Emmitt Smith is a Hall of Fame running back whose career earned one of the highest career value scores of 97 in the Knox value model. Smith's enshrinement reflects a career that consistently placed him among the elite of his generation.
Career Value · VORP
505 career value over replacement — #16 all-time of 4,695. 33.7/season above a replacement-level RB.
Career Profile
Pick #17 (Rd 1) · DAL · 1990 · +40.2 vs expected KV-H
Fan Rating
Rate Emmitt Smith — All-Time
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Ranked #64 of 568 by seasons where high individual production happened on low-win teams. Score aggregates only tracked StatVault categories.
Reached 100% of the all-time Rushing Yards leader — a elite all-time profile at the position.
A 0–100 scale where 100 = matched the all-time leader at this position. Built only from visible encyclopedia data — career production vs. the all-time leader, plus efficiency (EPA) and comparable-player confidence — so it's a transparent context score, not a subjective rating. Tiers: Elite ≥ 85 · Strong ≥ 65 · Solid ≥ 45 · Depth < 45. Comparable-player confidence: 91%.
StatVault aggregates multiple open-licensed and proprietary sources into a single profile. The depth indicator above shows which layers are available for this player.
Modern-era stats (1999+) come from nflverse's open data releases. Pre-1999 seasons are backfilled additively from Wikipedia and NFL.com's own official season pages — never from rights-restricted sources.
Major career thresholds crossed, derived from regular-season totals (1999+).
Passing
College stats are not imported for this profile yet.
StatVault has the verified college attribution (Florida), but no parsed college box-score table is present in this profile artifact. The section stays here so every profile has a consistent college-stats landing point without fabricating unavailable rows.
Career teammates and draft class, derived from year-by-year rosters — every name is linked.
Emmitt inherited the Dallas Cowboys RB room from Daryl Johnston (1989–1999), and handed it to Marion Barber (2005–2010).
Statistical + physical similarity across every player in the database, position-relevant (0–100%).
Last recorded season with ARI
Joined ARI (from DAL)
Drafted by DAL — Round 1, Pick 17
StatVault's proprietary player intelligence, informed by full career data. How Knox works →
Era-normalized career quality — z-scored against 15-season peers. See all →
Rush Yds translated to the 2025 NFL — each season's standing among its own-era peers, projected onto 2025's scoring environment. Modern-era (1999+) coverage.
| Season | Actual Rush Yds | Rush Yds/G | → 2025 Rush Yds | → 2025 /G |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | 937 | 58.6 | 1,501+564 | 88.3 |
| 1991 | 1,563 | 97.7 | 2,346+783 | 138 |
| 1992 | 1,713 | 107.1 | 2,490+777 | 146.5 |
| 1993 | 1,486 | 106.1 | 2,417+931 | 142.2 |
| 1994 | 1,484 | 98.9 | 2,123+639 | 124.9 |
| 1995 | 1,773 | 110.8 | 2,312+539 | 136 |
| 1996 | 1,204 | 80.3 | 1,751+547 | 103 |
| 1997 | 1,074 | 67.1 | 1,464+390 | 86.1 |
| 1998 | 1,332 | 83.3 | 1,722+390 | 101.3 |
| 1999 | 1,392 | 92.8 | 1,697+305 | 99.8 |
| 2000 | 1,197 | 74.8 | 1,287+90 | 75.7 |
| 2001 | 1,021 | 72.9 | 1,221+200 | 71.8 |
| 2002 | 975 | 60.9 | 1,002+27 | 59 |
| 2003 | 256 | 25.6 | 497+241 | 29.2 |
| 2004 | 937 | 62.5 | 975+38 | 57.4 |
Data: nflverse:draft_picks, nflverse:players, nflverse:player_stats, nflverse:player_stats_def, wikipedia:season-stats (CC-BY-SA, facts-only), nflverse:advanced-epa (CC-BY 4.0), espn.com:stats-api (games-played, facts-only reference) · multi-source verified via the StatVault Oracle · updated 8/31/2026
Jim Taylor
FB
90% match
1990 Draft ClassmatesFull class →
Famous Partnership
Troy Aikman
11 shared seasons · combined KV-H 1656
Pre-1999 players have bio + draft data but counting stats are not available from any freely-licensed source. Players with ★ Career Only see verified career aggregates from nflverse draft_picks.
Amber = this player (normalized to own peak). Indigo = average RBs aging curve. Group peak age: 21. Source: StatVault KV-H era (1999+).
Rushing
Receiving
Proprietary StatVault Metrics
The room is reconstructed from arrival order among durable members (≥4 seasons with the club) at the player’s position group — a lineage by arrival, not a week-by-week depth chart. Distinct from the league-wide positional GOAT torch.
Career durability — games played vs. scheduled, across 15 seasons.
Composite score across availability, IR frequency, and injury severity. See all →
Enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. See all →
What carries the case
Monitor score 195.1 · components sum to the score (All-Pro ×12 · Pro Bowl ×3 · League Lead ×4 · ranks/era/longevity weighted).
Career Fingerprint
Statistical profile across 5 dimensions
Best single season, projected to Rushing Yards in a modern 17-game schedule. See all →