Death, taxes and Frank Gore
League’s oldest active running back still grinding
AORCHARD PARK, N.Y. fter a two-hour practice in the pouring rain in early October, Buffalo Bills running back Frank Gore was still not finished.
As most of his teammates retreated to the locker room to change out of their wet gear and get on with their day, Gore remained, running drills on the turf field at the Bills’ training facility. Three younger players trailed alongside him, trying to keep up.
“See that?” the Bills’ running backs coach, Kelly Skipper, said as he stood on the sideline observing his players. “That’s all him. He’s the reason they are out there. That’s not me.
“It’s like he’s a rookie competing for his job everyday.”
Gore, 36, has 15,081 career rushing yards and more experience than the team’s four other running backs combined. Most of his teammates are closer in age to his son, a high school senior, than to him.
“I never like to think like I’m old,” Gore said after practice as he bounced on an exercise ball. “I try to compete with young guys to keep myself honest.”
Gore is doing more than just competing. He is averaging almost 67 yards per game (15th in the NFL) for the 4-1 Bills, steadily adding to Hall of Fame numbers in yet another season in which he should be in decline. He is fourth on the career rushing list, 188 yards behind Barry Sanders, who is third. He is just the second running back to make over 200 career starts.
Gore is also the oldest active running back in the NFL, and only two others, the Philadelphia Eagles’ Darren Sproles and the Redskins’ Adrian Peterson, are 34 or older. Gore’s workload of 15 carries per game ranks in the top 20, and he is on the field for about 50 percent of the team’s snaps.
“There’s no secret to how he’s doing what he’s doing,” Bills coach Sean McDermott said. “Just unbelievable.”
Gore has made a 15-year career out of picking up “dirty yardage” — 3- to 4-yard bursts through center, a style that, given his height, 5-foot-9, seems incompatible with longevity. But then, Gore’s NFL career has been falsely called dead many times since he left the University of Miami a year early.
Gore was picked by the San Francisco 49ers in the third round of the 2005 draft.
“I was surprised initially that he got in the National Football League,” said Michael Robinson, Gore’s teammate in San Francisco for four seasons. “I was just shocked that he even got here.”
Gore spent the first 10 years of his improbable career with the 49ers, compiling 11,073 rushing yards and five Pro Bowl selections. He then played three seasons with the Indianapolis Colts and one with the Miami Dolphins, his home team, before a sprained foot ended his 14th season early last December.
The Bills signed Gore to a one-year, $2 million contract in March, expecting him to share the backfield with Devin Singletary and LeSean McCoy. The burden has instead fallen almost entirely on Gore, as McCoy was cut in August (before signing with the Chiefs) and Singletary was injured in Week 2.
He had his best game of the season on Sept. 29 when he ran for 109 yards on 17 carries against the top-ranked New England Patriots defense, which allows the fewest yards per game in the NFL.
His opponent that day — quarterback Tom Brady, a 20-year veteran of the league — attributes his own longevity to a strict diet and training program. Gore, on the other hand, stuffed down two bags of chips after a recent practice. “They are only 150 calories each,” he said to a staff member standing nearby.
Gore has, however, picked up a few tricks along the way. He is a downhill runner and has never been known as a burner — he has only three runs over 20 yards this season — but has evolved his contact-heavy style over the years to rely on patience and savvy at finding holes in the defense. Gore has worked on burrowing his body and staying low to avoid taking as many big hits, guidance Robinson, his old teammate, said he didn’t always heed when he was young in
San Francisco.
Despite the chips, his diet now revolves around lean meat, and he allows himself cheat meals on Sundays. He started boxing midway through his career to build endurance and hand-eye coordination without the heavy impact that regular cardio had on his legs.
Gore has taken Singletary, the Bills’ third-round pick in the 2019 draft, under his wing. It’s important to him, Gore said, to be able to look back once he is finished playing and know he was able to pass down his knowledge to the next generation.
“Even when he’s not in, he’s still back there saying, ‘This play is going to go here’ or ‘This play is going to go here,’ ” said Ken Dorsey, the Bills’ quarterbacks coach, who has known Gore since 2001, when Gore was a freshman at Miami and Dorsey was the team’s starting quarterback.
“Sure enough, the play goes on and he’s right 99 percent of the time,” Dorsey added. “His instincts, feel and vision for the game is unbelievable.”