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Fun poll: Earl vs. J.J.

Earl meets J.J. at the 2 yard line. Does he score?

  • Yes

  • No

Results are only viewable after voting.
Double Barrel

Double Barrel

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Saw this on Facebook and thought it would be a fun off-season chat and poll:

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"The senseless waste of pitting these two mighty forces of nature against each other, like matter vs. anti-matter, will be a tragedy, not only for the players involved but for our planet. All nations must band together, to ensure that such a conflagration never takes place."

I dare say this would be a worse disaster than "Bears vs. Bulls".
 
Of course Earl doesn't score. He gets it inside the 1 though.

After all J.J. is in his prime while Earl is 60 years old and can barely walk.

He's Earl but he's still only human. It's going to take him two downs to score.
 
No, he still has another 98 yards to run and break away speed wasn't Earl's thing.

OR

Campbells YPA was only 4.3 for his career, 3.1 in the playoffs.

In 7% of his games he averaged under 2ypa...

To many variables to call.
 
If it's prime Earl vs prime JJ, JJ's only chance is if Earl is running east west
infantrycak said:
Y'all have some serious splanin to do..

Bob Lilly, Randy White...we have one of the greatest of all time. Don't piss it away.
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Not sure how it came into the question but nice video.... I agree
 
JB said:
If it's prime Earl vs prime JJ, JJ's only chance is if Earl is running east west


Not sure how it came into the question but nice video.... I agree
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Lilly and JJ strike me as the same. They're freaks. Randy was just mean. Texas mean. Undersized just mean. You'd listen to him and just know. Ernie Cannon was that way.
 
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Ernie was beautiful. 6 foot 3 of Texas. He owned the room. Had a southern drawl. Just an easy story telling sense.

Not many around any more.

Ernie's son isn't.
 
Speedy said:
Earl had plenty of break away speed.
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Yep, part of what made Earl so special was his combo of size, speed, and agility. You go back and watch some of his highlights. He made people miss, too. H ran over 'em enough times to make peoples' jaws drop, but he'd make 'em miss and run right on by 'em too.
 
This isn't really a fair question by itself.

It all would depend on how much momentum Earl already had running before they'd have their collision. How much momentum would Watt have? If one of them was running as fast as they could at full burst and the other one was going like 70% that would make quite a bit of a difference. You could have that scenario done 10 times, and the outcome would always depend on the angles from which Watt would be able to tackle from and how hard both were moving. Earl could definitely truck Watt right over in some cases, and Watt could definitely smash Earl into the ground in other cases.

For fun sake, I'll play and put my money on Earl getting in. Watt is a beast, but even Romo slipped him on one play and made a game winning play after that.
 
My best guess would be that Watt slips through two blocks within nanoseconds and meets Earl in the backfield, but Earl has a full head of steam and Watt is moving laterally. Watt holds him up with his pure strength and waits for reinforcements. Earl keeps those powerful legs churning and forces his way into the endzone as those reinforcements don't come in time. Watt, exhausted from the effort, turns around to see the rest of his DL is lying flat on their backs and his LBs have been pushed nearly to the goal posts. He realizes those reinforcements were never going to come, and that they never stood a chance unless he made the play all on his own.
 
I think it is easy to forget the size and physicality of Watt vs the players Earl played against. Isiah Robertson, in the video above, actually weigh less that Earl Campbell. JJ weighs in at 290 and has about 50-60lbs on Campbell. Also in that Isiah video, he is standing nearly straight up when Earl hits him. JJ has shown how low he fires out of a stance and he himself would have a good head of steam when he collided with Campbell. If Earl has no room to build up his power, I would take JJ more often than not. If Earl has 5-10 yards to get moving that it would be near impossible to stop him. Either way, it would be one hell of a collision.
 
Mean Joe Greene said in an article that Earl actually scared him. And Campbell is the ONLY player that Mean Joe said that about.

The thing about that Isiah Robertson is what happened before Earl hit him. Earl was not running full steam ahead. He was coming off of a stumble, and turned his body to get it straight right before impact.

The man had 34" thighs. For reference, I have a 34" waist! J.J. is no doubt a badass, and is going to go up there as one of the best at his position. But, there is nobody in the game today that compares to Earl in his prime.
 
Double Barrel said:
Mean Joe Greene said in an article that Earl actually scared him. And Campbell is the ONLY player that Mean Joe said that about.

The thing about that Isiah Robertson is what happened before Earl hit him. Earl was not running full steam ahead. He was coming off of a stumble, and turned his body to get it straight right before impact.

The man had 34" thighs. For reference, I have a 34" waist! J.J. is no doubt a badass, and is going to go up there as one of the best at his position. But, there is nobody in the game today that compares to Earl in his prime.
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I'm trying to find an article on who JJ said he was scared of, oh wait, he's never said that ;)
 
Meenster2008 said:
I'm trying to find an article on who JJ said he was scared of, oh wait, he's never said that ;)
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He won't admit it, but Tony Romo scares him...


You tellin' me that he can't get Romo when he's got him in his grasp but he can take down Earl, one of the greatest power runners in pro football history? :crazy:
 
On a side note i remember as a,kid wishing somehow Earl could have lit up deon sanders up on a toss sweep
.just wrong era lol

A ray lewis-Earl collision would have been historic
 
Earl scores. If we're being analytical, Watt plays incredibly low - most of his tackles are around the knees and ankles. If they met clean in the hole that might be a story, but getting off a block Watt would go low and Earl had impossible balance, he would get the other foot down to stumble into the endzone. If they did meet head on however, I'm still going Earl. I've yet to see Watt truly stone a runningback (Clowney has better thumps in his few games) - the result would look a lot like Bo vs Boz or Bettis vs Urlacher. A bit ironic because a guy that mirrors those two defenders would be a much better matchup ... pre-injury Cushing was able to flatten Marshawn Lynch 1v1 (name someone else with solo destroying beastmode on their resume, I'll wait). I don't think Cushing could stand up to Earl like that, but he'd be closer than Watt.

A man named 'The Assassin' in the prime of violent hits went square on Earl in this exact situation. They both went concussed, and Earl scored.

"Kinda girlish for one guy to tackle me". "If there wasn't 6 of them ... or 4 or 5 maybe, I knew what was going to happen and they knew what was going to happen".
 
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Scooter said:
Earl scores. If we're being analytical, Watt plays incredibly low - most of his tackles are around the knees and ankles. If they met clean in the hole that might be a story, but getting off a block Watt would go low and Earl had impossible balance, he would get the other foot down to stumble into the endzone. If they did meet head on however, I'm still going Earl. I've yet to see Watt truly stone a runningback (Clowney has better thumps in his few games) - the result would look a lot like Bo vs Boz or Bettis vs Urlacher. A bit ironic because a guy that mirrors those two defenders would be a much better matchup ... pre-injury Cushing was able to flatten Marshawn Lynch 1v1 (name someone else with solo destroying beastmode on their resume, I'll wait). I don't think Cushing could stand up to Earl like that, but he'd be closer than Watt.

A man named 'The Assassin' in the prime of violent hits went square on Earl in this exact situation. They both went concussed, and Earl scored.

"Kinda girlish for one guy to tackle me". "If there wasn't 6 of them ... or 4 or 5 maybe, I knew what was going to happen and they knew what was going to happen".
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Well said, man. Great analysis and breakdown of technique and where the power was in Earl's game.
 
eriadoc said:
Since we're talking about tackling a big guy low, watch this (start at the 2:14 mark):

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I was wondering who NFL Films put ahead of Earl. Of course Jim Brown is no. 1. It's almost a no brainer that if Jim Brown is on a list, the mystique and legend of Jim Brown automatically makes him no. 1.

So I went and looked and they put Marion Motley no. 2, who played in the 1940's and 1950's, so I have absolutely no reference and memory to even question it.

Obviously, Earl is the no. 1 power runner of the so-called 'modern era' (i.e. Super Bowl era). I have yet to see anyone close to him since I've been a pro football fan. Beast Mode and The Bus are about as close as they get, and they are distant seconds, IMHO.
 
"It was at the Superdome, and the Saints were on the one-yard line coming in," says former Oilers safety Bo Eason. "My job was to jump over the goal line and meet Earl at the peak. He was all ass and thighs, so there was no place to hit him, but I jumped up, and I hit him square. I mean I popped him face-to-face. After I hit him, I couldn't see anything. All I could see was black. I thought I was blind. Then I opened my eyes, and I was lying on my back in the end zone, and I could make out the lights on the ceiling. They were all fuzzy and blurry and spinning. I thought I was in heaven. Then I turned my head, and Earl was lying right next to me. He reached his hand over to help me up, and I said, 'Earl, I've got to lie here awhile; I think you knocked out my eyes.'

"I realized later it wasn't my eyes. He hit me so hard that both my contacts flew out. The next day we were watching film with our defensive coordinator, Jerry Glanville, and he asked me why I was running the wrong direction the rest of the game. I told him, 'Coach, I couldn't see s---. Earl Campbell knocked my contacts out of my head.'"
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http://www.si.com/vault/2015/07/10/106211230/lifes-roses-and-sausages

Of course Earl scores. I like Watt and all but you can't stop an avalanche.
 
Lucky said:
"Earl meets J.J. at the 2 yard line. Does he score?"

I'm more concerned about the hole created in the space time fabric.
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You know it just occurred to me that if nothing else at least the Astrodome would finally be gone.

Of course now we have to build a replacement for NRG Stadium and we can't put it in that 2 mile crater that used to be called NRG Park. We're also going to need a whole lot of new season ticket holders.
 
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