Breaking the Chiefs single-season rushing record is very, very difficult

If Kareem Hunt wants to be able to claim the spot atop the Chiefs rushing records for most yards in a season, it will take a Herculean effort.

Larry Johnson can breathe easy.

The Kansas City Chiefs single season rushing record currently belongs to Johnson, just as it has for the last 12 years. In 2006, Johnson eclipsed his own personal record set the previous season with an incredible 1,789 rushing yards on the year. It bested his previous mark by 49 yards and together they are the only seasons in franchise history where a running back has gained over 1,700 yards rushing.

The Chiefs have enjoyed a nice decades-long run of incredible running backs in recent years, and they now boast one of the NFL’s best and brightest in sophomore back Kareem Hunt. Last year, Hunt turned heads from his very first day on the job with a record-setting debut of 246 yards from scrimmage against the New England Patriots. From there, Hunt took hold of the NFL rushing lead from the outset and enjoyed a burst in the final quarterback to reclaim it at season’s end. It was a brilliant rookie campaign that culminated in being only the sixth freshman back to win the league’s rushing title.

As great as Hunt’s season was, a league-leading effort, it landed at No. 9 on the all-time Chiefs single-season list. Of course, that’s nothing at all to sneeze at, and Chiefs Kingdom is thrilled to know that Hunt is the starting back for the next few years at least. But when gaining perspective of what it takes to put together as many yards as Johnson did, you realize just how much more work Hunt would need to put in.

Health/Longevity

If a player like Hunt wants to eclipses Johnson’s single-season record, he would have to average 112 rushing yards per game for an entire season. This means that a player would have to remain healthy for the entire year while also not taking off the final game of the season like most starters did this year to prep for the playoffs. Check this stat: Kareem Hunt only had 4 games that matched or bested that total in 2017—and he led the league in rushing.

Commitment to Run

The game itself has changed quite a bit since only a decade-plus ago when Larry Johnson was in his prime. If you notice the Chiefs rushing records, you’ll see that the decade itself produced everyone atop the leaderboard. Johnson ended up taking over for Priest Holmes to start his career, and Holmes is the very man immediately following LJ on the list. In fact, three of Holmes’s seasons come in higher than Hunt’s year in which he led the NFL. In short, even the best in the NFL today pales in comparison to a decade ago.

Perhaps nothing shows this more than the fact that Johnson’s record-setting total wasn’t even the NFL’s highest mark that year. Instead that belonged to LaDanian Tomlinson of the San Diego Chargers who had 1,815. The Chiefs have only had two seasons in which a player rushed for more than 1,615 yards (those seasons being LJ’s two years mentioned earlier), yet in 2006, the NFL had 4 players rush for a total higher than that, including Tiki Barber and Frank Gore.

In order for a player like Hunt to be able to top Johnson for No. 1 overall, the Chiefs would have to wholeheartedly commit to the run as the focal point of the offense. That means telling Andy Reid to not use Tyreek Hill, Sammy Watkins or Travis Kelce. Good luck.

Offensive line

There’s one more piece of this puzzle that is worth mentioning, a hurdle that will keep Hunt or someone else from eclipsing Johnson’s total. The quality of the offensive front is everything when it comes to a running game. Zeke Elliott has a lot of natural ability but it certainly helps that he’s running behind the league’s best offensive line.

When Johnson broke the record, he had future Hall of Famer Will Shields at one guard spot, a likely future Hall of Famer at the other in Brian Waters and a damn good center in Pro Bowler Casey Wiegmann. The Chiefs of today haven’t had a Pro Bowl offensive lineman in years. Mitchell Schwartz deserves the honor. Laurent Duvernay-Tardif is a decent bet to someday earn the honor, and Mitch Morse and Eric Fisher have both played at high levels. Yet none of them have yet arrived.

In the future, I’d expect a few members of this unit to be gone or at least not starting by the time any new running back is going to challenge for that crown.