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Fun continued over the next five years. He rushed for more than eleven hundred yards in all but one season (the strike-shortened 1982 campaign) and soon reached eleventh on the all-time leading-rusher list.

But 1985 was a disaster for both Anderson and the Cardinals. A 3-1 record to open the season inspired hope within the players, the organization, and dejected St. Louis fans. Foot and calf injuries to their star back contributed to a 2-10 finish. An aching Anderson played in only three games during the team’s downward spiral.

Achieving only one playoff berth during the previous decade prompted a change in leadership, and management brought in Dallas Cowboys assistant Gene Stallings to redirect their fortunes. Toward the end of the 1985 season, Stump Mitchell performed well in Anderson’s place. Stallings recognized the value of an offense featuring Mitchell, the smaller, quicker runner, and the powerful workhorse Anderson, and split the carries between both backs. Not pleased with a reduced role, Anderson lashed out toward the end of the 1986 season opener. Stallings used Mitchell exclusively at the end of a 16-10 loss to the Rams, sparking a heated sideline argument. Anderson demanded to be traded.

St. Louis shipped Anderson—the franchise’s twenty-nine-year-old all-time leading rusher—to the New York Giants for a pair of draft picks. And although he went on to score a touchdown in Super Bowl XXI, 1986 was largely uneventful for Anderson: thirty-one carries for eighty-seven yards during his fourteen regular and postseason games.

He contributed even less (two rushing attempts despite not missing games due to injury) the next season before his role increased a bit in 1988. That December he helped to end the playoff hopes of his former team—now the Phoenix Cardinals—and old boss Gene Stallings, scoring three second-half touchdowns in a late-season game at the Meadowlands.

Still, the team’s feature back, Joe Morris, carried the ball over three hundred times that season, far more than Anderson’s sixty-five rushes. The Giants allowed Anderson’s contract to expire the following spring and added two running backs—Lewis Tillman and Dave Meggett—in April’s draft. New York eventually signed Anderson to a deal (a considerable pay cut) later that summer. He was a long shot to make the roster: thirty-two-year-old running backs don’t usually survive training camps.

“Every year, people say you’re 30-something and you’ve been in the league X amount of years. They start writing you off. I don’t think I’m old. I think the media feels that if you’ve been in the league five years you’re good and if you’re under 30, good. Once you’re over 30, they think you’re over the hill. It’s supposed to be a young man’s game.”

But Joe Morris broke his ankle in the team’s final preseason game and Anderson set out to prove that he could carry the load. During his first start in three seasons, Anderson gained ninety-three yards on twenty-three carries and scored a critical fourth-quarter touchdown in the Giants’ win. He remained healthy and a career-high fourteen touchdowns helped New York win the NFC East title. Another milestone meant more to Anderson than any previous achievement.

“This was my sweetest 1,000-yard season. It happened so late in my career. Nobody felt I had anything left. Nobody claimed me. Nobody thought I was worth the risk,” he said. “Nobody believed that Ottis Anderson could help the Giants win.”

Despite 120 yards and a touchdown, Anderson couldn’t help the Giants defeat the Rams in the first round of the playoffs, and for a second straight off-season, New York did not protect Anderson from free agency. Again, the Giants drafted his replacement that April, this time with their first-round selection. Big, quick, and durable, Georgia Bulldog Rodney Hampton resembled Anderson in every way, except that he was twelve years younger.

“I don’t think anybody is interested in me,” Anderson said about his prospects of playing in 1990. “My financial planner called