Every superhero story needs its conflict – its tragic backstory, its inevitable fights, its moral dilemmas, its threatening antagonists. And since being drafted in 2018, Cleveland Browns running back Nick Chubb has been a superhero in the backfield.
He’s run his way to four Pro Bowls and a second-team All-Pro selection, carrying the Browns offense on his back with increasingly impossible touchdown runs.
Unfortunately, adversity quickly found Cleveland’s protagonists. Before his NFL career started, it almost never happened thanks to a torn MCL, LCL, and PCL in his left knee. After his stretch of dominance, his 2023 season ended in Week 2 when that same knee tore its MCL and ACL at the hands of Pittsburgh Steelers safety Minkah Fitzpatrick.
That could’ve been curtains for Chubb. Perhaps for its prime, it was. But he managed to return in 2024, although that too was cut short due to injury, this time via a broken foot in Week 15.
Now, he’s set to be a free agent, and despite his standing as a franchise icon, general manager Andrew Berry didn’t seem optimistic about his potential return.
“We do expect Nick to hit the market,” Berry said, via Cleveland.com, at the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis. “Obviously his contract is up this year. We’ll meet with his reps and everything like that, but it’s obviously something we need to work through over the next couple weeks.”
The Browns legend shared a viral social media post after Berry’s comments. He took to Instagram to post a picture of Batman wiping blood off his mouth.
Chubb has frequently been compared to Batman, the beloved character that the running back seems to channel, if not resemble, on Sundays. It doesn’t take a comic book nerd to take meaning from his post.
It’s simply more adversity for Chubb to mount; further odds for him to beat.
Cleveland likely didn’t offer him much more than the league minimum, and certainly didn’t offer him much in the form of guaranteed money. That’s understandable given the injury history and the shape of production at the running back position.
His last season didn’t do him any favors, either. Rushing 102 times for 332 yards and three scores, Chubb looked like a running back beaten down by bad fortune. His yards per carry plummeted two full yards from his career average entering 2024 and he was similarly inefficient through the air.
It simply might be over for Chubb. If it is, he’ll go down as an easy entry into the team’s Ring of Honor and one of the defining backs of his era. He was quantifiably elite and matched it off the field.
Chubb’s looming free agency won’t define him. But it’s always darkest before dawn, and the superhero born in the Browns’ backfield could have one last fight in him. It’s up to the rest of the league to give him that shot.