Jordan Howard has become the favorite of Chicago Bears fans everywhere in the past six months. Everybody loves an underdog or a Cinderella story. Howard is a little bit of both. A quiet young man from Alabama, he hoped to forge his football legacy at the University of Alabama-Birmingham as their featured running back.
Despite an outstanding 2014 season, his entire career was jeopardized when the football program at UAB went belly up. That left him without a team to play for. In the past some young men were forced to switch their entire future plans to something different when that happened. Howard held out hope he could rescue the moment.
He transferred to Indiana and worked his way into the starting lineup. There he became their offensive focal point. His play earned third and even second round grades from some draft experts. However, people were skeptical. He ended up falling to the fifth round were the Bears scooped him up. Even then people didn't realize what Chicago had gotten.
Now the final stats are revealing it, and they're staggering.
Michael David Smith of Pro Football Talk came across a startling realization after doing some grunt research regarding the final tally of top rushers in the NFL. Not only was Howard being second in the NFL in yards impressive considering he was a fifth round pick, but there was a far more shocking twist.
"For the first time in NFL history, two rookies stand atop the list of rushing leaders. Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott easily won the NFL’s rushing title, finishing with 1, 631 yards despite taking Week 17 off. And in something no one could have seen coming at the start of the season, Bears rookie running back Jordan Howard finished second, with 1, 313 yards. That has never happened before in the NFL: Before Elliott only 13 rookies had led the league in rushing, and in none of those seasons had the No. 2 rusher also been a rookie. (Rookies did go 1-2 in rushing twice in the AFL, in 1960 and 1968.)"Keep in mind this league has been around since the 1920s. In all that time the NFL has never had two rookie running backs lead everybody else. That's a span of almost a century. It seems so fitting that Chicago and Dallas are the two organizations who featured those players. After all, they have arguably the richest running back histories in pro football. The Cowboys will Tony Dorsett and Emmitt Smith. The Bears with Bronco Nagurski, Gale Sayers and Walter Payton. The depth of Howard's incredible success goes even further too. Kevin Fishbain of the Northwest Herald delivered some fascinating stats from his rookie seasons. Turns out it was even more special than this revelation indicates. https://twitter.com/kfishbain/status/816327962337234944 https://twitter.com/kfishbain/status/816328148103131136 https://twitter.com/kfishbain/status/816328599880028164 https://twitter.com/kfishbain/status/816329332935315457 https://twitter.com/kfishbain/status/816329593665835008 Howard is keeping some pretty special company with these lists. Including a couple Hall of Famers. It's way too soon to think about what he might become 8-10 years down the road. Nevertheless it is apparent they Bears got themselves a potential superstar at a bargain price. The dream of every GM, coaching staff and fan base. Moving forward the Bears now know that whenever they get in trouble on offense, they can just give it to Howard. https://twitter.com/thegeorgeyou/status/816201902979514368 Here's hoping the team doesn't waste his best years by failing to put a proper offense in place with a quarterback and quality receivers. The ceiling of this offense could be limitless if Ryan Pace and his people don't screw it up.
