Mike Celizic

LaDainian Tomlinson has rewritten the record books and he’s won the NFL’s MVP award. But can he win a championship?

That’s an unfair question to ask, even of a quarterback, who has a greater potential to affect the outcome of a game than any other player on the field. But such queries are part of a game whose object is to test the will and ability of those who play it and whose players are measured by history by the number of rings they have won.

It’s also a question that slides neatly into any discussion of the greatest running backs in football history. That’s a discussion that now has to include the humble and magnificent running back for the San Diego Chargers.

You can get in a lot of trouble when you go around calling people the best ever at anything, whether it’s playing a game, creating art or hanging dry wall. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go ahead and say it about Tomlinson. He earned entry into the discussion when he dominated the game this year as few have before. His credentials were confirmed when 45 of 50 voters listed him first on their MVP ballots. And, after scoring 31 touchdowns, gaining more than 1,800 yards rushing and breaking Paul Hornung’s 46-year-old single-season scoring record, the wonder isn’t that Tomlinson was the run-away winner of the award, but that five voters thought someone else was more valuable than he.

But that was the regular season, and it’s over. The postseason, the only one that really matters, is upon us. It is during the next three weeks that we will sort out the great talents from the great winners.

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It is not a time of year that is kind to running backs who aspire to the title of the greatest ever to play their position.

Go ahead, make a list of the truly electrifying runners in the game’s history. It will start with Jim Brown and include Walter Payton, Eric Dickerson, O.J. Simpson, Barry Sanders and, for true aficionados, Earl Campbell and Gayle Sayers. It may also include Emmitt Smith, who didn’t have the kind of moves the others had, but was maybe the most durable and toughest running back ever and also happened to retire with the most yards.

Now go back and tick off how many titles all-timers won. Jim Brown had one in his nine years, in 1964, two years before the first Super Bowl, and when the Browns beat the Colts in the NFL Championship Game, it was more because they had a great defense and a multi-talented offense than because they had Brown.

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Payton had one, but it came at the tail end of his career with the Bears when he was no longer the focus of the offense. Dickerson, Simpson, Sayers and Sanders, who were arguably the most spectacular runners ever, don’t have one among them. Neither does Campbell, whose career was cut all too short by injury. Only Smith, who played with one of the greatest teams of all time — the Cowboys of Troy Aikman, Smith, Michael Irvin, et al. — has multiple rings.

It’s not hard to ferret out the reasons. Two of the rarest commodities in the game are all-time great running backs and quarterbacks. If you have one of those, you rarely have the other. And when it comes to winning titles, great quarterbacks rule; it’s easier to stop a one-dimensional running offense than it is to stop a one-dimensional passing attack. And it’s hardest of all to stop a team that has more than one weapon.

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That’s in Tomlinson’s favor. The Chargers are a complete team with a very good quarterback, some outstanding receivers and a great defense. You can build your game plan around stopping Tomlinson, but you can’t forget about Philip Rivers. And even if you can hold San Diego’s offense in check, you still have to figure out a way to beat their defense.

All of that has helped Tomlinson this year in piling up his eye-popping statistics, but he’s been a great runner for every one of his six years in the league; even when the Chargers were bad, he was great.

His coach, Marty Schottenheimer, who’s old enough to have seen Brown in action, said: "I believe he is the finest running back to ever wear an NFL uniform.” He’s not getting a lot of argument.

Schottenheimer, by the way, has even more to prove than Tomlinson. He’s had a long and illustrious career, but the Chargers coach has never gotten to the Super Bowl. He’s been painfully close twice, when he was in Cleveland. But in both instances, he lost in epic fashion to Denver, the first time when John Elway led a 98-yard game-winning march against the clock and the second when Ernest Byner fumbled away the winning touchdown.

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Some say that Schottenheimer has been the victim of bad luck. Others say he’s the victim of his own conservative play calling.

This year, he has more reason than ever to get conservative with a lead; he’s got Tomlinson’s number to call to pound out the yards and eat up the clock. And all Tomlinson has to do is answer the call.

In the playoffs, it’s not nearly as easy as it sounds.

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