A great story from the Detroit Free Press on Barry Sanders and his sudden retirement from the NFL.
According to the center, the story began in the huddle, when the guys told Sanders he needed only 10 more yards.
"For what?" Sanders apparently said.
"The rushing title," replied former Lions center Kevin Glover.
"Oh, really? That's cool. But not that important."
"He took himself out of the game," Glover recalled. "He went to the bench and took his shoes off. We were standing there stunned."
However it went down, this much is true: Sanders finished with 1,470 yards that season; Kansas City Chiefs running back Christian Okoye finished with 1,480. No one, no matter how they remember the details, had ever seen anything quite like it.
It's hard to get your head around the kind of stats Sanders put up. He rushed for 1470 yards and 14 TDs in his rookie season -- then topped 1470 yards FIVE more seasons. He rushed for 1883 yards in 1994 and then a mind-blowing 2053 yds and 11 TDs in 1997. He never rushed for less than 1115 yds -- and he did that in only 11 games (an average of 101.4 yds per game)
In his ten year career, he averaged 99.8 rushing yards per game.
While it's a great bar argument over who was the greatest RB of all time, it would be hard to argue that Sanders was the greatest fantasy football RB of all time. I wonder if we'll ever see anybody like him again.