Troy Aikman can’t imagine Emmitt Smith’s rushing record falling

Two seasons after Troy Aikman retired, the future NFL Hall of Famer watched as former Cowboys teammate Emmitt Smith broke one of the most significant records in all of sports.

On Oct. 27, 2002, in a home game against the Seahawks, Smith took down Walter Payton’s career rushing record. (You can check out the play here). At that point, Smith was in his 13th season. He played two more seasons, changing teams from the Cowboys to the Cardinals. And Smith retired with 18,355 yards.

No running back since then has come close to threatening the record. And Troy Aikman says it’s safe to predict that no back ever will break the Emmitt Smith standard.

“I think it’s pretty safe,” Aikman said of the record during an appearance this week on the Dan Patrick show. “I can’t imagine in my lifetime that I’ll see anyone really threaten that record. The game’s going to have to change dramatically.”

First, for context, let’s take a look at the NFL top five.

1. Emmitt Smith 1990-04 18,355
2. Walter Payton 1975-87 16,726
3. Frank Gore 2005-20 16,000
4. Barry Sanders 1989-98 15,269
5. Adrian Peterson 2007-21 14,918

And there’s not an active running back who is within 10,000 yards of Smith. Tennessee’s Derrick Henry tops the current NFL backs with a career total of 8,335 yards.

Aikman was on the Dan Patrick Show to promote his new beer. It’s called Eight for obvious reasons. But Patrick also got Aikman, who now is the lead analyst for Monday Night Football, to talk about football. Read on for more Troy Aikman and Emmitt Smith details. But here’s the entire video:

Aikman said that one reason why Smith posted such gaudy stats is because he always was on the field. In fact, Patrick looked up the number and discovered Smith had missed only five games in his entire career.

“Now, with 17 games, if you’re able to stay healthy, who knows,” Aikman said of a potential record breaker out there. “That’s what I always admired about Emmitt. When you started talking numbers, the yards always are impressive. But what’s impressive to me and what’s always been impressive, is a guy who had a front row seat. In order to put up those kind of numbers, two things have to happen. You have to have great years. And you have to play, you have to be on the field.

“To me, Emmitt’s greatness, despite the fact he played well, was that he didn’t miss games,” Aikman said. “He was on the field. Bet I can count on only one hand the number of games Emmitt Smith missed in his career while he was with the Cowboys. … When you start looking at big numbers guys put up over their careers, in their careers they simply didn’t miss much time.”