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Through 10 games so far, it hasn’t been Chase Young that’s gotten the top grade of rookie players in Washington, but rather Antonio Gibson, a third-round pick out of Memphis who had an uphill battle when it came to exceeding at the running back position in the NFL.
We all saw highlights of him in college, darting in and out of tackles and making defenders miss out in the open, but questions still remained. Could a player who only had a total of 33 carries as a running back in college succeed at that position at the next level? Would he be successful running in between the tackles and operating out of a backfield? Was it really smart for Washington to take a bit of a flier in the third round when they already had players like Derrius Guice and Adrian Peterson on the roster?
Man, do those questions seem pretty silly now.
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Gibson has been a revelation so far through 10 games, and with both AP and Guice long gone from the team, Washington needs every ounce of production that the rookie can give them. So far this year, he has 742 total yards with eight touchdowns, and he’s assumed the lead back role on the team with ease. What’s more, is that he claims to still be learning a position that is somewhat new to him.
“Just getting started,” said Gibson, after rushing 16 times for 94 yards and a touchdown in a win over the Bengals. “It’s a lot I have to learn. There’s a lot to the running back position that’s new to me. Each week I’m learning. I keep saying that. It’s just the beginning.”
If “the beginning” means asserting himself as one of the best young players in the game, and finding a spot in the top 15 RBs in the NFL, then yea, I think everyone in Washington is pretty happy with where things might go from here. It’s always hard to predict what the career of a running back might look like because there is usually so much variance from player to player depending on scheme and injury risk, but so far, Washington seems to have found an absolutely solid building block of their offense, and he’s just getting started.
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