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https://deadspin.com/frank-gore-has-been-so-good-for-so-long-1829112471
All of which is to point out that players like Frank Gore shouldn’t exist. But Gore has remained productive far beyond the point when most star running backs tail off. He currently has a record 12-season streak of 1,200 or more yards from scrimmage. He has played in all 16 games for seven years running, and he looks like he’ll get plenty of playing time for the Dolphins in 2018. He’s outlasted basically every other back from the mid-2000s (the first three backs selected in the same draft as Gore were Ronnie Brown, Cedric Benson, and Cadillac Williams, to give you a sense of how long he’s been doing this), despite five potentially ruinous injuries, and survived to compete for a job against a dude 11 years his junior.
Gore didn’t want to leave San Francisco in 2014, and even though the team drafted Carlos Hyde in the second round, Gore has talked about how he would have been happy to fight for his job if the money had been right. He understood the realities of the market, but after overcoming devastating injuries and grinding for a decade, the idea of losing his job without someone earning it away from him did not make sense to him. As he told Stephen Holder of the Indianapolis Star in 2015:
If he doesn’t catch Sanders, that’s fine. Gore isn’t in the NFL to make history. As he told Peter King last December:
From the comment section:
Gore was on some very loaded Miami teams, but I think he’s outlasted all his college teammates:
Najeh Davenport: 2008
Clinton Portis: 2010
Jeremy Shockey: 2011
Phillip Buchanon: 2011
Ed Reed: 2013
Jonathan Vilma: 2013
Willis McGahee: 2013
Kellen Winslow: 2013
DJ Williams: 2014
Brandon Meriweather: 2015
Antrel Rolle: 2015
Andre Johnson: 2016
Vince Wilfork: 2016
Devin Hester: 2016
Not bad at all for a guy with cadaver knees.
9/17/18 3:23pm
Niners fan, so excuse my fawning, but Gore is just the ******* best. You talk a lot here about his running but I’ve always loved two other things about him - his casualness after the whistle...he’ll drag 3 guys and fight like ****, finally go down, then just stand up and walk to the huddle like it was nothing. He’d break long runs and just toss the ball to the ref and move on. In a way its demoralizing to the other team because there’s this current of “yea man. This isn’t unique. Gonna do this all day. Good luck.”
Also this guy was a ******* BEAST in pass protection. The number of times I’d see some blitzing guy flying in, even completely outmatched by size and Gore would just smash the guy and not give an inch. He was super reliable and did *not* miss. I credit the loss of his protection as a significant part of Kaep’s regression in 2014.
All of which is to point out that players like Frank Gore shouldn’t exist. But Gore has remained productive far beyond the point when most star running backs tail off. He currently has a record 12-season streak of 1,200 or more yards from scrimmage. He has played in all 16 games for seven years running, and he looks like he’ll get plenty of playing time for the Dolphins in 2018. He’s outlasted basically every other back from the mid-2000s (the first three backs selected in the same draft as Gore were Ronnie Brown, Cedric Benson, and Cadillac Williams, to give you a sense of how long he’s been doing this), despite five potentially ruinous injuries, and survived to compete for a job against a dude 11 years his junior.
Gore didn’t want to leave San Francisco in 2014, and even though the team drafted Carlos Hyde in the second round, Gore has talked about how he would have been happy to fight for his job if the money had been right. He understood the realities of the market, but after overcoming devastating injuries and grinding for a decade, the idea of losing his job without someone earning it away from him did not make sense to him. As he told Stephen Holder of the Indianapolis Star in 2015:
“I mean, you could let us compete. You didn’t have to say I was automatically going to take the back seat. Put it on me. I mean, bro, I finished last season with 1,100 yards. Every time I got opportunities, I did something with it. So, I felt like, ‘Fine, if you want to go with the young guy, (make him) beat me out. It wasn’t like I can’t play anymore. If he beats me out, I can handle that. You can’t play this game forever. I knew I couldn’t be there forever. But I was there 10 years and I played every down the same whether we were winning or not.”
If he doesn’t catch Sanders, that’s fine. Gore isn’t in the NFL to make history. As he told Peter King last December:
“But if this is it, if this is my last year, I want everybody in the NFL to say, ‘He was a football player. Period.’
From the comment section:
Gore was on some very loaded Miami teams, but I think he’s outlasted all his college teammates:
Najeh Davenport: 2008
Clinton Portis: 2010
Jeremy Shockey: 2011
Phillip Buchanon: 2011
Ed Reed: 2013
Jonathan Vilma: 2013
Willis McGahee: 2013
Kellen Winslow: 2013
DJ Williams: 2014
Brandon Meriweather: 2015
Antrel Rolle: 2015
Andre Johnson: 2016
Vince Wilfork: 2016
Devin Hester: 2016
Not bad at all for a guy with cadaver knees.
9/17/18 3:23pm
Niners fan, so excuse my fawning, but Gore is just the ******* best. You talk a lot here about his running but I’ve always loved two other things about him - his casualness after the whistle...he’ll drag 3 guys and fight like ****, finally go down, then just stand up and walk to the huddle like it was nothing. He’d break long runs and just toss the ball to the ref and move on. In a way its demoralizing to the other team because there’s this current of “yea man. This isn’t unique. Gonna do this all day. Good luck.”
Also this guy was a ******* BEAST in pass protection. The number of times I’d see some blitzing guy flying in, even completely outmatched by size and Gore would just smash the guy and not give an inch. He was super reliable and did *not* miss. I credit the loss of his protection as a significant part of Kaep’s regression in 2014.
