Kansas City Chiefs rookie running back Kareem Hunt is off to just about as good a start to the season as anyone can possibly have.
Hunt has played in four games, and in all four he has totaled at least 100 yards from scrimmage. He's just the fourth player in NFL history to start his career with four straight games of 100 yards from scrimmage or more, joining Billy Sims, LaDainian Tomlinson, and Adrian Peterson on the list. His 659 scrimmage yards in those four games are second to only Sims in the history of the NFL.
Hunt already has three touchdowns of 50 yards or more, and was the first player in the history of the league to begin his career with a 50-plus yard touchdown in each of his first three games. He has more plays of 50 yards or more (four) than any running back has had in a full season since Adrian Peterson in 2012 – and there are still 12 games left.
He currently leads the league in rushing yards and yards from scrimmage, while only Todd Gurley has more touchdowns. He's caught all 13 of his targets for 157 yards and two scores, while his 68 carries have totaled an incredible 502 yards, or 7.4 a pop. Among players with at least 60 carries in their team's first four games of the season, only Jim Brown has ever exceeded Hunt's current yards per carry average.
All of those stats are pretty amazing, and do well to highlight just how good Hunt has been early on. But this next stat shows just how much better he's been than everyone else, and it's pretty ridiculous.
From @NFLResearch. Amazing.
— Andrew Siciliano (@AndrewSiciliano) October 4, 2017
Kareem Hunt has 372 rush yards in 2nd halves of 4 games. No other player @NFL has that many TOTAL rush yards.
WHAT? Yes, that's really real.
Player | Att | Yds | Yds/Att | TD |
Kareem Hunt | 68 | 502 | 7.38 | 4 |
Kareem Hunt (2H) | 44 | 372 | 8.45 | 4 |
Todd Gurley | 86 | 362 | 4.21 | 4 |
Dalvin Cook | 74 | 354 | 4.78 | 2 |
C.J. Anderson | 73 | 330 | 4.52 | 1 |
Le'Veon Bell | 87 | 324 | 3.72 | 3 |
Carlos Hyde | 65 | 321 | 4.94 | 2 |
Leonard Fournette | 81 | 285 | 3.52 | 3 |
Devonta Freeman | 70 | 285 | 4.07 | 5 |
Ezekiel Elliott | 76 | 277 | 3.64 | 2 |
Ameer Abdullah | 66 | 257 | 3.89 | 1 |
That's the list of top-10 rushers in the league so far this season, with Hunt's second-half stats split out from his overall totals. His 372 yards on the ground in second halves are indeed 10 more than second-leading Todd Gurley has in eight halves combined.
It seems impossible for Hunt to keep up this level of production, but it's clear at this point that he's already one of the best backs in the NFL, if not the best. Pretty impressive for a rookie that wasn't even the lead runner heading into training camp and may not have even been in the lineup if not for Spencer Ware's preseason injury.