Former Cleveland Browns RB Earnest Byner should be in the Hall of Fame

Former Cleveland Browns RB Earnest Byner gained 12,866 yards from scrimmage despite spending half his career helping his team as a blocking back. He belongs in the Hall of Fame.

No doubt many fans will question the firm recommendation to send the Cleveland Brown‘ “Fumble Guy” to Canton, but Earnest Byner‘s career transcends the fumble.  Recovery from “The Fumble” is much more significant than the fumble itself. And if you look into his career, his performance is way better than the numbers would indicate, because he was a blocking back for his entire career. If blocking is part of football, and it is, Earnest Byner needs to be in there.

Byner is the link to the heartbreaking losses of the Marty Schottenheimer era, which otherwise might seem to be psychologically insurmountable. Browns fans remember all too well that Earnest put on an unbelievable performance with 187 yards from scrimmage against John Elway as the Browns mounted a furious comeback from a 28-10 deficit…only to have it come apart at the end as Byner fumbled as he tried to score what would have been the winning touchdown.

Anytime you hear some fan or sportswriters mope about how the Browns are doomed to failure and can never come back from that, you can drop this little bomb on them: Earnest Byner has not one but two Super Bowl Rings, both earned after the infamous fumble. Because of Earnest Byner, the Browns will never accept the finality of any loss no matter how crushing. As far as that is concerned, Byner has been an inspiration to innumerable ordinary people who have suffered some failure or loss in their lives and picked themselves up and went on with life. Football is about getting back up, dusting yourself off and asking for the ball again.

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But let us talk about his production on the field. Byner had two gigs with the Browns, and played a total of fourteen seasons and was one of the most productive backs of the era. He had 12,866 yards from scrimmage and 13,497 all-purpose yards. These are insane numbers. When his team needed an emergency kick returner, there he was returning kickoffs at age 37, because that is the kind of player he was.

By the way, greatness is not just about stats. Can we talk a little about blocking?  Ask star fullback Kevin Mack how many yards he got over the years because Earnest Byner was there beside him, blowing up linebackers and clearing paths for him.

Byner was really like a second fullback.  Mack and Byner complemented each other perfectly, blocking for each other and taking turns carrying the ball, but the point is that neither got the maximum number of carries.  Byner gained the reputation of being a good blocker and outlet receiver and that became his role.

In fact, there were seven seasons in which Byner actually had more receiving yards than rushing yards. That’s because his job was often to stay in the backfield and block and set up the screen.

Upon being traded to Washington, coach Joe Gibbs used him as a fullback a year, primarily to block for Gerald Riggs. That meant that he had to bulk up to levy his shoulder pads on people instead of carrying the ball himself as much.

Byner accepted his role and did not complain (Hello, Duke Johnson). He didn’t put up big numbers when he was a blocking fullback, but that should not be interpreted as a lack of ability. When Gibbs shifted him back to halfback, lo and behold, he gained 1,219 yards on the ground in 1990, and 1,498 yards from scrimmage. Over a three-year period with Washington, Byner was good for 4,190 yards from scrimmage (or if you prefer, an average of 1,397 yards from scrimmage for each of those three years). That should make your eyes glaze over.

We should not conclude that Gibbs made a mistake by not getting more yards from Byner, prior to that statistical breakout season of 1990. On the contrary, Gibbs knew what he was doing, and the team was benefiting from having Byner the blocking back and screen pass threat, with Riggs as the feature back. Byner’s contribution overall was more valuable to the team than if he had gotten the glory for himself, even if it doesn’t appear on a stat sheet.

It is not like fantasy football, where the player with the bigger stats is more valuable than the guy without the stats. In fantasy football, blocking tight ends and blocking backs are not very valuable.  In real life, they are.

Your humble correspondent can not understand the rationale of putting players with gaudy stats in the Hall of Fame, while in some cases they were so toxic to the team that they felt they had to get rid of them via trade or cutting them outright. It’s not necessary to mention their names, you readers know who they are.

But if you’re going to make it a Hall of Fantasy Football, get it the heck out of Canton, Ohio and just move it to Las Vegas, Nevada. Stats alone are not real football. As long as the Hall of Fame stays in Canton, the players who are enshrined there ought to be the ones that helped their team to win ball games. That means the voters have to be knowledgeable enough to understand the importance of blocking and other assignments away from the ball, and not just read the stat sheet. It’s supposed to be about the total game of football,  then it has to include the likes of Earnest Byner.

Earnest took the full blame for that fumble, and he took it very, very hard. Truthfully, though the wound has healed and scarred over, he may never fully recover because he loves the Dawg Pound and truly feels that he cost them the Super Bowl. He even wrote a book about it, entitled Everybody Fumbles, appropriately enough.

Your humble correspondent has gotten to know Earnest a bit at his appearances for Browns fans events and via social media, and my message to him is that he just cannot accept total responsibility for that loss.  Just as a player cannot claim total credit for a win, neither can he accept all the blame for a loss.

Earnest, did you give up 38 points that day? He just laughs when asked that question.  But we all understand that that was on the defense. Byner knows more than anyone that football is a team game, and as painful as it is to admit, there were other problems besides one bad fumble, and there were a few missed tackles and blown coverages that day that had nothing to do with the running back.

If football is a team game and that it in includes blocking, playing special teams and getting back up again after being knocked down, then Earnest Byner is way, way bigger than his 13,497 total yards. There is zero question that Earnest Byner belongs in the Hall of Fame. None.