Nick Chubb never wanted the spotlight in Cleveland. He just wanted the ball

New York Times

a day ago

Nick Chubb is an all-time great Cleveland Browns player. Not just a great new-era player, and not just an all-time great Browns running back — a list that's impressive compared to any franchise.
The Chubb statue should be commissioned immediately. It should have comically oversized arms and quads, and at its base, there should be helpless defenders reaching for Chubb's ankles or bouncing off his forearm. For the complete detail the statue deserves, there are plenty of photos from which the team can choose.
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It was the rare combination of power and explosion that made Chubb so good and made so many of his runs so memorable. That Chubb was the low-maintenance superstar made him even more popular with a fan base that's rarely seen the kind of consistent greatness he brought over his first five seasons.
For Browns fans who never wanted to see Chubb in another uniform, the news that he's agreed to a one-year deal with the Houston Texans is not surprising but still disappointing.
Considering the gruesome knee injury Chubb suffered in Pittsburgh in September 2023, seeing him in any uniform again was never guaranteed. The Browns did right by Chubb by keeping him on an amended deal in 2024 and giving him the proper runway to return to the field, a comeback that was cut short by a broken foot.
Now that the Browns are in the acceptance stage of dealing with their disastrous 2022 Deshaun Watson trade and the lingering fallout, the folks in charge were right to let Chubb achieve true free agency — and probably right to move on with younger runners. The team drafted Quinshon Judkins and Dylan Sampson in April.
There is likely to be disappointment involved in this breakup, for sure. However, there doesn't need to be a lot of blame or anger toward the Browns' front office, which long ago structured Chubb's extension to expire after the 2024 season. Chubb is six months short of his 30th birthday and plays an unforgiving, unfair sport at a position that does not often have a long shelf life.
The Browns have mismanaged numerous situations and now find themselves in an awkward place with their roster. With Chubb trying to rediscover his form and the Browns needing to reinvent many things, it was time for both sides to move forward.
It stings because Chubb's arrival in 2018 was a part of Cleveland moving past the worst three-year stretch in NFL history. Chubb was shot out of a cannon on those runs in Oakland in the first month of his rookie season, when he ran for 105 yards and two touchdowns on just three carries. A few weeks later, then-general manager John Dorsey had to trade starting running back Carlos Hyde on a Friday afternoon to make sure Chubb got more chances.
NICK CHUBB TO THE HOUSE #CLEvsOAK pic.twitter.com/863bKmneGN
— FOX Sports (@FOXSports) September 30, 2018
Doing the simple things has been hard for this franchise, but much of what made Chubb great in Cleveland was his simplicity.
He ran off tackle. He ran through tackles. Then, at 227 pounds, he often pulled away from safeties and linebackers. Chubb said little, complained less and kept things — and the chains — moving. He nearly won the NFL rushing title in 2019 and averaged 5.6 yards per carry the next season as the Browns won 11 games.
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Kevin Stefanski was named the 2020 NFL Coach of the Year, and a key reason for this was his installation of a wide-zone rushing attack and a series of game plans that featured both Chubb and Kareem Hunt in a physical offense that wore down opponents.
Chubb ranks third on the Browns' all-time rushing list behind Hall of Famers Jim Brown and Leroy Kelly. He's second behind Brown in multiple rushing categories, and his average of 5.3 yards per carry from 2018 to 2023 ranked only behind Jamaal Charles in the highest career average per rush among NFL running backs.
Chubb has 30 games of 100-plus rushing yards and went over 1,000 yards for four straight seasons from 2019 to 2022.
After Chubb set the franchise record for longest run on a 92-yard touchdown against Atlanta in 2018, the first thing he told the media after the game was that his linemen did 'just a great job up front.' He never sought the spotlight or cared about the numbers. He just wanted the ball.
'Nick is a pretty special football player,' Stefanski said in October, just before Chubb's return. 'He's a pretty special person. I think he embodies a lot of what we want to be as Cleveland Browns, and certainly I think our fans feel that from him. And for me, from my chair, I get to watch him work and I get to see the fruits of his labor. And I (got) to peek out of my office window early in the morning and see he was the only one out there running.
'So, I've gotten to witness this journey, if you will, back to last year and how hard he's worked.'
Now that he's off to Houston, it's easy to cringe about how the Texans fleeced the Browns in 2022 or remember that Cleveland drafted Chubb with a pick acquired from Houston in the Brock Osweiler trade, a move that worked in a way for both teams.
But one moment that sums up what made Chubb truly different came in a 2020 Browns-Texans game, when he broke free on what could have been a 60-yard touchdown in the game's final minute.
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With the Browns up by three, Chubb instead ran out of bounds at the 1-yard line. The Browns then took two knees to end the game, slamming the door on any possibility of a wild Texans comeback. It reinforced two themes that followed Chubb for the rest of his Browns career: that he always put the team first, and that he almost always delivered.