What Nick Chubb Means To Football
Photo Credit: Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports
Nick Chubb quite simply is the greatest player to wear brown and orange since 1999. We’ve had some pretty good players: Joe Haden, Josh Cribbs, Denzel Ward. We’ve even had some great players like Joe Thomas, Myles Garrett, and Joel Bitonio. But ever since Nicholas Jamaal Chubb was drafted in the second round of the 2018 NFL Draft, there hasn’t been a single player as lethal or electric. Every time he touches the ball, he’s a threat to take it to the house. If he can’t get there, he will make anyone who stopped him feel it for the rest of the season.
There are two types of running backs. There’s the Barry Sanders/Gayle Sayers mold, the guys who dance up and down the field with precision, making defenders miss with their eloquent, mercurial feet like a sleight-of-hand magician who disappears and then reappears at the other end of the field. They exemplify everything that’s beautiful about this game. Then there are the Earl Campbell/Jim Brown-type backs who make you pay if you so much as look in their direction. Every time they touch the ball, it feels like a fifteen-round slugfest between two maulers. These backs represent the brutality of this game.
Nick Chubb could do both. He makes you miss behind the line of scrimmage and then blasts through you like bad egg salad. Before you know it, he’s downfield for an extra 10 yards. We’ve seen him skirt, ditch, and slip as well as lay waste to everyone in front of him. And he does it silently. I’ve never seen him smile. I’ve never seen him get angry. I’ve only ever seen him be himself: quiet, reserved, and measured. All he’s ever done is exemplify himself, the city of Cleveland, and the state of Georgia with tremendous class.
I’m not one of those people who says athletes need to be role models because I don’t believe they should be. They are flawed people just like us. The difference is they make a lot of money to do the things we wished we could do as children, and maybe still wish we could now. Because there is that distance between us and them, we can sometimes view them as pieces of meat on our fantasy teams while they go out and compete in a 21st-century version of gladiatorial combat and lay their bodies on the line so we can complain about the numbers they put up.
Some athletes make it really hard for you to root for them. Then again, that’s not their job as much as it’s our decision whether or not to look past those things and welcome them into our homes on Sundays (or Mondays and Thursdays … sometimes on Saturdays … and that one time during the COVID year on Tuesdays and Wednesdays).
When I heard Steelers fans’ reaction to the replay of his injury and subsequently chanting Nick Chubb’s name as he was carted off the field, it took a little bit of hate out of my heart. I’ve always said that the worst thing about sports is the fans that root for the team you despise. I still despise them, but a little less than I did last night.
The outpouring of support on social media, by the fans at Heinz Field, and even by ESPN to not show the injury reminded me of everything that’s good about sports for a minute or two, and that is the objective appreciation fans, media, and the players have for greatness when they see it. ESPN’s decision not to show the injury (whether consciously or subconsciously) was to not tattoo the image of one of the most brutal injuries in the history of this game into our heads, and to instead recognize how sad that moment was and to take a moment to honor not just the greatness of Nick Chubb but the running back position and its place in the game today.
One of the biggest narratives of the offseason was not so much a story but a contemplation of where the running back fits in the game today, whether or not it’s an antiquated relic of a bygone era of American sports that is fading away with the ascension of the passing attack. The cutting of Dalvin Cook and the apathetic handling of Jonathan Taylor‘s contract fuels this discussion more than ever before. But if last night proved anything, it’s that the running back position may have died, but Nicholas Jamaal Chubb lives.
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