articles.
I am writing from my heart on this subject.
Eric Dickerson, #29, Los Angeles Rams running back.
For
a great many Rams fans these days, the sight of #29 carrying the ball
is only a video highlight from a bygone era. However, for those
of us who are old enough to have seen #29 carry the rock, no one since
or maybe in the next ten years will be able to do the things he did while
carrying both the Rams and the football. He was 6’3”, weighed about
228lbs and ran a 4.3
forty, both in and out of pads. He had great field vision and an
incredible burst of speed once he saw the hole the line gave him. His
upright running style that made it appear as if only his legs and arms
were moving and that everything else was quiet has never be matched.
In
his first year with the Rams, the coaching staff had to develop a different
technique that the
in-line blockers were going to use. Instead of overwhelming an opponent,
they just needed to shield that opponent for the briefest of moments along
the line of scrimmage. I can remember reading a Ram TE by the name
of Barber saying that no one would be able to run with that kind of blocking.
Coach Robinson, told them all to wait until they saw Eric run. He
set the rookie rushing record, gaining over 1800 yds. I was lucky
enough to see Eric run against the 9ers in Candlestick Park. At
the start of the second half, he broke a 50yd run to the put the ball
inside of the 10yd line. He scored on the next play when he burst
though a hole, stopped in a single step and let the SS go by and then
accelerated into the end zone with his knees pumping. He ran right
at me on that long run and again when he scored the TD. I was 8
rows up from the field and in the corner of the end zone. I will
never forget the sight of someone so big, running so fast, yet looking
like he was taking a stroll in the park instead of playing tackle football.
He just made it look so easy.
He also caught
54 passes his first year in the league. His receiving skills were
excellent and it is something that I have never understood why the Rams
did not use him as a receiver more often.
Even as great as he was running from the single back set the Rams used
during his tenure with the team, his receiving skills were top of the
line and he could make any linebacker look like a slow poke trying to
keep up with him once he caught the ball. One can only think of how many
more big plays he would have been able to make if they had thrown the
ball to him on a more consistent basis.
In my opinion it is a shame that he is not being given his rightful place
among the NFL’s greatest running backs of all time. I know that
the NFL people will say he is being given his due, but I do not believe
that is accurate. I saw a NFL Films show on Eric where they were
asking these famous ex-football players and current players a question
who they was the (at the time) running back that was second all time in
total rushing yards. Not one of these people mentioned Dickerson.
You should have heard some of the names that they were giving instead
of Eric. It was appalling to see their faces when they were told
that it was Dickerson. On some occasions
when his name was mentioned some of those being interviewed asked the
interviewer, “Really?”.
There are a number of reasons why he has not been mentioned as he should
be, the foremost is politics, pure and simple. He was a player who
was his own man during an era of teams being run by egotistical and old
school owners. The trading of Eric from the Rams to the Colts was a cold
day for Ram lovers everywhere. A relatively new owner (the only
female owner at the time)
Georgia Frontiere felt that Eric was being an upstart to ask to be paid
as much money as the top five running backs were being paid. He
did not even ask to be paid the most of any running back, he just asked
to be paid what was fair for a running back of his proven abilities in
the NFL. He was the all-time single season rushing leader when he
asked to have his contract reworked.
Don’t
get me wrong, if you were to talk to any Ram player that ever played with
Dickerson they would have told you that he was a team player first and
foremost. His contract demands had to do with pride and with insuring
that he would be paid a fair wage. To show you how deeply Georgia
disliked Eric, she was shown on the day the Rams drafted L. Phillips with
the #6 pick in the draft. An ex-teammate from his college days,
Craig James, was conducting interviews with the various team representatives
as each team drafted their player. When he started to interview Frontiere
he was asked by Frontiere if he was making more money than Eric was since
he was working for ESPN. Craig James, turned pale at the thought
of answering such a question, the network quickly changed cameras.
The committee to elect players into the Football Hall of Fame did not
have these tainted visions of Dickerson, they voted him in on the first
ballot that was cast.
The second reason Dickerson is not seen as a great running back, is that
he made it look so ridiculously easy. He never seemed to take a
hit. Unlike Jim Brown who always got up slow after a tackle and
made it seem like he was hurting, Eric simply got up and trotted back
to the huddle. Unlike Walter Payton who banged heads on every play,
Eric would bull rush a tackler when needed, but he always tried for extra
yards using his speed, so he was arm tackled
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