National Football League

Pro Football 101: Marshall Faulk ranks No. 41 on all-time list

Updated May. 18, 2022 2:47 p.m. ET

By Joe Posnanski
Special to FOX Sports

Editor's Note: Throughout 2021 and 2022, Joe Posnanski is ranking the 101 best players in pro football history in collaboration with FOX Sports. Posnanski will publish a detailed look at all 101 players on Substack. The countdown continues today with player No. 41, Marshall Faulk.

Let’s start in New York, Downtown Athletic Club, Dec. 12, 1992. They’re about to announce the Heisman Trophy winner. As it turns out, I am there — because I cover the University of Georgia for The Augusta Chronicle, and one of the Heisman finalists is a Bulldogs running back (and Augusta local from nearby Lincoln County) named Garrison Hearst.

Before the announcement is even made, I know Hearst is not going to win the award, not after he and Georgia came up pretty small against archrival Florida. Before the announcement is even made, I know that Gino Torretta — the awkward quarterback whose Miami team never loses — will win the Heisman Trophy because all the people who know about such things are predicting it. ESPN’s Lee Corso, for example, told everyone: "Don’t waste your vote. Vote for Gino Torretta. He’s the only candidate who can win."

But what I don’t know is that the third person on that stage is fully expecting to hear his name. In his mind, he’s definitely the Heisman Trophy winner. Nobody else is even close to him. The Heisman Trophy is supposed to go to the best college football player, right? The idea that Garrison Hearst or Gino Torretta or anybody else might actually be named the Heisman Trophy winner seems so ridiculous to him that his brain cannot even fathom it.

And when the announcement is made, and Gino Torretta stands up, the third man stares icily into space because he cannot understand what just happened.

This is just a guess, but I don’t think to this day that Marshall Faulk has quite gotten over it.

Marshall Faulk is not an easy guy to figure out. He prefers it that way. A few years ago, he agreed to be the subject for NFL Films’ wonderful recurring series "A Football Life." And the show tells the compelling, movie-worthy life story of Faulk:

• He grew up in the dangerous and deadly Desire Housing Project in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans. His mother used to tell him to look around and decide if he wanted to be like others or if he wanted to rise above.

• He wanted to play basketball, but his coach, Wayne Reese, convinced him that he was too small and that football could lead him to college.

• He worked at his high school as a janitor and learned that he wanted to be something more.

• He was a star high school football player, but all the big colleges such as Miami and Nebraska recruited him to play defense, which made him mad.

• He took a chance on visiting relatively obscure San Diego State because the Aztecs promised him a shot at being a running back.

• His father, Roosevelt, got deathly ill just before Marshall's San Diego State visit but went anyway — and died while on the recruiting trip. When Marshall returned home, his coach, Reese, had to make him go to the funeral because, as Faulk says, "I wasn’t ready to say goodbye."

• He chose San Diego State and made it to the No. 2 spot on the depth chart. When the starter got hurt in the second game of the season, against Pacific, Faulk took over and ran for 386 yards and scored seven touchdowns.

Marshall Faulk ran for 4,589 yards, averaging 6.0 yards per carry, and scored 62 touchdowns in three seasons at San Diego State from 1991 to 1993. (Stephen Dunn /Allsport)

And then comes the rest: the incredible college career, the Heisman Trophy snubs (ninth as a freshman, second to Torretta as a sophomore, fourth as a junior), the second pick of the draft to Indianapolis, the Indy years when he was viewed as a me-first kind of player, the bad ending with the Colts, the trade to a moribund St. Louis team and then the emergence of Marshall Faulk as Superman, both on and off the field.

And all of it — or at least most of it — is true if you believe true to be synonymous with accurate. But little of it is TRUE, all capital letters, if you want to know about the depths of emotion that come with Marshall Faulk’s rise. For instance, that part about his coach making him go to his father’s funeral, well, that’s lowercase true, but the reason was apparently quite a bit more complicated than "I wasn’t ready to say goodbye."

"Marshall and his daddy didn’t get along — not at all, you understand," Reese told Sports Illustrated back in 1995. "There are some things that happened between them that Marshall doesn’t like to get into, and neither do I. But when his daddy died, I put Marshall in my van, and I said to him, ‘You’re going to pay your respects, if only because he was your father. Whatever might have happened in the past, he’s still your dad.’ I drove him to the funeral myself, but he wouldn’t get out of the van. He just sat there and watched from the window."

See, Faulk’s father did not die while he was on the recruiting trip; Roosevelt died before Marshall went on the trip. He went anyway. San Diego State offered to reschedule. "No," Faulk said, "I’m coming."

It’s like this: Faulk covers the pain. It’s nobody’s business. He doesn’t talk about the nightly police sirens and gunshots he heard ringing through the Desire Housing Project. He doesn’t talk about one of his brothers being jailed for robbery. He doesn’t talk about how when he was a kid, his biggest dream was to have a real car, one that didn’t break down all the time, and when he got his record-breaking rookie contract with the Colts, he quickly bought 11 cars, plus a car for every member of his family.

Nobody’s business. There are athletes out there who like to share their motivations, like to tell you how they’re driven by the doubters, by the teams that passed them up in the draft, by the challenging experiences of their childhood, by the people who told them they would never make it.

Marshall Faulk doesn’t talk about all that. Maybe it’s too painful. Maybe it’s too personal. Maybe he just expressed himself best on the field, where he broke off runs and caught passes and blocked blitzers and scored touchdowns and used his mind and speed and strength and will to make the St. Louis Rams, quite possibly, the greatest offense in the history of professional football.

Maybe there’s simply nothing more to be said after that.

*** *** ***

The story of how Marshall Faulk’s time in Indianapolis ended is really strange. This was 1998, Peyton Manning’s rookie season, and the Colts were abysmal. They went 3-13 under first-year coach Jim Mora — this was well before the "Playoffs? Playoffs?" year — and Faulk put up a fabulous statistical season: 1,319 yards rushing, another 908 yards receiving, 10 touchdowns, his third Pro Bowl appearance.

But numbers are only numbers. There were all these whispers going around the NFL that Faulk was a selfish player, that he cared only about getting his own numbers, that he was standoffish and an isolated teammate, that he didn’t take to coaching, that you couldn’t win with him. Whispers, alas, are hard to track down, so good luck trying to find anyone who would admit to saying any of that stuff. But it was very much in the air in 1998.

Then, one day before the penultimate game of the season in Seattle, Mora scheduled a team meeting for 8:30 p.m. The way Faulk remembered it, he was going over the game plan outside the meeting room, waiting for the earlier special-teams meeting to end, and he walked into the meeting at 8:28 p.m.

It had already started. "You’re late," Mora said. Then in Faulk’s memory, Mora began yelling at him about how his lateness was a representative example of why the team was playing lousy. Mora then said, "You’re not starting tomorrow."

Faulk made three Pro Bowls as a Colt, but he clashed with head coach Jim Mora and was traded to the Rams in 1999. (Photo by Focus on Sport/Getty Images)

Even now, the particulars of that clash are in dispute. Faulk insists that he walked in before 8:30 and so was not late. He says that when he said that to Mora, he was told to "shut up … you talk too much."

Mora, meanwhile, insists that Faulk was indeed late "by my watch. … I’m not going to treat him any different because he’s Marshall Faulk. And maybe some other coach would have said, ‘All right, go on in there. You’re only 15 seconds late.’ Not me. I don’t care who it was. If they’re late, they’re late."

We can’t know for sure … but I will say that a reasonable reading of the arguments suggests that Faulk probably did walk in at 8:28. Even Mora says Faulk was only 15 seconds late, which doesn’t sound like much of a case. Here’s what I think: Mora wanted to make an example of Faulk. He made his bones as a coach who relied on discipline, and he probably wanted to send a message to everybody.

Faulk did not start against Seattle, did not play the entire first quarter. He ended up having a disastrous game, 13 carries for 19 yards and a critical fourth-quarter fumble that, as much as anything, cost the Colts the game.

At that point, the relationship was probably irreparable. Faulk said the Colts promised to renegotiate his contract if he finished in the top five in the NFL in rushing; after the first-quarter benching, he ended up 13 yards shy of Emmitt Smith in the No. 5 slot. He felt sure all of it was connected. He felt sure the team was sticking it to him. And whether that was true or not — everybody obviously denies it — the Colts clearly had lost their enthusiasm for Faulk.

Enter Eric Dickerson. Ha, you probably weren’t expecting that name. Dickerson had, of course, been a legendary running back with the Rams when they were in Los Angeles, and then mid-career he was traded to the Colts. He kept up with both franchises, and so one day after the 1998 season, he was talking with Colts owner Jim Irsay, who said in passing that while Faulk was a great player, he was not the kind of running back they wanted. Too small. Not powerful enough. There were lots of rumors that the Colts wanted to figure out a way to get Heisman Trophy winner Ricky Williams in the draft.

Not long after, Dickerson was talking with Rams president John Shaw, and he mentioned that it was possible — just possible — that Faulk was on the trading block.

This is the absurd way that trades get made.

Not long after, the Rams traded a second- and a fifth-round pick to the Colts for Marshall Faulk. It was one of the biggest steals in NFL history.

*** *** ***

Mike Martz, then the Rams' offensive coordinator, realized he had someone special at the first offensive meeting. Marshall Faulk sat down in the front row, which (as you might guess) is not often where the veteran players sit for meetings. And Martz noticed that Faulk had multiple notebooks and different colored pens, and he was writing down everything neatly, precisely, and then he raised his hand and asked if he could say something.

"Sure," Martz said. Faulk turned to the rest of the players in the meeting.

"Are you writing this down?" he asked.

As part of the "Greatest Show on Turf," Faulk led the Rams to two Super Bowls and became a Hall of Famer. (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)

And so began the ascent of Marshall Faulk. He was a star by the time he got to St. Louis, but he wasn’t the best running back in the league, wasn’t really all that close to the best. He had moves, but he wasn’t Barry Sanders. He scored touchdowns, but he wasn’t Emmitt Smith or Terrell Davis. He was versatile, but so were Ricky Watters and Robert Smith and others. He felt valuable, but his teams usually lost.

Faulk would say he had an epiphany in 1998 — even before the unfortunate late-for-a-meeting incident. Late in that season, the Colts had Baltimore on the ropes … and Faulk was having the game of his life. He would end up rushing for 192 yards, catching seven passes for 75 more and scoring two touchdowns. But late in the game, he went out for a pass in the flat, and Peyton Manning’s throw was high. Faulk reached for it, and the ball went through his hands, bounced off his helmet and was picked off.

It was a disastrous, game-losing play — and the worst part is that Manning’s throw actually wasn’t high; Faulk had run the wrong route. He went into the team meeting and, as expected, Mora stopped the tape and railed on Faulk for blowing the game. Faulk’s first instinct was to go: "Are you f---ing kidding me? I was the only reason we were even in the game."

But then … he stopped. It was, he would later say, like the shades were pulled from his eyes. Mora was right. He did blow the game. He let his teammates down. He didn’t want to be a star. He wanted to be the best. The best player. The best teammate. The best leader. The best everything. That’s all he ever wanted.

That’s why he was so crushed when Gino Torretta walked away with that damn Heisman.

And so in St. Louis, he was a different force. Sure, the players had all heard the whispers, but the Marshall Faulk they saw bore no resemblance to the whispers. He was the ultimate teammate. He would play any position, do any task. He led the team in meetings, led the team in drills, offered help to anyone who wanted it.

And his game — wow. He had not wanted to be traded to St. Louis. His agent, Rocky Arceneaux, had promised Faulk that he would give the Colts four demands for a trade destination:

• The team had to be in the AFC.
• The team had to play in a warm climate.
• The team had to play on natural turf.
• The team had to be serious about winning.

"I went 0-for-4," Arceneaux would say. The Rams played on artificial turf, in cold weather, in the NFC, and they seemed hopeless. They seemed even more hopeless after starting quarterback Trent Green was hit by Rodney Harrison in a 1999 exhibition game and blew out his knee — and it was Faulk himself who missed the block.

But you know this story — an unknown quarterback named Kurt Warner emerged, the Rams had more good receivers than anyone realized, Faulk was ready to take off the glasses and become Superman. And together they became the "Greatest Show on Turf."

Faulk in 1999: NFL-record 2,429 yards from scrimmage, 12 touchdowns, NFL-leading 5.5 yards per rush, 1,000 yards receiving, led the Rams to the Super Bowl title — even making a key block in the game.

Faulk in 2000: NFL-record 26 touchdowns, 18 of them rushing, NFL-leading 5.4 yards per carry, named the league MVP, led Rams back to the playoffs.

Faulk in 2001: Scored league-leading 21 touchdowns, NFL-leading 5.3 yards per rush, caught 83 passes, led Rams back to the Super Bowl.

It would be difficult to find three more dominant years than that — not just from a statistical standpoint but also from his all-encompassing greatness. He could beat you running, he could beat you receiving, he could beat you blocking, he could beat you with his mind, he could beat you physically, even if he was barely 5-foot-9 and, as one teammate said lovingly but with an edge, "pear-shaped."

Faulk has never quite gotten over that Super Bowl loss, by the way. He has claimed on numerous occasions — it’s basically an annual tradition now — that the Patriots cheated before that Super Bowl by somehow spying on the Rams and knowing what plays they were going to run, especially around the end zone.

Whether the Patriots cheated is not the point here. It’s that Marshall Faulk does not let go.

Joe Posnanski is a New York Times bestselling author and has been named the best sportswriter in America by five different organizations. His latest book, "The Baseball 100," came out last September.