Denver Broncos “What If?”: What if Terrell Davis had never gotten hurt?
By Adam Uribes
· General
·
· 3 min read
What if Terrell Davis had never gotten hurt? What if Davis got to have 3-6 more prime years of production? How would that stand among the names like Thomas, Payton, Sanders, Emmett Smith?
As Morpheus said in the Matrix, “fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.
Watching San Francisco cornerback Tyronne Drakeford do his best Charlie Brown impression, shoes flying and body contorting, introduced a young running back named Terrell Davis to the Denver football scene. For as significant as that moment was, Davis trying to make another tackle before getting wiped out by his own teammate and thus ruining his knee in the process, was just as important a moment in the history of the franchise, even if Broncos Country didn’t know it at the time. Coming off a season where Davis led the league in rushing, went over the hallowed 2,000-yard rushing mark, and was named league MVP, the knee injury robbed Davis and the Broncos of whatever career he had left in front of him.
What if Terrell Davis had never gotten hurt? What if Davis got to have 3-6 more prime years of production? How would that stand among the names like Thomas, Payton, Sanders, Emmett Smith? While overdue in its honor, Davis earned his place in the Hall of Fame for having a dominant three-year run that is still impressive when compared to his contemporaries even today. Something to chew on as far as stats go, the year that Davis went over the 2K mark, the back was pulled in eight cumulative quarters, equivalent to roughly two games. Meaning, O.J. Simpson and Terrell Davis (in theory) are the only two players in league history to top 2,000 yards in a 14-game season. The imagination does crazy things to think about if Davis had the luxury of a SIX year run at the top, ideally.
Unpopular opinion time. Knowing what we know now about the extent of Davis injuries, it’s a safer assumption to carry that Davis knee, even without a major injury, wasn’t going to hold up to have an 8-to-10-year career. Additionally, playing running back isn’t known for career longevity either. This is also in a period where Davis had over 300 carries three years in a row AND played on all three downs, meaning that kind of usage very well could have sped up the aging process on Davis and his bad knee. Throwing those ingredients into a bowl and mixing them, you can assume you get a running back that has a longer career, but not a long career, if that makes sense. It’s also worth mentioning that Davis got out to a slow start in the season he got hurt, so it's not crazy to think that the decline was already starting to shape, and the ACL/MCL injury just made the inevitable come quicker than anticipated.
It’s a great thought experiment to have when you’re sitting around with friends talking football, what Terrell Davis could have done if he had had the benefit of health for the rest of his career, however long that may have been. While it’s entirely plausible that Davis would have had success for a little while longer than he played, it still needs to be balanced that the writing was on the wall long before he initially got hurt that Davis would resemble a supernova, burn white hot for only a short period of time.
Tags: Broncos, Broncos Country, NFL, Denver, Football, NFL, Blogs, terrell davis