Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut
Forte was effectively done by 2016; he was a backup by 2017. So he was only relevant for roughly 2/3 of the decade.
So with Forte you get a combination of Gore's low floor and Charles' relatively short duration.
I would argue Gore AND Charles over Forte. At least both guys have strong arguments in a single direction. With Forte you have durability, longetivity and overall productivity. With Charles you have among the most electric and dynamic peaks in NFL history. With Forte you get none of that.
Regarding the '10 games of Charles, 6 games of scrub' - the issue is that A) that's not what you tended to get (way too many times you got effectively zero games of Charles) and B) you can't know when you'll actually get those games so it's hard to build around them.
Come post-season you knew you had Gore (and he was actually pretty damn good; people forget how critical he was to those Harbaugh teams that went to a SB and another NFCCG). With Charles, you oftentimes had him injured by the end of the season or, in the case of the Indy game, bounced out during it. When the Chiefs were trying to nurse him along in '14 and missed the playoffs by a game when they struggled down the stretch, well that should be considered. Or when he missed '15 and they were as good/better without him than they were with him.
There's just not enough credit given to dependability here, IMO.
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Blah. I was remembering Matt Forte as elite or at least semi-elite there for a while but maybe I'm remembering wrong. Outside of a couple seasons he was basically a 1000-1100 rushing yards a season kind of guy, though he definitely excelled in the passing game.
I definitely tend to underrate dependability but I just know that if Frank Gore was my RB, I'd have been looking to replace him for basically 60% of the decade and that just doesn't sit well with me.