Top Five Saints RBs

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New Orleans Saints Top Five Running Backs
Blech. What a dull list! When we did the quarterback top fives, we could at least lead off with Drew Brees and Archie Manning, and there were worse third and fourth options than Bobby Hebert and Aaron Brooks. If we ever get to receivers, we have Danny Abramowicz, Joe Horn, Marques Colston, Wes Chandler ... an interesting group. These guys are just weak.

The Saints had ten different leading rushers in their first ten seasons, with no duplicates. Jim Taylor led them with 390 yards in 1967, their first year and his last. Then came Don McCall with 637 yards. Andy Livingston made the Pro Bowl with 761 yards the next year.
Then, go see for yourself at Pro Football Reference. It is a parade of nobodies, many of them gaining about 600 rushing yards in their Lead-the-Saints season. In 1975, Michael Strachen led the Saints with 668 yards. He is only relevant because I found some footage of Peyton Manning getting interviewed about his father at age three, with Cooper making faces next to him, and Peyton is wearing a tiny Strachen jersey.
The man who broke the string was Chuck Muncie, who led the team in 1976 and 1977, then had a mammoth year in 1979, with 1,198 yards and 40 receptions. Muncie was high on cocaine the whole time. George Rogers also had major, well-publicized cocaine issues. Ricky Williams preferred marijuana, and while we can fill the message boards with arguments about the relative health hazards and severity of habituation between the two drugs (though it may be more fun if we don’t), Williams’ substance abuse choices inarguably affected his career. All three were early first-round picks by the Saints; there is no grand connection here, just a strange, sad coincidence.
A fourth high pick, Reggie Bush, did not need drugs to be a nitwit.
So, we are left with this list:

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