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So we had a ton of success with our staffer power ranking NFL teams two weeks ago (153 comments and 4 recs, which is a lot for a staffer article, unless you are Mike) so we decided to go out and rank other things. Today we are revealing our staffer power rankings of the best Denver Broncos running backs of all time.
Like last time each staffer created their own rankings and then we compiled them all together and created an average of all of them. I've also included each staffers rankings along with the average. With this I included the standard deviation which measures the variation between rankings. The higher the standard deviation the less agreement there was. So Mike Anderson has a standard deviation of 0.79 while Clinton Portis has a standard deviation of 1.21. That doesn't mean Anderson was ranked higher it just means there is less agreement on where that player should rank.
Now I know there may be some players that some think should be on here or that we just threw the players on a list. I can assure you that didn't happen, if you could have seen the dozens of hours of debates that went on between us staffers and some tough cuts that had to happen. We had tons of stats and most of us went back and refreshed our memories on some of these players. We each had our own criteria for the best running back but we put work into our lists.
*This is a sortable table, click on the header you want to sort by and it will organize them. To see the combined staffer power ranking click on Avg. Currently they are sorted in order of the staffer average. Each players name is a link to their career numbers, sponsored by Pro-Football-Reference.com*
| Player | Monty | Pete | Tim | Mike | Topher | Scott | Ian | Avg | St Dev |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| T. Davis | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1.0 | 0.0 |
| F. Little | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 2.4 | 1.13 |
| O. Armstrong | 4 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 2 | 3.7 | 1.11 |
| C. Portis | 5 | 3 | 3 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3.9 | 1.21 |
| M. Anderson | 6 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4.6 | 0.79 |
| S. Winder | 3 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 9 | 6 | 8 | 6.1 | 1.95 |
| B. Humphrey | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 8 | 8 | 6 | 8.0 | 1.29 |
| W. McGahee | 9 | 10 | 8 | 12 | 6 | 9 | 7 | 8.7 | 1.98 |
| K. Moreno | 10 | 7 | 12 | 9 | 7 | 13 | 11 | 10.0 | 2.34 |
| G. Willhite | 11 | 14 | 7 | 7 | 12 | 7 | 14 | 10.3 | 3.25 |
| S. Sewell | 8 | 9 | 11 | 8 | 14 | 11 | 15 | 10.9 | 2.79 |
| O. Gary | 14 | 13 | 10 | 13 | 11 | 12 | 10 | 11.9 | 1.57 |
| T. Bell | 12 | 15 | 13 | 16 | 10 | 10 | 9 | 12.0 | 2.45 |
| G. Green | 13 | 11 | 14 | 11 | 13 | 15 | 12 | 12.7 | 1.50 |
| S. Young | 15 | 12 | 15 | 14 | 15 | 14 | 13 | 14.0 | 1.15 |
Correll Buckhalter tied with Selvin Young but he had more last place votes so he lost out on the final spot.
So there you go, a few notes that I took:
- Knowshon Moreno and Willis McGahee saw mixed votes, some high, some low, overall though they came in at #9 and #8 respectively.
- Clinton Portis got a lot of love despite only two years with the Broncos because he was massively successful despite only a short time with the team.
- The player we disagreed most about was Gerald Willhite. Tatum Bell and Steve Sewell also saw some serious disagreement.
- The player we agreed upon most was Terrell Davis, which makes sense.
So let us know who you agreed with most on these rankings in the poll and comments section. Last power rankings Ian came in 1st and Topher came in 2nd while Chris came in 3rd.