-- Legacy check complete
Note: A week ago we looked at the ten most accomplished running backs in BYU history and trimmed the list to three in contention for GOAT status. Yesterday we started part 1 of the deep dive into Luke, Jamaal, and Harvey's career. Today we crown a king from among the Luke-Jamaal-Harvey triumvirate.
Who had the best peak?
Single game peak? That award goes to Jamaal who has the best single game rushing numbers of the trio. In any discussion about peaks he holds an ultimate trump card: no one on a BYU field has ever gained as many scrimmage yards as he did against Toledo. That is significant.
If we’re talking about a more nebulous peak spanning a random number of consecutive games, well then Luke’s peak in 2001 lasted an entire season which is hilarious. His lowest yardage output during 2001 was 93 yards against Cal, and that came on 11 touches. Imagine a world where averaging 8.5 yards per touch and gaining 93 yards and a touchdown is your worst game of the season. We already covered the unfathomable 7-game stretch where Luke averaged 198 yard and 3 TDs per game run in the prior post, but it's worth mentioning again. Do Harvey or Jamaal have anything to compare to this run of insanity? Not really.
Jamaal’s final 7 games of the '16 season saw him average 163 yards per game but he missed three games during that stretch, including a huge one against a top-15 Boise State. Harvey’s '07 season is kind of like the poor man’s version of Luke in '01. He went over 100 yards in 9 of 13 games -- only Austin Collie and Staley ever went over 100 yards more times in a season -- and had a 7-game stretch from UNLV to SDSU where he averaged 170 scrimmage yards and just under two TDs per game. I had honestly forgotten Harvey was that awesome.
But it's not enough to overtake the streaking comet that was Luke's 2001 year.
Which stat line do you prefer?
a) 20 carries for 100 yards or
b) 20 carries for 100 yards
Eh, let’s try again. Which stat line do you prefer?
a) 20 carries for 100 yards (made up of 1 carry that went 97 yards, and 19 carries that netted a cumulative total of 3 yards) or
b) 20 carries for 100 yards (made up of 20 carries that each went exactly 5 yards)
You’re likely going with option B right? Better to be able to count on a consistent chain mover than roll the dice with a guy who is almost always ineffective but breaks a big run once a game. The point being that while the career yard per carry averages of Jamaal/Luke/Harvey are in the same neighborhood, I wanted to know if those averages were boosted by the occasional long run or a more consistent approach. So I jotted down each player’s carries and separated them into the following categories: runs that gained less than 3 yards were considered “stuffed”, any gain of 3 to 5 yards was a "success", and "bursts" were runs that went for 6 yards or more. See this footnote for a few noteworthy important details.2323. Short-yardage attempts were excluded in this analysis. For example, an attempt on 1st and goal from the 2 that results in a TD would be considered "stuffed" by this criteria. That's dumb so I kept out runs like that or runs on 3rd-and-1 that went for 2 yards. Runs on 3rd-and-short that netted less yardage than needed for the first down were included as they were clearly stuffed. Here’s how the percentages came together:
Observations? Jamaal was stuffed on a higher percentage of his runs (38%) than Luke or Harvey, which at first blush seems ugly, but I suspect that is more the result of enduring some literally lean offensive line years. The number that really pops off the page is the 44% in the burst column for Luke Staley. Almost half of the runs in his career went for 6 yards or more? That seems impossible!
Spoiler – it is. I lied a little bit. These numbers aren’t a complete picture. I could only find play-by-play data for Luke’s 2001 season – the best I can get for 1999 and 2000 are box scores (which provide at most the longest carry of the game and the length of any touchdown carries). So the chart above actually shows the breakdown of carries for each player’s best season (Luke 2001, Jamaal 2016, Harvey 2007). When we add Harvey and Jamal’s other seasons, their numbers don’t change that much. But when we add Luke’s other seasons (estimating with averages for the run lengths we don't know) his numbers tank quite a bit, with his stuffed percentage increasing 7% and his burst percentage dropping by 16%.
I'm also not sure I trust my Luke estimates because when you look at Luke’s box scores he had some rough pre-2001 games. In '99 he had 26 carries for 68 yards versus Air Force, 6 carries for 5 yards versus SDSU, and 7 carries for 3 yards versus Marshall in the bowl. In '00 he had 6 carries for 1 yard vs Syracuse, 11 carries for 29 yards versus SDSU, 6 carries for 4 yards versus CSU, 13 carries for 36 yards versus New Mexico, and 17 carries for 30 yards against Utah. That's eight games where Luke averaged less than 3 yards per carry. Jamaal only had 7 games in his career where he averaged less than 3 per carry, despite playing 13 more games than Luke. Harvey had ... wait for it ... wait for it ... only 2 games in his career where he averaged less than 3 per carry!
That's impressive! But we can twist the numbers to make Harvey look a little worse too.
Since this entire question revolves around arbitrary thresholds I've grabbed from the sky -- could we compare against 3.5 yards per carry instead of 3? -- why not grab one more for fun. How many times did our trio truly break loose, say with a run of 20 yards or more? I'm glad you asked. Luke had (at least) 23 such runs (419 carries - once per 18 touches). Jamaal had 28 (726 carries - once per 26 carries). Harvey only 16 (696 carries - once per 43 touches).
So I guess this is the fun of numbers. Harvey was the best at turning carries into gains of 6 yards or more. He was the worst at turning them into gains of 20 yards or more.
Who was the most durable?
Duh, this is an easy answer in resounding favor of Harvey. He only missed one game in his career (though it was a biggie, Oklahoma in '09) and avoided the bad injuries that knocked out Staley or the nicks that cost Jamaal three games as a senior or limited his snaps in key contests like the '16 and '13 Utah games or the shootout versus Houston in '13.
And it's not like Harvey was protecting himself by skimping on workload. His 288 touches in 2007 are the most any skill player has ever handled the ball in a season at BYU. His 282 touches in 2008 are the third most. Shoutout to Ronney Jenkins with 286 touches in '98 as the second most ever.
Who Was the Toughest?
Running backs need to be tough. They touch the ball more than anyone on the team (non-QB division) and their tacklers are the hefty defensive lineman and hard-hitting linebackers compared to the safeties and corners that wide receivers encounter.
Look, we know the answer to this one is Jamaal, but I had to include this question so that we could defend Luke’s honor against the great besmircher, Brady Poppinga. I don’t get why Brady trashes Luke so much – my theory is Luke broke Brady’s ankles approximately 231 times during practice -- but trash him he does. I won’t link to all of Brady’s tweets and media appearances out of respect for Luke but in case you’re unaware of the beef just know Brady thinks Luke was a wimp who avoided contact at all costs and doesn't crack the top-6 list of running backs in BYU history. Let us now point to the tape.
Luke never ran between the tackles? Ok.
Luke went down at first sign of contact? Sure.
Luke wasn't physical? If you say so.
Luke's only move was running fast down the sideline? Ok.
Luke wasn’t a team first guy? Hmm.
The defense rests.
Now for Jamaal. His entire highlight reel is loaded with plays where he gets hit by two or three guys and just keeps fighting and churning his legs for yards. These three below are some of my favorites.
#1 - Against Arizona in Kalani's first game Jamaal takes a carry and is immediately met by an unblocked defensive tackle. He shucks him off, is met by another unblocked player, this time a linebacker. He shucks him off. That's two defenders with two free shots, and both times instead of wondering where his blockers are Jamaal just says, "I'm not going down that easy."
By the time Jamaal is tackled there are seven Wildcats deployed to the cause. And it's not like this happened in the first quarter when Jamaal is fresh. This is late in a game where he'd end up with 30 touches.
#2 - It's 2013 and BYU is down 17 points with the ball with 5 minutes left against Wisconsin. They're running the ball and using a play they've used at least three times already in the game. In short BYU is raising the white flag. And yet there's Jamaal, slipping one tackle, absorbing a big hit, and then grinding away as hard as he can at the third tackler. The game is over and still he fights.
#3 - Jamaal never had a good game against Utah, but that doesn't mean he didn't try. He pumps his legs so fast fighting for extra yardage on this play it looks like the video is sped up. Watch it twice if you need to.
Harvey was no slouch in the toughness department but I think this one is a no-brainer for Jamaal. If you're an advocate for Jamaal as GOAT this is where you build your alter.
Were they the most important player on their team?
Harvey ... I don’t think so. Max Hall and the pass catchers made the engine run. When Harvey missed the Oklahoma game, BYU's offense still managed four drives that reached at least the Sooner's 25 yard line. Against TCU in '08 and '09 Harvey put up 227 yards but didn’t have a meaningful impact on the game. The Frogs took out BYU’s passing game and that was all she wrote.
Jamaal? Nah, Taysom was more important. In particular, where was Jamaal in 2014 after Taysom went down in the USU game? When I got the text at halftime from a friend saying Taysom was probably gone for the year —I was not the only fan shedding tears in the restroom line that fateful night -- I was ready for Jamaal throw on his Mitch Hasslehoff suit and sprint into the ocean to save BYU’s season. I expected him to put the team on his back and lift them with 30 touches a game. Instead he had one carry in the Central Florida game, missed the Nevada game, and was fine against Boise and Middle Tennessee before being knocked out for the rest of the season. I know I judge Jamaal too harshly on this but it still stings me. We all wondered what Jamaal could do if Taysom wasn't around to gobble his opportunities and the one time Jamaal didn't have Taysom it went poorly.
Luke? Yeah I think he was the most important guy on BYU’s team in 2001. BYU nearly lost the New Mexico game in his absence and got killed in the Hawaii and Louisville games after his season-ending injury. In the games Luke played BYU averaged 49 points per game. In the games he missed BYU averaged 26.
But remember - Luke was a critical player in 1999 too. He was second on the team to Margin Hooks in scrimmage yards, first on the team in touchdowns, played a crucial role in the big wins against Washington, Cal, and a ranked CSU, and he averaged 6.1 yards per touch, which is tied for the ninth-best of any lead running back of the last 40 years. He took home Mountain West freshman of the year honors that same year. Prior to tearing his ACL BYU was 8-1. After the ACL tear BYU lost the final three games of the season.
His performance seemed to drive BYU for his whole career. In wins he averaged 6.8 yards per carry. In losses he averaged 2.5. Stop Staley and you stopped BYU.
Does it matter if you're the key player on a team? A little. The most important player is typically the focus of the defense, not to mention they carry more pressure than the other guys lower on the totem pole. To succeed under such circumstances is noteworthy to me. Yet as with all of these questions I'll remind you that one answer isn't the end all be all. It’s just another data point to consider as we try to spot the microscopic differences among these three.
Who was the best receiver?
Harvey was so automatic in the passing game. At one point he caught 24 passes in a row during a run spanning the end of the ’07 season against SDSU through the Wyoming game in ’08. Max throwing to Harvey was an uncontested layup.But Luke was the better receiver in my opinion. He was so smooth on the catch, it never seemed like he bobbled catches like this one by Jamaal ...
or had a drop as killer as the one Harvey had in the ’07 Utah game...
Just look at some of these catches by Luke.
He has the one-handers:
The scoop off the ground:
The catch despite hands in the face:
Luke made a lot of money in the screen game, but BYU’s staff was confident sending him on deep routes as well.
Staley ranks 5th among the ten RBs I looked at for this project in career receiving yards. The Cougars ahead of him played 11, 13, 18, and 22 more games than him.
Sadly the first play that comes to mind when I think of Jamaal as a receiver is the drop that turned into an interception that cost BYU the Virginia game in 2013, an inglorious loss to a team that would finish the season a ghastly 2-10, their only other win coming against something called the Virginia Military Institute.
Now was Jamaal the victim of a scheme that chose not to rely on passing backs? Would he have put up Unga or Staley type numbers if he had played in their system? Was he secretly a quality receiver who simply was never utilized? Afterall he turned into a nice receiving weapon in the pros.
My answer: I don't think so. He played under three different offensive coordinators and with four different QBs and no one managed to unlock him as a catching presence. Fans talk about running vision where backs anticipate and find openings within the crowded mass of blockers and defensive lineman. What we don't talk about is a running back's passing vision -- the ability to know when to stop blocking and run a route, to find a crease in the zone, to make a play out of nothing. Jamaal did not do this but boy oh boy did Luke.
In this play against Utah Luke's receiving assignment sends him on a short route into the flat. He runs the route, settles, and nothing is developing so he thinks, "eh, I can probably roast this linebacker" and he just takes off down the sideline. Next thing you know a broken play turns into a 20 yard gain. (and quite a catch by the way) When I go through Jamaal highlights I just don't see stuff like this.
In these last two it's more of the same, Luke ad-libbing with his instinctive passing vision to great success.
And so at long last we've found the first question that truly separates our trio. At a school like BYU where passing is the entire DNA; in an era when a running back like James White catches 14 passes in the greatest super bowl come back of all-time; when the players who reliably gain the most yards in both college and the pros are pass-catching running backs, my BYU GOAT has to be a factor in the passing attack.
Harvey and Luke were. Jamaal was not. That means he's third in this race.
If we're punishing Jamaal as a receiver, shouldn't we reward him for not fumbling?
Jamaal was an absolute stud when it came to ball security. The Cougarstats site has Jamaal fumbling 6 times on 786 touches, or once every 131 times he touched the ball. For Harvey (8 fumbles on 798 touches) and Luke (7 fumbles on 504 touches) the math tracks them at 100 and 72 touches per fumble. At first glance that's a huge difference between Jamaal and Luke - Luke fumbled almost twice as often as Jamaal. That seems like a big deal ... but is it?
Think of it this way. If each of these guys had a cowbell workload where they touched the ball 220 times per season, we'd expect Jamaal to fumble 1.4 times during the season, Harvey 1.9 times, and Luke 2.8 times. Is one extra fumble per season by Luke really that impactful? Isn't there a 50% chance the extra fumble will be recovered by the offense?
I'm not saying fumbles aren't important -- they are. Just ask the '10, '11, '12, and '15 Utah games. **Wipes away tears**
I'm not saying we shouldn't reward Jamaal for his iron hands -- we should!
I just don't believe the benefits generated by Jamaal's lack of fumbling make up for the gap between his and the other candidates receiving production.
I feel the same about Jamaal's pass protection skills, by the way. Is pass protection a useful skill? Absolutely. It's helped give Jamaal a NFL career that Harvey and Luke lack. Maybe in a vacuum it's even more valuable than receiving skill. But at a school like BYU where passing is the origin story, the hope for the future, and the entire reason for existence I personally value the pass catching back more than the blocking back.
Ok, enough about receiving, what were the trio's other fatal flaws?
For Luke it's obvious - injuries are the story (here's a good article of what he went through even before college). He never had a fully healthy season, and worse he played compromised during much of 2000. His season of glory in 2001 also happened to come against a strength of schedule that didn't impress.
For Jamaal, we covered the receiving but I also wish his best season wouldn't have been so hit and miss. Don't get me wrong, 2016 was an awesome year but it felt "every other game" awesome. Jamaal was great against Arizona; not great against Utah. Great against West Virginia, not great against UCLA. Great against Michigan State, ineffective against Mississippi State. Amazing against Toledo ... not dressed for Boise. See what I mean? I wish that instead of giving us 280 yards against Toledo we could've gotten 140 versus Toledo and 140 versus Boise. It also hurts his case that he had no good games versus Utah while the two runners he's being measured against have two of the most dramatic rivalry plays this century.
For Harvey, I'm not sure he had a fatal flaw. He never got hurt. He rarely had bad games. He was an amazing teammate. He was an outstanding receiver. He punked the Utes. His 2007 season is the closest anyone has ever come to posting a season like Luke did in 2001. There are no glaring holes in his game. One potential knock is that his best single season rushing performance ranks only seventh on the all-time list. But on the other hand his total yardage that year ranks second. In fact he and Luke are the only BYU players to eclipse the 1,800 yard mark in a season. They're also the only ones to eclipse the 1,700 yard mark as well! The 1,600 club welcomes Austin Collie and Ronney Jenkins into the mix, but it's not until you drop to the 1,400 mark that Jamaal's 2016 season pops on the radar.
Here's the real problem with Harvey: I've never met one person who thinks he should be the GOAT. Not one. In my unofficial polling throughout the years I've counted many votes for Luke, TONS of votes for Jamaal, and even one vote for Jamal Willis, but never a ballot for Harvey. (unless you count this Ben Criddle tweet)
And I can get why.
He was fast but not as fast as Jamaal. His hands were soft but not as soft as Luke's. He had huge stat games but none as huge as Jamaal's legendary performances. The only noticeable skills at which he clearly outclassed his peers was durability and power running, the least sexy of all running back attributes (see: Jerome Bettis).2424. Jerome Bettis wasn't pretty but he's 25th in NFL history in scrimmage yards FWIW. And yes in a GOAT discussion style definitely matters. 25 25. Speaking of style, Harvey nearly pulled off an all-time TD celebration in the '07 Utah game. After Unga planted Robert Johnson in the ground he tried to mockingly toss the ball back at him - but unfortunately it was blocked by a celebrating Cougar lineman.
But while plowing people into the ground isn't as fun as Luke vaporizing defenders in his jet exhaust, it was still a meaningful talent. I mean, just imagine what it was like to tackle Harvey Unga.
Ask this poor Air Force defender.
Or this poor Air Force defender. (I hope for his sake this isn't the same victim in both clips)
Watching Harvey brings to mind the psalm of World WideWob:
Ashes to ashes,
Dust to dust,
You have been dunked into the earth's crust
But somehow the same guy who could shoulder people into the third dimension had agility like this and suddenly if you were playing against Harvey Unga you realize he just wasn't fair:
Somehow a guy that size could stop-and-start again with the best of them
He could roast you on deep passing routes:
He was the absolute best at draggin' people. Sometimes by leg ...
Sometimes by piggyback ...
Ok, many times by piggyback
Tacklers would spin around him like the moon orbiting the earth:
Or maybe Harvey would spin instead, shaking his head at the failed defense like a disappointed father:
No one made defenders surrender like Harvey did. Remember the time that USU defender just laid down instead of trying to stop Harvey? Don't show this highlight to any potential spouses, #3.
Here's another brave soul who saw Unga coming and decided, "no thank you, I'd rather not get hit by a train today."
I feel confident his yards after contact are a BYU record.
Oh and remember up above when I called Jamaal our toughest running back? Maybe I was wrong. Here's a video of Harvey getting blindsided in the head and getting up almost faster than the tackler.
Harvey likely played that entire rivalry game concussed and still threw down a 116 yard, 1 TD performance.
When you put it all together it's not surprising that Harvey gained more total yards over his career than any non-QB at BYU. Ever. Full stop.
It's crazy that in a world where BYU careers don't end because of sex Harvey would be only the 11th player in the entire history of college football to have 4 seasons of 1,000 yards rushing. Over the last 100 years I'd estimate at least 20,000 athletes have suited up at the running back position and not accomplished that. Alas, the violation blocked Harvey from owning that national claim to fame as well as every other meaningful BYU running back record. But a zillion words later I don't think it's gonna stop me.
If you're a coach it sounds good to say you'd pick Luke for one game and Harvey for one career, but I'm not convinced. If that one game is a big game I might want Harvey and if choosing Luke's career gives me one season with the best offense in the country I might prefer that, even if the other years aren't as strong. But the more you expand the line of hypothetical questioning -- who would you choose on a passing play, or as a teammate, in a short-yardage scenario, for a home run hit, at home, on the road, for a blocking down, in a clutch moment, against an elite defense, to secure the ball, if you have a bad quarterback, or to simply gain yards as reliably as possible -- I think for me Harvey answers more of those questions than Luke, even if just barely.
Luke is absolutely my second favorite player of all-time, but when I strip away the emotional connection I think Harvey is who I'd want in my backfield for the majority of circumstances a team could face. And maybe after all is said and done that's how I spell GOAT.
We knew it would be a close race between these three legends. So close that when writing this post I pulled a 2017 Gordon Hayward free agency and had three different endings prepared for each runner. But in my book, the all-time order has become clear. In third place it's Jamaal. In second place it's Luke. Which means it's time to give #45 his due.
All hail Harvey Unga, the first of his name, king of his peers and the first downs, lowerer of the shoulder, protector of leads, mover of chains, father of draggins', the untackled, the breaker of Robert Johnson, the GOAT of the great grass sea.
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