Is Tomlinson really clearly a better runner than Peterson? Better RB, yeah. But pure runner? I mean you can make that argument, but it's far from clear. Peterson has him beat in YPA and for the most part he did that on teams with subpar passing attacks against stacked boxes, while Tomlinson generally had more balanced offenses with Rivers and Brees. A similar argument could be made for Smith. Peterson is at least in the conversation. He had a combination of speed, power and ability to explode through the line that no one before him ever showed. I think there's some bias here because we've been watching the twilight of Peterson's career as recently as this past season, while everyone else has been out of the league long enough that we remember them for their primes.