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Michele Moore, Bruce Smith Pro Bowl cropped, CC BY 2.0
David Wilson, 19981213 28 Reggie White, Lambeau Field (cropped), CC BY 2.0
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Pass rusher is one of the most important positions in football (and quite possibly the most important one on defense), as the ability to generate pressure and force the quarterback to get rid of the ball quickly can wreak havoc on an opposing team’s offense. Thus, having a disruptive pass rusher is a precious commodity in the NFL, and one that teams will often spend high draft picks on to mixed results. In the history of the NFL, no one got to the quarterback better than Bruce Smith or Reggie White, who with 200.0 and 198.0 career sacks, respectively, are the number one and number two all-time sack leaders. Between the two fearsome Hall of Fame pass rushers, however, the question is:
Who was better – Bruce Smith or Reggie White?
The Beginning
The best pass rushers are often identified early in college and given a high value, which in turn leads to NFL teams selecting them with high draft picks – such was the case with both Smith and White, who were actually courted by not one, but two professional football leagues (the NFL and USFL), and took different professional paths to eventual NFL stardom.
After an All-State high school career in Virginia, Smith opted to stay local and play his college ball at Virginia Tech. Over the course of his four years there, “The Sack Man”, as he was known, accumulated 46 sacks, including 22 as a junior, and was a 2x All-American and winner of the Outland Trophy as best lineman his senior year. Following this standout collegiate career, Smith was drafted #1 overall in the 1985 NFL Draft by the Buffalo Bills; at the same time, he was also drafted by the Baltimore Stars in the 1985 USFL Territorial Draft, but decided to join the NFL. While his rookie season was so-so (6.5 sacks), Smith quickly established himself as a pass-rushing force in year two, racking up 15.0 sacks.
Similarly, White was the #1 recruit in the state of Tennessee coming out of high school and attended local Tennessee to play college football. During his college career there, he racked up 32 sacks and capped off his senior year by being named All-SEC, All-American, and SEC Player of the Year in 1983. Like Smith, he was drafted in the USFL Territorial Draft (by the Memphis Showboats in 1984), though actually played for two years in the upstart USFL and accumulated 23.5 sacks. However, with the collapse of the USFL in 1985, White joined the Philadelphia Eagles (who had drafted him fourth overall in the 1984 NFL Supplemental Draft) and did not miss a beat with 13.0 sacks and 100 total tackles as a rookie.
Career Comparison
While there are players who rack up double-digit sacks every year and teams are always looking for the next great pass rusher, what really separated Smith and White was not just their peak brilliance, but their ability to maintain an extraordinarily high level of play over a long career.
Starting with his 15.0 sack season in 1986, Smith would rack up five straight years of double-digit sacks, including his first of 11 Pro Bowl appearances and first of eight First Team All-Pro selections in 1987 on the back of 12.0 sacks, 78 tackles, 3 forced fumbles, and his only career touchdown. By notching his 52nd career sack in 1989 in just his fifth NFL season, Smith would already become the Bills all-time sacks leader (of course, he would continue to add and add to that total, finishing with 171.0 career sacks with Buffalo). 1990 was arguably his best season, as Smith piled up a career-high 19.0 sacks (only 3.0 short of the then-record 22.0 sacks held by Mark Gastineau of the New York Jets) along with 101 total tackles and 4 forced fumbles en route to NFL Defensive Player of the Year honors, as well as First Team All-Pro and Pro Bowl selections.
After being limited to only five games (and a career-low 1.5 sacks) due to knee injuries in 1991, Smith bounced back with 14.0 sacks and another Pro Bowl selection in 1992; this would spark another great stretch in which he put up seven consecutive seasons of double-digit sacks and earned Pro Bowl honors each season along with being a 5x First Team All-Pro. The pinnacle of this period in Smith’s career came in 1996, when he earned his second NFL Defensive Player of the Year honors with 13.5 sacks, 90 total tackles, and a career-best 5 forced fumbles.
Following the 1999 season, the Bills released Smith along with veteran running back Thurman Thomas and wide receiver Andre Reed for salary cap reasons. Smith subsequently signed with the Washington Redskins to continue his pursuit of the career sacks record and spent four seasons in the nation’s capital – while he was still a respectable player, he was no longer the dominant force from Buffalo and only had one year with double-digit sacks (10.0 in 2000). In Week 14 of the 2003 season, Smith sacked New York Giants quarterback Jesse Palmer for his 199th career sack, thus passing Reggie White for most career sacks; Smith would then retire at the end of the season at age 40 with exactly 200.0 career sacks.
As for the aforementioned White, he would build on his outstanding rookie year by stringing together nine straight double-digit sack seasons, including three consecutive seasons of 18+ sacks. In just his second season, White accumulated 18.0 sacks and 98 total tackles to earn the first of 13 straight Pro Bowl appearances and the first of eight straight First Team All-Pro selections. He would then follow that up with an even better season – in 1987, White led the NFL with a career-high 21.0 sacks in only 12 games played, along with 76 total tackles, 4 forced fumbles, and one of his two career touchdowns, to earn NFL Defensive Player of the Year honors. To cap off this three-year stretch of dominance, White would again lead the league in sacks with 18.0 in 1988 and also rack up a career-high 133 total tackles. Overall, during his eight years in Philadelphia, White accumulated 124.0 sacks, thus averaging over a sack per game in his Eagles career.
In one of the most consequential free agent signings in NFL history, White joined the Green Bay Packers in 1993 and did not miss a beat with 13.0 sacks that year. During his Packers career, he remained an elite pass rusher, though was not quite as dominant as he was in Philadelphia; for the first time in his career, White had seasons with fewer than 10 sacks, including “only” 8.0 sacks in 1994 and 8.5 sacks in 1996. Nevertheless, at age 37 in 1998, White would bounce back in a big way and rack up 16.0 sacks, his most since 1988, along with 4 forced fumbles to once again win NFL Defensive Player of the Year honors. He announced his retirement after the 1998 season, but came back to play one final year with the Carolina Panthers in 2000, though had a career-low 5.5 sacks and retired for good after that season at age 39 as the then all-time sacks leader with 198.0 career sacks.
As of this writing, Smith (200.0) and White (198.0) remain #1 and 2 all-time in career sacks (remember that sacks only became an official individual NFL statistic starting in 1982), with Smith also holding the edge in career tackles and forced fumbles. Since it took Smith four additional seasons and 47 more games played to rack up the differential, however, White has the superior sack rate (0.85 per game vs. 0.72 per game); also remember that White spent a couple of seasons playing in the USFL, whereas Smith jumped directly from college to the NFL. When it comes to awards and accolades, despite Smith’s greater longevity, White had more Pro Bowl selections (13 vs. 11), though both were 8x First Team All-Pros and 2x NFL Defensive Player of the Year. Not surprisingly, both players were enshrined in Canton in their first year of eligibility, White in 2006 and Smith in 2009.
Regular Season Statistics
| Bruce Smith | Player | Reggie White |
| 19 (1985-2003) | Seasons | 15 (1985-1998, 2000) |
| 279 | Games Played | 232 |
| 200.0 | Sacks | 198.0 |
| 43 | Forced Fumbles | 33 |
| 1,224 | Tackles | 1,111 |
| 11x | Pro Bowls | 13x |
| 8x | All-Pro | 8x |
| – | Super Bowls | 1x |
| 2x Defensive POY | Other Awards | 2x Defensive POY |
| 2009 | Hall of Fame Induction | 2006 |
Source: Pro-Football-Reference.com
In the postseason, both Smith and White played a little over one full regular season’s worth of games and in-line with their regular season numbers, posted double-digit sacks. However, despite gaudy pass-rushing numbers, the chase for a Super Bowl was elusive, particularly for Smith.
As many football fans will remember, Smith was an integral part of the great Buffalo Bills teams of the early 1990s under coach Marv Levy that featured quarterback Jim Kelly, running back Thurman Thomas, and wide receiver Andre Reed, and lost four straight Super Bowls from 1991 to 1994. The first one, Super Bowl XXV, was the closest, as Buffalo lost to the New York Giants 20-19 on an infamous “wide right” field goal miss by kicker Scott Norwood in the waning seconds; Smith played his part, sacking Giants quarterback Jeff Hostetler in the end zone for a safety in the second quarter. In the ensuing three Super Bowl losses, one to the Washington Redskins and two to the Dallas Cowboys, Smith had a total of one sack (in Super Bowl XXXVII). Individually, Smith’s best postseason came in 1992, when he accumulated 3.5 total sacks and was part of the Bills’ epic 41-38 comeback victory in the AFC Wildcard Game vs. Warren Moon and the Houston Oilers.
Meanwhile, White teamed with dynamic quarterback Randall Cunningham to lead the Eagles to four postseason appearances in five seasons between 1988 and 1992, though they only managed to win one playoff game during that span. He found better success with the Packers, making the playoffs every year in Green Bay; notably, in 1997, White helped lead the Packers to a 35-21 win over the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XXXI, piling up three sacks of Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe. Green Bay would make it back the next year to Super Bowl XXXII as the defending champions, but fell to the Denver Broncos 31-24.
Playoff Statistics
| Bruce Smith | Player | Reggie White |
| 20 | Games Played | 19 |
| 14.5 | Sacks | 12.0 |
Source: Pro-Football-Reference.com
Every athlete goes through a natural career lifecycle, from starting off as a rookie to reaching peak years of performance and finally, declining into the inevitable retirement due to a combination of age and/or injury; case in point, Smith played well past his prime to break the all-time sacks record, while White was largely forgettable in his last season with Carolina. For Hall of Fame caliber players across sports, I like to look at a concept I call a “decade of dominance.” The thinking behind this is that for most Hall of Fame type careers, there are roughly 10 great seasons that define an athlete (this idea is embodied in a sense by the NFL’s All-Decade teams – Smith is on the Second Team for the 1980s and the First Team for the 1990s, while White is part of the First Team for both the 1980s and 1990s), though due to injury or other factors, they might not be 10 consecutive years.
Decade of Dominance
| Bruce Smith | Player | Reggie White |
| 1987-1990, 1992-1997 | Decade of Dominance | 1986-1993, 1995, 1998 |
| 149 | Games Played | 155 |
| 131.0 | Sacks | 152.0 |
| 27 | Forced Fumbles | 27 |
| 830 | Tackles | 861 |
Source: Pro-Football-Reference.com
By looking at their respective decades of dominance, which in part normalizes for Smith’s greater number of games played, White emerges as the more dominant player, with 21.0 more sacks in six additional games (0.98 sacks per game vs. 0.88 sacks per game), as well as more tackles and the same number of forced fumbles.
My Thoughts
Statistically, there is no question that among eligible players, Bruce Smith is the all-time sack king. However, determining who was better between him and Reggie White is a bit more of a nuanced situation. Overall, their career numbers (2.0 sacks differential) and accolades are very similar (2x Defensive Player of the Year, 8x First Team All-Pro, White 2x more Pro Bowl nods, etc.), but White generally accomplished more in fewer games, and had he not played in the USFL for two years, could very well be the sack king with ~220 career sacks (assuming he would have had double-digit NFL sacks both of those seasons). Moreover, in terms of winning, White was one of the most consequential free agent signings in NFL history and helped propel the Packers to their first Super Bowl win since the 1960s, playing a huge role in winning the game, whereas Smith is remembered for being part of four straight Super Bowl-losing Bills teams (of course, it was not entirely his entire fault). In short, other than absolute number of career sacks, White edges out Smith in most of the relevant areas of comparison.
Thus, after weighing their careers against each other in terms of statistics, achievements, and impact, the winner of this faceoff is:
Reggie White
As always, vote for your choice and leave your thoughts and comments below.
Further Reading
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