The running back position has lost its luster over the years, but the importance isn’t lost on the history of the game. When looking at the Pro Football Hall of Fame, there are more running backs enshrined than quarterbacks (not including players who claimed both positions in the early era of the game). There are 32 running backs and fullbacks with a bust in Canton, Ohio, while there are only 26 quarterbacks. We expect the numbers to flip, but for now, the running back position deserves its own wing in the Hall.
Running backs have the most direct line to creating offense. After the ball is handed off to them by the quarterback, it’s entirely up to them to make something happen. Today, we see Saquon Barkley, Derrick Henry, and Christian McCaffrey as the best of the best. All three of them have a real chance to make the Hall of Fame one day, and nobody would consider them underrated.
Looking at the history of the league, there are so many players who could come off as underrated. Do we look at superstars who have been lost to the cruel hands of time? Are we looking for running backs who weren’t appreciated during their time? What about players who found themselves in the wrong situation? We’ll say yes to it all. This list tries to balance them all.
10. Roger Craig: 1983-1993
Roger Craig has finally received the recognition he deserves, earning the nod for the Hall of Fame in 2026. However, forcing him to wait until he was 65 shows that he is still underrated. This was something that should have happened decades ago. Craig was one of the first players who dominated in both the ground game and the passing game.
He’s the first player to put up 1,000 yards rushing and 1,000 yards receiving. That season (1985), he also led the league with 92 receptions. It wasn’t just this one season, however. Craig was a dominant force on a San Francisco 49ers team that had probably the best collection of offensive talent in history. It’s hard to stand out when you’re on a team with Joe Montana (top five quarterback of all time) and Jerry Rice (easily the best wide receiver of all time). Craig wasn’t a top-five running back in league history, but he was one of the greats.
His numbers on paper don’t give you the full scope of his impact on the field. Montana would use Rice to make the big plays, but he would use Craig to move the chains. Craig accounted for 11,506 yards from scrimmage with the 49ers before leaving as an injured player to the Los Angeles Raiders. His career with the Raiders and Vikings wasn’t much to talk about, but it existed.
9. Chris Warren: 1990-2000
Chris Warren didn’t get his chance for a few years after the Seattle Seahawks drafted him in the fourth round, but when he finally got his opportunity, he broke out. He hit 1,000 yards for the first time in 1992, two years after he was drafted. That started a run of four-straight seasons of 1,000 yards rushing.
Warren hit his peak in 1994 when he had more than 1,500 yards rushing and nine touchdowns. He was considered one of the best players in the league that season, leading the Seahawks offense. Warren did a lot of this by himself. He dominated for a team that was winning six games per season.
Which is why he ended up being so underrated. He made the Pro Bowl three times in his career, but the pure volume of carries he was getting pushed him to the brink. He was the best running back until Shaun Alexander came along, a name that came really close to making this list. He finished his career with the Dallas Cowboys and Philadelphia Eagles, but that was more as a kick returner. His peak was short, but it was great, even if it was for the lowly Seahawks.
8. Ahman Green: 1998-2009
Did you know that Ahman Green played two years in his career before joining the Green Bay Packers? Green was a great player rushing on the Lambeau Field grass, but he didn’t get there until he was traded by the Seahawks for Fred Vinson (and draft picks going both ways). The Hawks had Ricky Watters, so Green was not needed. Well, he would be needed since Watters was out of the league about a year later.
Green went on to dominate the league for the next seven seasons. He broke 1,000 yards in six of those seasons, and he had more than 1,200 yards three times. His best season came in 2003, when he had just under 1,900 yards rushing, including 96 first downs and 15 touchdowns. He added 367 receiving yards and five receiving touchdowns. More than 2,000 yards and 20 touchdowns is great, especially for a Packers team that was getting the most out of the last years of Brett Favre.
Green was a game breaker, as proved by being one of just two players who have two 90+ yard touchdowns in their careers. The other is Bo Jackson.
7. Ricky Watters: 1991-2001
We just mentioned Ricky Watters, since he was the one who blocked Ahman Green from being great in Seattle. There’s good reason to think Watters could be great over the long term. Did you know that Watters rushed for more than 10,000 yards in his career? Or that he made the Pro Bowl for five straight seasons? That has all been lost to history, and Watters is just another example of a player who pops on Pro Football Reference.
Watters was incredible for the San Francisco 49ers to start his career. He helped them get to the NFC Championship three years in a row, including a game against the New York Giants where Watters had an NFL record five rushing touchdowns, and he still holds a share of the record for most rushing yards in a Super Bowl (three).
These weren’t even his best statistical years. He joined the Philadelphia Eagles as a free agent in 1995. That season, he rushed for more than 1,200 yards and 11 touchdowns. The next season, he had close to 1,500 yards and 13 touchdowns. He’s about 100 yards short of 15,000 total yards from scrimmage, has multiple playoff records, has a Super Bowl ring, and averaged more than four yards per carry over his career. How is this man not in the Hall? More importantly, why is nobody even talking about it?
6. Tony Dorsett: 1977-1988
There are many reasons why a player is underrated or overlooked. Sometimes, players are overlooked because there are legends on their own team, and other times, they play on teams that aren’t worth talking about. Tony Dorsett falls in neither of those buckets. No, Dorsett is unfortunately stuck playing in an era that included Walter Payton and Eric Dickerson.
Dorsett’s rushed for over 12,000 yards in his career, placing him among the top rushers in NFL history at the time of his retirement. He also won both the Heisman Trophy in college and a Super Bowl with the Dallas Cowboys, a rare combination that highlights his ability. Despite this, his accomplishments are sometimes minimized because he played on a star-studded Cowboys team, where attention was often split among multiple high-profile players.
Let’s ask this: Is Tony Dorsett a Hall of Famer? The fact that many don’t know the answer to that question shows how underrated he was. He played on the most popular team in the league, but that didn’t stop others from stealing the headlines.
5. Michael Turner: 2004-2012
Short and sweet explains Michael Turner in many ways. He was far from the biggest guy on the field, but his impact was oversized. Turner was only a primary starter for five years, but he was incredible those seasons. After four years as the backup in San Diego, Turner signed with Atlanta to get that starter’s opportunity after playing behind LaDainian Tomlinson.
In his first season with the Falcons, Turner led the league in attempts with 376 and had a yard short of 1,700 yards and 17 touchdowns. Turner was a burst of energy that couldn’t be contained, and the Falcons felt like they had found a superstar that had been hidden for years. That season, he finished second for MVP.
Turner broke 1,300 yards two more times in his career. He even made second-team All-Pro in 2010. Even in 2009, when he missed five games with injury, he still broke 10 touchdowns on the season. Then, out of nowhere, Turner failed a physical and was released by the Falcons. He never returned to football, and his career was over out of seemingly nowhere.
4. Curtis Martin: 1995-2005
Curtis Martin is the rare example of a player who was constantly called underrated during his career, only to get properly rated because everyone kept talking about it, and now back to being underrated. Martin rushed for more than 1,000 yards for 10 seasons in a row. He actually went to the New York Jets and excelled. That is seemingly impossible today!
Martin joined the Patriots in 1995, and he rushed for 1,487 yards and 14 touchdowns as a rookie. He followed it up with 1,152 yards and repeated 14 touchdowns. In his sophomore season, he even added three touchdowns to his stat line. Even with all that, he was only a first-team All-Pro once. The voters would talk themselves into someone else almost every time. Despite hitting 1,000 yards for 10-straight seasons, he only made five Pro Bowls.
While with the Patriots, Martin did get to play in one Super Bowl, but it was a Packers thrashing. New England couldn’t stop Favre’s lethal offense, and Martin was limited to 42 yards rushing, but he did score a touchdown. That was the mantra for Martin. Don’t do anything flashy, but get into the endzone and get results.
3. Corey Dillon: 1997-2006
Corey Dillon is another player who just essentially disappeared. He holds a special place in the original New England Patriots dynasty, and he’s probably still the best running back Tom Brady ever played with. However, Dillon deserves better recognition than he’s been given for his career.
He started his career hot, rushing for more than 1,000 yards in his first six seasons. When he finally saw his numbers drop in 2003, the Bengals traded him to the Patriots. He thrived once again, rushing for more than 1,600 yards and 12 touchdowns. That team felt like it was unfair. They already had a championship defense, but adding Dillon’s impact to Brady’s GOAT status, and the Super Bowl seemed like a certainty.
Dillon became a platoon player in his last year after suffering some injuries, but he was still insanely effective. He had 13 touchdowns on fewer than 200 carries. It was great efficiency with each run. He still owns multiple Bengals and Patriots franchise records. He has that Super Bowl ring, and he reportedly considered a return to the league in 2007, which would have been interesting since that was the undefeated Patriots who lost in the Super Bowl.
2. Gerald Riggs: 1982-1991
Like many of the names on this list, Gerald Riggs has impressive stats that didn’t seem crazy while they were happening. He rarely gets mentioned alongside the elite running backs of his era. Like Dorsett, Riggs played in an era with Walter Payton and Eric Dickerson. Those are the running backs that get the focus because they held the records.
Even though Riggs rushed for over 11,000 yards in his career, he didn’t have the same flash or media attention as his NFL colleagues. His style was more about power and consistency than breakaway runs, which made him less visible but no less effective. He was someone his teams could rely on, but he wasn’t making that era’s version of SportsCenter.
Riggs also played on some awful teams. Those teams ground him down as much as they could. He was a workhorse who took the rock as often as teams allowed him to rush. One season, he had 397 rushes. Those years where he was overworked really hurt the rest of his career. He really had three dominant years, but he stuck around for 11 years. He also has the rare success story of a player staying one year too long and winning a Super Bowl, as Riggs got his ring with Washington in 1991. It's great that he got the recognition.
1. Priest Holmes: 1997-2007
This is another situation where a team didn’t know what they had with Priest Holmes until he was gone. He was the most dominant running back of an era that had Jamal Lewis and LaDainian Tomlinson. Holmes was a first-team All-Pro three years in a row. Before that, he started with the Baltimore Ravens, playing backup for his career there. When he came to the Kansas City Chiefs, he immediately dominated. Holmes did get a Super Bowl ring for his troubles, so that’s nice.
Holmes led the league in rushing in his first season with the Chiefs. The impact was immediate and extreme after coming over. However, he had just eight touchdowns rushing that year. The next year, he went off the charts and rushed for 21 touchdowns. That’s insane, but he outdid himself the next year by rushing for 27 touchdowns.
And then it was over. The weight of his expectations and the volume of offense that fell on him led to his injury in 2004. He wouldn’t play more than eight games again. However, those three years were as dominant as we’ve ever seen. Holmes is the most underrated running back of all time because he isn't considered one of the best ever.