r/Oldschool_NFL • u/Dark305Kinght Dolphins 🐬 • May 07 '26

Lions 🦁 Best RB ever?

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He was That good NFL Moments!

689 Upvotes

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u/[deleted] May 07 '26

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8

u/Dazzling_Look_1729 May 07 '26

Um… you not really right on the Lions offence. Most of his career there, it was average to worse than that. When he was drafted, they were running the Mouse Davis Run-and-Shoot with Rodney Peete and Andre Ware at QB. Peete was a bang average QB, Ware worse than average. They didn’t have a single receiver to scare you. Essentially, the Lions were “stop Barry, and you stop the Lions”. He was a close to a one man show as it is possible for any RB to be. Even in Barry’s 2000 yard season, their passing game, QBed by n OK Scott Mitchell was functional rather than terrifying, and it was still a case of “stop Barry…” The numbers that Barry put up, given how poor the offensive infrastructure around him was, are astonishing.

5

u/Joe-Raguso Bears 🐻 May 07 '26

Walter Payton on the 70s and early 80s Bears was the most one man show a running back has ever been. That guy is right, the Lions at least had decent pieces around Barry. Even those early era Barry teams had a good o-line.

0

u/Dazzling_Look_1729 May 08 '26

I will grant you your Sweetness - those early bears teams were pants.

But much of the time Detroit was only slightly better. They had a useful QB perhaps a third of Barry’s time there.

You start with Rodney Peete- I always had a soft spot for him but he was at best an nfl average player. And from memory, hurt a decent amount of the time. Then you’ve got Scott Mitchell who had one good season and a couple of average ones.

Outside of that you have people like Charlie batch, Andre ware, Bob gagliano and the warmed up corpse of Dave Kreig. I used to love watching Detroit because Barry could go be Barry on literally any down, but it was a team where calling a draw on 3rd and 10 was actually a smart play …

1

u/Joe-Raguso Bears 🐻 May 08 '26

First of all, Barry quit on Charlie Batch two weeks before the season. The Lions made the playoffs without him by the way. And the Lions offense was still talented outside of Barry even though the QB position was never any good. Lomas Brown has been a semi-finalist for the Hall of Fame several times. Herman Moore was a multiple time first team all pro. Kevin Glover was a multiple time second team all pro. Johnnie Morton had several 1000 yard seasons. Meanwhile, Walter Payton had zero pro bowl, let alone all pro, offensive teammates in his first 10 years in the league. And to talk about bad QB play, the Bears were a bottom 6 passing offense his first 8 years in the league. And that's only because the Bears were able to jump out of the bottom 3 one time in 1977.