Two Sports Minds: Mattradamus's 15-Year Football Team Cont'd

Yesterday I posted my selections for the Offensive and Defensive Lines and today i'm going to move on to Running Backs, Tight End and Linebackers.

I'll get it started today with selecting two guys who I can rely on for both the short yardage situations, but also display big play abilities out of the backfield. To me this decision was a no brainer and my only fear is that they wouldn't be able to put aside their respective schools hatred toward one another to team up and go down as the greatest backfield in the history of the game. The University of Texas has had some great RB's in recent memory, but Ricky Williams takes the cake. Looks at these credentials:

2× Doak Walker Award (1997, 1998)
2× Jim Brown Trophy (1997, 1998)
Walter Camp Award (1998)
Maxwell Award (1998)
Heisman Trophy (1998)
AP College Player of the Year (1998)

This Longhorn will be splitting carries with his Red River Rivalry counterpart, Adrian Peterson. This Boomer Sooner was a guy I hated in college, but now have grown to love (playing for the Vikings of course). While he doesn't have the trophies that Ricky Williams has, his accolades are impressive and was an unstoppable force in his 3 years at OU.

Hall Trophy (2003)
First-team AP All-Freshman (2004)
First-team consensus All-American (2004)
Doak Walker Award finalist (2004)
Heisman Trophy finalist (2004)
Jim Brown Trophy winner (2004)

You will notice that I haven't mentioned any finalist and the reason behind that is b/c there were no other candidates in my eyes. These two were clear cut decisions in my mind.

Moving on to the TE position I had to think about whether or not I leaned towards a guy who was more of a pass catching TE, blocking TE or both. I had two guys in mind and it came down to Dallas Clark from Iowa and Jeremy Shockey from Da U, Miami. Here were the credentials:

Dallas Clark - All American and recepient of the John Mackey award for the nations best TE

Jeremy Shockey - All American and National Champion

I decided to go with the guy that has a bit of a mean streak and chose Jeremy Shockey. He can run, catch and you gotta love a TE who seeks out dishing punishment.

I'm going to jump to the defensive side of the ball now and talk about the Linebackers. I chose the three best LB's regardless of Middle or Outside 'backers. I had to go with the first three guys that stuck out in my mind. The first of which is a fellow Sooner of Adrian Peterson. Teddy Lehman was an All-American defensive force for two years at OU and also won the Dick Butkus and Chuck Bednarik awards (top LB and best defensive player in the country). Back to Big 10 country I go to round out my linebacking corp. Paul Posluszny was a 2-time All-American at Penn St and also was a recipient of the Dick Butkus and Chuck Bednarik Awards. He is actually only the second player to win the Bednarik award more than once (2x winner). He may go down as the best LB in Penn St. history and it has been called Linebacker U by many if that tells you of his talents. To round out the three, I chose Andy Katzenmoyer from THE Ohio St. He won the same awards as Lehman and Posluszny and brought the pain to the Big 10 for 3 years.