Falcons: ESPN: With weapons, Koetter can succeed

[juraitwaluzka]

(01-16-2012 11:15 PM)Knight of God Wrote:  Turner is my favorite Falcons runningback of all time...that's in my day considering I've only been a fan since '89.

I hear ya, but I can tell you if you like Turner you would've been foaming at the mouth at William Andrews. I only wish his career hadn't been cut short and that there's not much film on him. He was one of the fiercest runners I've ever seen. My favorite player of all time and it's not even close. He was the type of runner that would be in the open field looking for guys to run over on the way to the end zone. He was a complete back.

Ronny Lott said it was the hardest hit that he had received during his NFL career, "I ran 10 yards straight at him, as hard as I could. He didn’t see me. The whole time I was saying to myself, This is it! Then, boom. I slid off of him like butter. I hit the ground, and he didn’t go down. I was thinking, What?"

If not for the injury I think he would've been HOF.

In his 5 seasons before the injury:

Four 1000-yard seasons.
No seasons under 4.0 yards per carry.
Three seasons with at least 50 receptions.
Four seasons with at least 270 touches.
Four seasons where he was among the top four backs in total yards from scrimmage.
Four consecutive Pro Bowl selections.
Three years as first or second team All-NFL.
No games missed prior to the knee surgery in 1984.

Andrews was the second back in NFL history to gain 2000 combined yards rushing and receiving. Moreover he did it twice in his career: 2036 yards and 12 scores in 1981 and 2176 yards and 11 scores in 1983. In fact, in 1983 his 1,567 rushing yards and 609 receiving yards were 39 percent of the Falcons’ total offense.

Interestingly, when looking up these numbers, I saw a lot of comments from fans all across the nation saying basically the same thing, so I know it's not Falcon bias

Someone put together a "Case for Canton" on him:

http://mattwaldmanrsp.com/2011/09/04/a-c...m-andrews/

I'd vote for him