Nick Chubb could always soar. Now, he’s sprinting toward the NFL rushing title

A bird? A plane? Neither, actually.

Check out the picture above. The muscular young man high above Lane 2 is now a fully-formed battering ram known for more than just this picture that went viral five years ago. This Sunday, Nick Chubb is a near-lock to wrap up the NFL rushing title. That accomplishment is bringing the low-key Chubb more outside attention than he’s used to — or maybe than he’s comfortable with.

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He’s earned it, and with it comes some extra internal attention, too. Inside the Browns’ locker room, he’s getting some ribbing about the picture that initially made him internet famous.

“That picture is definitely a keeper,” wide receiver Damion Ratley said. “That’s one of my best friends, man. I mess with him. I tell him ‘You don’t have those hops. That must have been a weird angle.’

“All I can say is Chubb grew up running and lifting logs and stuff. What else are you gonna do down in Cedartown, Georgia? That’s how he became so big and fast.”

Imagine deciding to run HS track and then H̶e̶r̶c̶u̶l̶e̶s̶ Nick Chubb pulls up to the lane next to you

— Tron Madden (@madden_tron) September 30, 2019

First things first. Yes, it’s a real picture. They’re all real pictures, and they were taken at the 2014 Georgia High School Association state track meet. Even back then, Chubb’s muscles had muscles.

The picture of Chubb soaring more than three feet above the ground before the 100 meter dash was taken by Radi Nabulsi, the publisher of Rivals-owned site UGASports.com. It wasn’t until Nabulsi fielded 15-20 calls over the next several days asking for permission to re-use the picture on various websites and news broadcasts that he realized it was anything special.

“I’d been following Nick Chubb for a few years at that point,” Nabulsi said. “I’d seen him do things like that all the time. He was different, in a good way.”

Chubb won the 4A state title in the shot-put at the meet with a throw of 55 feet, and he also qualified for the state finals in the 100 and 200 meters. His 10.69 100-meter dash and 21.83 200-meter dash at the sectional meet both set Cedartown school records; he took fifth in both races at the state meet.

Chubb guesses now that he was probably 218 pounds when that picture was taken; his Rivals.com high school recruiting profile listed him as such. His vertical jump had been measured at 40.8 inches the previous summer on the football recruiting camp circuit.

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To the mere mortals in Lane Nos. 1, 3 and 4, it probably seemed higher.

“I did the same jump before every race,” Chubb said. “That was all part of my routine. The only thing different is that picture went viral.”

That’s Chubb, a man of many long runs but few hyperbolic descriptions. He doesn’t like to say much about anything, and that goes for winning the NFL rushing title or trying to win multiple medals at the state track meet five years ago.

“I saw the pictures, and I have to admit my jaw kind of hit the floor,” Browns guard and team captain Joel Bitonio said. “I don’t know if someone had it in a meeting or maybe I got it in a group chat, but one day I went up and said, ‘Hey, Chubb. Tell me you won this race after you jumped, like, 60 inches off the ground.’

“And he said ‘No, I didn’t, I think I took fifth or sixth.’ So that kind of floored me. But it just shows that back then he was what he is now, which is a guy who’s way too big to be doing the things he does athletically. I mean, that kind of vertical at 220 pounds? As a teenager? I’m guessing in Georgia there are tons of fast guys so I understand him not winning the state title in the 100, but I guarantee nobody close to 200 pounds could run or jump like he could.”

Browns linebacker Joe Schobert, a high school running back who was a jumper on his high school track team and part-time relay participant, chuckled as he scrolled the pictures of Chubb in the state track meet.

“A 10.69 in the 100 for a guy that big,” Schobert said. “I don’t know what to say. That’s freakish.”

Said Bitonio: “He was a state champ in the shot put and a sprinter. That’s basically an unheard of combination. Almost 220 pounds, jumping 40 inches and running under 10.7 in the 100 at 18 years old? That’s incredible.”

Here is a another shot of incoming #UGA RB Nick Chubb. Opposing linebackers be warned….

— Radi Nabulsi (@RadiNabulsi) May 13, 2014

Said Ratley: “That’s a big man. His face in that picture is just so funny. Here’s this big beast running by these regular-sized guys. I was maybe 170 pounds running high school track, like most guys running those sprints are. Chubb was not only 220 then, but he would have beaten me by about four steps (in the 100).”

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Nabulsi said many around Georgia saw the video game-like numbers from Chubb (6,893 yards, 102 touchdowns) at Cedartown High School and pegged him as a really big and strong fish in a small pond.

“But that’s kind of why I tweeted the (track meet) pictures,” Nabulsi said. “It showed that he had some real explosion. It took a while, and after Nick’s knee injury (in 2015 his sophomore season) I think a lot of people wondered if his career was over. It was that ugly…but he’s super-human.”

Chubb’s injury, suffered on the first play of a game against SEC rival Tennessee, resulted in three ligament tears. But he was back on the field in time for the 2016 season opener, and he ran for 222 yards in that game against North Carolina. The comeback from the knee injury and Chubb’s decision to stay for his 2017 senior season made him a homegrown hero in and around the Georgia program before the Browns drafted him at No. 35 overall in 2018.

One of the stories that’s been passed around about Chubb is that he was squatting 600 pounds around six months after his knee injury — and the only reason he wasn’t squatting more weight is that the Georgia strength staff prevented him from doing so.

“I can say I got it right on Nick Chubb,” Nabulsi said. “But he’s even surpassed my expectations. I always knew he was special. I didn’t know he was Superman-esque.”

Entering the final week of the season, Chubb is the NFL’s rushing leader by 92 yards over Christian McCaffrey of the Panthers. Assuming the pass-happy Browns just feed him the ball a few times in Sunday’s season finale at Cincinnati, he’ll become the Browns’ first rushing champion since Leroy Kelly in 1968.

With 1,453 yards, Chubb already has the best rushing season of the Browns’ new era, the best by someone other than Jim Brown and the fourth-best in team history. With a big game Sunday, he could move all the way to second by passing Brown’s third (1,527 in 1958) and second-best (1,544 in 1965) seasons. The franchise record is 1,863, which Brown set in 1963.

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The Browns now list Chubb at 227 pounds. He turns 24 later this week, which means he was only 22 when he showed off his explosiveness on touchdown runs covering 92 and 63 yards, respectively, last season. The 92-yard run was the longest in Browns’ history. This season, his 11 runs of 20 yards or more are tied for the most in the league.

For further perspective on an 18-year old shot-put state champion jumping more than 40 inches before taking fifth place in the 100-meter dash, consider this: At the 2019 NFL scouting combine, only 15 players recorded a vertical jump of 40 inches or higher. All but three of those fifteen were defensive backs or wide receivers. At the 2018 combine, Chubb’s official vertical jump measurement was 38.5 inches. His official weight was 227 pounds

“I’m a little heavier now than I was when I jumped 40 inches in high school,” he said.

And also a little bit more famous.

(Top photo courtesy Radi Nabulsi)