An injury may have taken a handful of games away from Browns running back Nick Chubb, but it sure hasn't done much to hamper his performance. It's a shame that he missed time, too, because he might be putting up historic numbers given a full 16-game workload.
Is this a surprise? Not really. Anyone who has followed the 2018 second-round pick's career since he entered the league knows just how good he is. The eye test says so. The analytics especially say so, considering Chubb was the number one running back over the past two seasons according to Pro Football Focus's metrics.
And, by looking at some of his less complicated numbers, it seems as though Chubb may have even improved in his third campaign, again despite some health issues.
Career-high yards per attempt and yards per game totals? Who knows what his end-of-year stat line could have looked like without the injury bug heading his way. And who knows what his rushing output would have looked like had he been able to run behind Browns great Joe Thomas, who earned six First-Team All-Pro nods and was named to the Pro Football Hall of Fame All-2010s Team.
It's not that the Browns current offensive line is bad by any means — Football Outsiders ranks them fifth in terms of their adjusted line yards metric — and Thomas has even vouched for rookie Jedrick Wills' performance in the trenches. But Thomas had also recorded one of the best run-blocking grades ever in the history of Pro Football Focus despite being known predominantly for his pass blocking.
Though Chubb never got to run behind Thomas, it seems as though the former offensive lineman is marveling at what the current Browns standout RB is doing on the field.
I mean... wow. What a stat. When expanding that out to team splits throughout the whole league, you can see Chubb's impact and just how far ahead the Browns are from the rest of the pack.
Sure, you can attribute this to positive game script, to Baker Mayfield's up-and-down season and the Browns' reliance on the ground game. But it's still a spectacular stat, and it has impressed Joe Thomas — a feat in itself, considering he led a ground game that saw guys like Peyton Hillis, Jerome Harrison, Trent Richardson and others who clearly aren't as good as Nick Chubb find success.
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