2. Nick Chubb, Cleveland Browns
Cleveland’s offense under former head coach Freddie Kitchens was a disorganized mess in 2019, but Chubb was the stalwart among all the mess. In his second NFL season, the Georgia alum ranked second behind Tennessee’s Derrick Henry with 1.494 yards, adding 278 receiving yards on 36 catches, and there’s a reason the Browns led the league in running back screens. Nobody in the 2019 regular season had more runs of 15-plus yards than Chubb’s 20, and only Josh Jacobs of the Raiders had more broken rushing tackles than Chubb’s 66. With two notable exceptions, Chubb was everything the Browns hoped he would be in 2019. Given his near-perfect attributes for the position, you can expect more of the same over the next few seasons.
If you ask me, Nick Chubb has the most complete rushing skill set of any back in the league. Vision, acceleration, wiggle, contact balance… on and on. A more comprehensive offense might produce 2020's rushing champ. pic.twitter.com/vcxtULRUSy
— Doug Farrar (@NFL_DougFarrar) July 26, 2020
The only things that prevented Chubb from ranking first on this list were his relative ineffectiveness against stacked boxes (per Football Outsiders, the Browns had just 2.4 yards per carry and -37.2% DVOA when facing a heavy box of eight or more defenders, compared to a 5.6-yard average and 8.8% DVOA on other running back carries), and certain red zone issues (he ran 51 times for just 89 yards in the red zone, and only seven of those carries were touchdowns or first downs). We can attribute some of that to Cleveland’s overall offensive malaise, and the idea is that new head coach Kevin Stefanski will bring enough of the things he learned from Gary Kubiak in Minnesota to turn Chubb into a force multiplier in the very few ways he isn’t already.