In honor of Running Backs Week at SDS, we’re ranking the top 25 tailbacks in SEC history, and the top 5 backs in the histories of some of the SEC’s most prominent programs.

Following along those same lines, and with the NFL draft just barely behind us, we’ve also ranked the SEC’s top 5 running backs based on their success at the NFL level. Take a look at our list, beginning with a player who’d likely rank much higher had injuries not derailed his career:

HONORABLE MENTIONS

  • Charley Trippi (NFL Hall of Fame inductee)
  • Jamal Lewis (one of only seven players in NFL history to rush for 2,000 yards in a season)
  • Fred Taylor (15th on the NFL all-time rushing list).

5. Bo Jackson

Jackson only lasted four years and 38 games in the NFL before a severe hip injury ended his career, but he was able to accomplish a lot in a short amount of time in the NFL. He ran for 221 yards in his Monday Night Football debut in 1987, less than a month after taking his first NFL carry, and from that moment on he established himself as one of the league’s premier stars. He never ran for 1,000 yards in a season, but earned Pro Bowl honors in 1990 and closed his career with a 5.4 yards per carry average. Jackson had three career carries of 88 yards or longer (all for touchdowns), and he was the ultimate playmaker, also catching 40 passes during his career as a threat out of the backfield. He is still the only athlete to earn All-Star or Pro Bowl honors in two of the four major American sports leagues (NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL), but we’ll forever wonder “what if” regarding Jackson and what he might have further achieved in the NFL had he been able to stay healthy.

4. Shaun Alexander

Alexander is considered one of the best tailbacks, if not the best tailback, in Alabama history, which places him in some elite company in the history of one of the SEC’s all-time great programs. What’s amazing is that Alexander was even better in the NFL than he was in college, eventually setting a league record for touchdowns in a single season with 27 in 2005, the same year he was named league MVP upon leading the Seattle Seahawks to their first Super Bowl appearance. That record has since been broken, but Alexander’s MVP, his three Pro Bowl invites, his rushing title, his two All-Pro honors and his place on the NFL’s All-Decade team from the 2000s validate an exceptional NFL career for the former Tide star.

3. Jimmy Taylor

Once an All-American at LSU, Taylor entered the NFL in 1958 and had an illustrious 10-year career, the first nine years of which were spent with the Green Bay Packers. He was a member of five Packers title teams, the first four of which won NFL championships while the fifth won the first-ever Super Bowl over the AFL’s Kansas City Chiefs. Taylor was the leading rusher on all five teams, and he was named NFL MVP in 1962, the same year he won his second championship. He’s a Hall of Famer and a member of the NFL’s All-Decade team for the 1960s, and his 83 career touchdowns are the second-most all-time by a player who retired before 1970 (he trails only Jim Brown).

2. Steve Van Buren

Steve Van Buren, a former LSU Tiger, starred for the Philadelphia Eagles from 1944-51, and is still considered by many to be the greatest Eagle of all-time. In eight NFL seasons he was a five-time All-Pro and a four-time rushing champion, leading Philadelphia to back-to-back titles in 1948-49. (The Eagles have only won one other championship without Van Buren in their 83-year history.)  When he retied in 1952 due to injuries, he was the NFL’s all-time leader in career yards and career touchdowns (he’s since been passed in both categories), and he’s now a Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee whose number has been retired by the Eagles.

1. Emmitt Smith

Smith is the NFL’s all-time leading rusher, so if you’re wondering how he jumped to the top of this list, that’s how. He won three Super Bowls with the Dallas Cowboys in the early ’90s as part of the famed Triplets (Troy Aikman, Smith and Michael Irvin). For his career (15 seasons) he ran for 18,355 yards and 164 touchdowns, and he posted 11-straight 1,000-yard seasons from 1991-2001. He only ran for fewer than 900 yards once in 15 seasons, the same number of times he amassed fewer than 200 carries in a season or played in fewer than 14 games. Smith was a model for success and a model for consistency in the NFL, and it’s no surprise he was the star of so many contending teams throughout his career.