There are two types of running backs in this world: those who eschew contact, and those who seek it out.
The former are the ones we'll tell our kids about, complete with the jukes, cuts, dives, and blazing speed. They are the Maseratis, the Ferraris, the Aston Martins; they look great and turn the corner better than you or I do anything.
The latter are the bulldozers who run with a vengeance. Certainly, they want to score touchdowns, get their yards, and make the evening highlights show, but they want to hurt people along the way.
It's a special breed of back; hell, it's a special breed of human that wants to punish someone along their own way to personal glory, which makes it less surprising that the prototypical contact-seeking back, Jim Brown, was a hot magnet for controversy who felt so unappreciated by the NFL that he retired at age 29.
Now, let the record show that I have nothing but love and ardor for that first group of running backs. I was fortunate enough to grow up in Dallas in the 1990s and attend USC in the mid 2000's, which means that my formative football watching years have been shaped by Emmitt Smith's career and Reggie Bush's junior season. I wouldn't trade those memories for anything.
That being said, there is something immensely satisfying about watching a 225 lb (or thereabouts) running back pound men who outweigh them up to 40 lbs (or thereabouts) flatter than Carlos Mencia punchline.
Trouble is, while the number of average contact-seeking, power backs is probably equal to or even a little greater than the average contact-eschewing, speed backs, there is a disparity between the great contact-eschewing backs and the great contact-seeking backs at the NFL level.
Indeed, I've grown up regaled on stories of Brown (by my father) and Earl Campbell (everyone else in the state of Texas), but I've never seen a really great, transcendent one in my 15 years or so of following the NFL.
Until now.
You know where I'm going with this (probably because I slapped a nice big photo of him at the top of this post), but Adrian Peterson is the closest thing to Brown since Brown himself...and if you don't believe me, listen to Brown gush about AD (as in All Day, or what Oklahoma fans demand he be called under penalty of death. Seriously, OU fans are crazy - bring up the 'AP' moniker around one sometime and see what happens. Or don't. Actually, don't. It's for the best.) sometime.
Simply put, he runs like a man, and it's just so damn entertaining. Bill Simmons once wrote that he runs like the biggest kid on the playground, and that's most apt, simple description I can of.
Sadly, he'll probably suffer the same cruel fate of Earl Campbell and wind up in a wheelchair 20 years from now due to all the abuse he'll take but for right now, all we can do as fans of the sport is watch him do what hasn't been done for decades.
What prompted all this? A 64 yard TD run against Cleveland on Sunday that ironically resembled the greatest Brown of them all. It's barely a minute long, but this YouTube clip just screams greatness:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrhBXbVmrWc&feature=popular
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