Nick Chubb, the Lamborghini of Tailbacks

 

Nick Chubb, the Lamborghini of Tailbacks 

Joseph DiPietro

Nick Chubb was once asked why he doesn’t tweet or post on social media. His response?

“You ever seen a Lamborghini commercial? don't gotta advertise”

By this point, everyone knows I’m a Georgia fan, so go ahead and tell me I’m biased. I don’t care. To be fair, Derrick Henry fits a lot of this narrative too.

Nick is one of my favorite players. He is probably the hardest working athlete in the world. He is a kind and generous human too- despite his killer instinct on the field. My sister worked for the team for a few years and had nothing but good experiences with him; my mother in law met him once at an event and she said “Go Dawgs” and in typical, short winded Chubb fashion he replied “Go Dawgs”. A real class act.

But he’s also one of the best runners in the NFL, and has been since he got to the league. That’s a fact, not an opinion. There’s only one stat that matters in the NFL for running backs in the ground game- yards after contact, and Nick Chubb has led the NFL in that statistic since he entered the league.

Many folks want to know 40-times, squat maxes, or three cone times at the combine. Once in the league, people hang on to stats like yards-per-carry. But that’s the most overrated stat for a runner because that tells me nothing about him, and everything about the offensive line. If you’re playing in college or the NFL, we already know you’ve got decent speed and power. If a line makes a hole, or if a line hits every block in a zone scheme, any halfway decent runner can hit it and get positive yardage. But what if there is no hole? What if the hole doesn’t last long? What if the zone is beaten? A soft runner will be held to a negative gain or at most they’ll make it to the line of scrimmage. A good runner, like Nick, turns those situations into positive gains despite the adversity.

His success on the field is only a part of why he is one of my favorite players. It’s his work off the field and sometimes the things he doesn’t do that put him in a league of his own.

Nick is well known to be a monster in the weight room. There are plenty of videos to prove it, he was featured as Tim Tebow’s Freak of the Week at least once, and we’ve interviewed one of his offensive lineman that confirmed how dedicated he is to his strength. I remember a story about Nick skipping Spring Break at Georgia to work on his strength and speed- I spent spring breaks playing rugby in college but it was more fun than work for us, and it was in season too.

In addition to his weight room dedication, I love how Nick Chubb has overcome adversity. I was disgusted when I saw his knee turn around against Tennessee a few years back. For tailbacks, you never know if that could be the end of a promising career. Nick had every reason to give up, but he worked even harder and helped lead Georgia to a Rose Bowl victory and an overtime away from a national championship. You wanna talk about yards after contact- please go watch his runs against Oklahoma in the Rose Bowl. I was so blessed to be there that night, and the way he just bounced off defenders was incredible. I even use those highlights to teach combined arms for my Marines. Even before then, as a freshman, Nick was just about the only tailback left on the UGA roster after a series of injuries and suspensions. He embraced that moment, and his first game as the starter resulted in 42 touches for 174 yards in a 34-0 victory. And of course, we can’t forget how he scored his first touchdown for my beloved Dawgs, on his first college carry with only one shoe on. Nothing can stop this guy.

And finally, what separates him from others in his position the most are the things he doesn’t do. He doesn’t brag. He doesn’t run his mouth on or off the field. He doesn’t showboat. His end zone celebrations are so subtle you barely can tell he scores. He is the epitome of “speak softly and carry a big stick”, and his big stick is the powerful lower body he runs every play with. Some station made the mistake of featuring him in a “mic’d up” segment... he didn’t say much...

There’s so many good lessons to learn from this football star- work ethic, dedication, resilience, you name it, Nick demonstrates it. I hope he has a long and healthy career in the league, but whenever that ends I would give just about anything to have him on one of my teams. In the meantime- even though he’s not a quarterback, I’d probably submit my vote for Nick as the NFL MVP. After all, he is the Lamborghini of the NFL.