[C-Gold]

The thing most people don't understand is most NFL players are flat broke 5 years after their playing careers. That goes for Tyrone the backup safety who you never heard of and made $500,000 dollars for a couple of years and for Michael Vick who signed a $100,000,000 contract and blew through the money.
The Carolina Panthers Owner Jerry Richardson is a former player and he warns his current players about the danger. He said the biggest mistake a player can make is divorce.

Think about it. You "make" a million bucks but have 50% of it taken out in taxes. Federal, State, Local, Property taxes, sales taxes etc. So you buy a big house and a fast car and have to pay heavy taxes on them. When you are playing that's fine, but when you retire are you going to be able to pay that heavy tax bill for 50+ years? Then factor what happens with the child support payments and divorce. Imagine if you have 1/2 your estate cut in half, rising payments etc. MOST players are BROKE 5 years after playing.

Tiki Barber the jerk
Tiki Barber was a good player but was said to be horrible in the locker room. He's an arrogant guy that always thought he was better than the team. Right when he quit the team he threw Coughlin and Eli under the bus, but they had the last laugh as the Giants won the SB without him.

Tiki the next Matt Lawor
Tiki wanted to quit the Giants because he didn't think they'd win, and because he thought he'd be the next daily talk show host super star. He wasn't very good and leaving your 8 months pregnant wife for a young intern was a sleezeball of the decade type move. He couldn't keep his dick in his pants and he rightfully lost his job for it. That's NOT what the viewing public wants to tune into. Some snake oil salesman who will do anything for ass.

So now Barber is BROKE like most former NFL players. He needs money, has no career path, and is trying to go back to what he knows makes money. The problem, he's a 36 year old running back.

So what do we know know about his play. Tiki supporters will point out the good stats he had his last few years BUT HE HAD ONE OF THE BEST OFFENSIVE LINES IN THE LEAGUE for years. The Giants nearly had 3 (1,000) yard running backs after he left, and they did have 2 (1,000) yard running backs even after the line started to degrade some.

Barber was NEVER a very fast running back but he was very shifty/agile. Trust me I watched all the NFC east games and in particular the Giants. He was not super fast in a straight line way, most people do NOT understand that. He was however a very shirt/shifty/agile guy. There's a big difference there. Ahmad Bradshaw is the same way. He only ran a 4.6 at the combine but he's shifty/elusive. Barber was never that 4.3, 4.4 kind of guy. He was also one of the most fumble prone players in the league.

Barber bad in the locker room
You have to be a pretty low person to cheat on and leave your 8 months pregnant wife, but Antonio Pierce said he was a scumbag in the locker room and he ripped him in public. Teams like a good vet leader in the locker room but Barber is a me first kind of guy. He threw his coach and QB under the bus. The Giants needed a leader when they had a young Manning, Shockey, Plax, and barber in the huddle and a strong willed coach. Barber should have been that guy but he wasn't. He only cared about himself and threw everybody under the bus. Pierce rightfully trashed him. Pierce was the walk on free agent who drove a beat up old pick up truck to practice. Barber was the quick tounged guy who thought he was slicker than he really is and is broke now.

So how would he do now?
He's only going to be slower at 36 and he was never very fast to begin with ( only agile)
He's fumble prone
He's horrible in the locker room ( most teams want VET LEADERS not Vet detracters) so his "exp" is neg
Since he's going to be a backup he's going to have to play special teams... will he?
The Giants dominant O-Line made him look better than he was

At this point Tiki is a broke and desperate athlete. He will likely sign a vet min but incentive laden contract that he probably won't hit. He'll have to sign with a bad team. This is really a desperation move for Tiki because he has no money, no career prospects and he's trying to make a couple million bucks before his window closes. The NFL is not kind to old running backs, it's a game of fresh legs.

[slacker00]

While Tiki Barber had some good years and was an above average running back, mentioning him with those HOF'ers above is quite a significant stretch.

I'm just comparing numbers. If there's something specific about the comparisons I'm using, please share.

...And projecting numbers of what he would have done "if his career hadn't been cut short" (he actually retired to pursue TV) is ludicrous.

Projecting a potential outcome based on analysis is ludicrous? Do you ever handicap a game or make a bet? Seriously!

If he makes the HOF, which he won't, it would be a bad addition.

Nobody ever said he'd make the HOF. I guess you missed the point I was trying to illustrate.

[slacker00]

He was also one of the most fumble prone players in the league.

This is the biggest myth about Tiki. Just the opposite is true. I thought I already hit on this, but I guess some learn slowly.

Tiki Barber 2952 career touches with 53 career fumbles for an average of 55.69 touches per fumble.

Lets compare this to some of the NFL HOF RBs who all fumbled at a higher rate than Tiki Barber.

Gale Sayers: (1221 touches / 34 fumbles) = 35.91 touches per fumble
Franco Harris: (3266 touches / 90 fumbles) = 36.28 touches per fumble
Tony Dorsett: (3334 touches / 90 fumbles) = 37.04 touches per fumble
Eric Dickerson: (3277 touches / 78 fumbles) = 42.01 touches per fumble
OJ Simpson: (2640 touches / 62 fumbles) = 42.58 touches per fumble
Jim Brown: (2650 touches / 57 fumbles) = 46.49 touches per fumble
Walter Payton: (4347 touches / 86 fumbles) = 50.54 touches per fumble
Earl Campbell: (2308 touches / 43 fumbles) = 53.67 touches per fumble
John Riggins: (3166 touches / 58 fumbles) = 54.58 touches per fumble
Marcus Allen: (3609 touches / 65 fumbles) = 55.52 touches per fumble
Tiki Barber: (2952 touches / 53 fumbles) = 55.69 touches per fumble





Another note about fumbles: Tiki Barber recovered 25 fumbles in his career which is more than any other RB in NFL history. Now, if I wanted to talk about touches versus net fumbles, Tiki's stats would even more completely blow everyone away. Of the players mentioned above, the only one that's close is Walter Payton at 21, otherwise none of them have more than 15, which is nearly half of Tiki's number. Funny how people never mention this fact about Tiki when assessing his history with fumbles.

[C-Gold]

You are counting "touches". Barbers catches will water down the stats. Catches = more in open space = less prone to fumbles and less wear and tear on the body. Barber was a league leader in fumbles before Coughlin taught him how to hold the ball.


There is no way in freaking hell Tiki Barber is a hall of fame-er. He was plugged into a top 10 maybe top 5 offense with probably the best offensive line in the league and he had some good stats. Right place at the right time. Even at his peak his backup Brand Jacobs was better than him ( average more YPC). The only thing Barber had on Jacobs was catching the ball out of the backfield. The Giants were better without him.

[slacker00]

Well, my database doesn't do a great job of sorting out where the fumbles come from. I did look back at 1999-2001 and found that over 1/3 of his fumbles were on punt returns during his seasons with the highest number of fumbles. Special teams is even worse for fumbles and injuries than running the ball behind an offensive line like you talked about. If I was able to seperate out his special teams touches, it would improve his numbers considerably. But like I said, my database doesn't do it automatically and I've have to do a lot more tedious work to count up the fumbles like that.

Another thing I found is that of his 53 fumbles, only 22 were lost. Like I said above, he has 25 recorded fumble recoveries, I wonder if a lot of these were his own fumbles. Maybe he had a knack for fumbling out of bounds or towards his teammates in the rare cases where he did fumble. But the bottom line is that his fumbles didn't tend to result in points or bad field position that hurt his team because the majority of his fumbles weren't even lost.

As for Tiki running behind such a great offensive line, check out the stats from the 2007 Giants RBs, they had a much higher fumbling rate than Tiki, losing 10 fumbles on 435 rushing attempts. In 2006, Tiki had 3 fumbles on 327 rushing attempts. You can look at the stats all you want, but Tiki's numbers are much better than Jacobs, Bradshaw, Ward or whoever else they had back there and they were running with basically the same offense. If you want to know why the Giants won the Super Bowl in 2007, look at the defense which really came together (after years of being average to poor), capping it off by holding the record breaking Pats offense to 14 points, that was the secret, not Brandon Jacobs.

I'm not calling Tiki a HOFer. I'm just comparing his fumbling numbers to HOF RB numbers. WTF is wrong with you guys?

[CaptainPrice]

Really? It's not like rbs are hard to come by..

[jjgold]

The thing most people don't understand is most NFL players are flat broke 5 years after their playing careers. That goes for Tyrone the backup safety who you never heard of and made $500,000 dollars for a couple of years and for Michael Vick who signed a $100,000,000 contract and blew through the money.
The Carolina Panthers Owner Jerry Richardson is a former player and he warns his current players about the danger. He said the biggest mistake a player can make is divorce.

Think about it. You "make" a million bucks but have 50% of it taken out in taxes. Federal, State, Local, Property taxes, sales taxes etc. So you buy a big house and a fast car and have to pay heavy taxes on them. When you are playing that's fine, but when you retire are you going to be able to pay that heavy tax bill for 50+ years? Then factor what happens with the child support payments and divorce. Imagine if you have 1/2 your estate cut in half, rising payments etc. MOST players are BROKE 5 years after playing.

Tiki Barber the jerk
Tiki Barber was a good player but was said to be horrible in the locker room. He's an arrogant guy that always thought he was better than the team. Right when he quit the team he threw Coughlin and Eli under the bus, but they had the last laugh as the Giants won the SB without him.

Tiki the next Matt Lawor
Tiki wanted to quit the Giants because he didn't think they'd win, and because he thought he'd be the next daily talk show host super star. He wasn't very good and leaving your 8 months pregnant wife for a young intern was a sleezeball of the decade type move. He couldn't keep his dick in his pants and he rightfully lost his job for it. That's NOT what the viewing public wants to tune into. Some snake oil salesman who will do anything for ass.

So now Barber is BROKE like most former NFL players. He needs money, has no career path, and is trying to go back to what he knows makes money. The problem, he's a 36 year old running back.

So what do we know know about his play. Tiki supporters will point out the good stats he had his last few years BUT HE HAD ONE OF THE BEST OFFENSIVE LINES IN THE LEAGUE for years. The Giants nearly had 3 (1,000) yard running backs after he left, and they did have 2 (1,000) yard running backs even after the line started to degrade some.

Barber was NEVER a very fast running back but he was very shifty/agile. Trust me I watched all the NFC east games and in particular the Giants. He was not super fast in a straight line way, most people do NOT understand that. He was however a very shirt/shifty/agile guy. There's a big difference there. Ahmad Bradshaw is the same way. He only ran a 4.6 at the combine but he's shifty/elusive. Barber was never that 4.3, 4.4 kind of guy. He was also one of the most fumble prone players in the league.

Barber bad in the locker room
You have to be a pretty low person to cheat on and leave your 8 months pregnant wife, but Antonio Pierce said he was a scumbag in the locker room and he ripped him in public. Teams like a good vet leader in the locker room but Barber is a me first kind of guy. He threw his coach and QB under the bus. The Giants needed a leader when they had a young Manning, Shockey, Plax, and barber in the huddle and a strong willed coach. Barber should have been that guy but he wasn't. He only cared about himself and threw everybody under the bus. Pierce rightfully trashed him. Pierce was the walk on free agent who drove a beat up old pick up truck to practice. Barber was the quick tounged guy who thought he was slicker than he really is and is broke now.

So how would he do now?
He's only going to be slower at 36 and he was never very fast to begin with ( only agile)
He's fumble prone
He's horrible in the locker room ( most teams want VET LEADERS not Vet detracters) so his "exp" is neg
Since he's going to be a backup he's going to have to play special teams... will he?
The Giants dominant O-Line made him look better than he was

At this point Tiki is a broke and desperate athlete. He will likely sign a vet min but incentive laden contract that he probably won't hit. He'll have to sign with a bad team. This is really a desperation move for Tiki because he has no money, no career prospects and he's trying to make a couple million bucks before his window closes. The NFL is not kind to old running backs, it's a game of fresh legs.

Wow!!!

Great Great Post!!!!

Bottom line is Tikki because he mismanaged his life and money will be broke forever

When are these players going to learn just pay hookers and do not get married and live within your means and stop with all the lavish houses, etc

[AlphaOmega]

C-Gold excellent analysis of a bum I mean low life I mean a$$hole I mean Tiki Barber f him back to retirement ..

[jahred6999]

I'm all in on Tiki Barber!