One hundred seasons The National Football League has come a long way since that first exhibition game on Sept, 20, 1920, between the Rock Island Independents and our town’s own independent team, the St. Paul Ideals.

Since the Ideals were already tainted by the Minnesota Jinx Madden nfl 20 coins they lost that day 48-0, and disappeared soon after. The Independents, though, would compete in the first six NFL seasons.

There was no such thing as fantasy football in the Roaring 20s. That phenomenon was not conceived until 1962. That’s when some members of the Oakland Raiders’ front office came up with the rules that gave birth to the all-world time waster we enjoy today.

To mark the NFL’s centennial, we’ve decided to open our season by counting down the greatest fantasy performances in the league’s history. We start today with the running backs, then move on to receivers and quarterbacks over the next two weeks.

This is not going to be a strictly by-the-numbers exercise. If that were true, we’d be focused almost exclusively on the manically offensive 21st century. Thanks to rules changes, some of the greatest 20th Century statistical landmarks now look rather obsolete.

So, we’re going to grade each player’s performance, in large part, based on how he compared to his compatriots in that season. How dominant were his numbers? He led the league by how much?

We’re also going to limit each player to one season. Otherwise, next week’s list of wide receivers would have a few too many Jerry Rice performances. Not that Flash 80 wasn’t the Greatest Of All Time …

Before scandal tarnished All Day’s image, he was clearly the Vikings’ greatest running back since the mid-1970s. This will go down as his best season unless he has another renaissance with the Washington Redskins. While he was only third in the league in touchdowns (trailing Houston’s Arian Foster by four), he nearly lapped the field in yardage. Peterson had 484 yards more than the No. 2 runner (Washington’s Alfred Morris). But his season is most remembered for the fact he fell eight yards short of Eric Dickerson’s NFL record of 2,105.

Johnson became a sensation at the 2008 NFL combine by blazing to a then-record 4.24 seconds-time in the 40-yard dash. But he really only lived up to the hype in his magical sophomore season, when he became the sixth player to break the 2,000-yard rushing mark. That was nearly 600 more yards than the runner-up (the Rams’ Steven Jackson). His 16 TDs were just two off the league lead (Adrian Peterson), and his 2,509 total yards were 468 ahead of No. 2 (the Ravens’ Ray Rice). His numbers the next four years were good, topping 1,000 yards in each, but not otherworldly.

Vince Lombardi’s Titletown dynasty got off the ground in large part because of the two stars lined up in the backfield behind Bart Starr. Hornung was famous long before landing in Wisconsin buy Madden nfl 20 coins winning the 1956 Heisman Trophy at Notre Dame. He was a triple threat who could run, pass and kick. It was his work as the Packers’ kicker that got him on this list. He scored 15 TDs and added 86 points with his right foot. His 176 points led the NFL by an astounding 71. How fantasy rules would have dealt with such a multi-talented player, we’ll never know.