Panthers' Hubbard among NFL's elite running backs as he joins exclusive Canadian club

Chuba Hubbard rushes toward record A Sherwood Park NFL player has accomplished a major milestone reached by just one other Canadian player. Adel Ahmed reports.

Chuba Hubbard wasn't thinking about it when some of his Carolina Panthers teammates came up to him after their loss to the visiting Philadelphia Eagles a little more than two weeks ago.

The starting running back for the National Football League club had rushed for 92 yards in the 22-16 decision – and passed a mark not just significant in annual statistical terms but in historical terms.

Hubbard has reached 1,000 yards rushing in the 2024 NFL campaign, not only to join a handful of others near the top of the league stats sheet but also to become just the second Canadian to reach the milestone in a season.

"(They) were like, 'I think we got 1,000,' and we went and checked and saw that we did," Hubbard told CTV News Edmonton last week. "We were all excited in the locker room after so it was a great achievement for all of us."

The 25-year-old product of Sherwood Park, Alta., where he played three-down football at Bev Facey high school before being recruited by Oklahoma State in 2017 to play at the top-tier U.S. college level, joined Rueben Mayes on the list of Canadian running backs to have reached 1,000 yards in an NFL season.

Mayes, who grew up in North Battleford, Sask., and played U.S. college football at Washington State, hit the mark in 1986, amassing 1,353 yards in his rookie season with the New Orleans Saints.

Hubbard said he recently found out about Mayes and the Canadian connection.

"To know that I'm a part of that now, it was definitely cool to hear," Hubbard said. "It definitely shows that more Canadians will also get to that mark and do great things, even surpass me. To be the second one, it's definitely a blessing."

In the two games since passing 1,000 against the Eagles on Dec. 8, Hubbard has run his season rushing total to a career-high 1,195 yards – with 152 of them coming on Sunday as Hubbard scored two touchdowns, including the winning score on a 21-yard scamper in overtime, in the Panthers' 36-30 victory over the visiting Arizona Cardinals.

That performance earned him National Football Conference (NFC) offensive player of the week honours on Tuesday from the NFL.

Hubbard, in his fourth year with the 4-11 Panthers, has taken on the bulk of the rushing workload this season – with injuries sidelining fellow Carolina running backs Miles Sanders and Jonathan Brooks – and has already set other career bests with 250 carries and 10 rushing touchdowns. He signed a contract extension with Carolina last month worth $33.2 million over four years.

Dave Naylor, who covers football for TSN, told CTV News Edmonton on Monday that Hubbard's performance not just this season but over his U.S. football journey – from All-American and all-star honours in an NCAA power conference to being drafted and eventually starting at running back for an NFL squad – is noteworthy for Canadians.

"If you get a second contract in the National Football League as a running back from the team that drafted you for the kind of money that he got, that's significant in itself," Naylor said.

"This is a tough time in the NFL to be a running back. There are a lot of organizations in the NFL that subscribe – not exclusively, but very close – to a philosophy that says, 'You draft running backs, you let them play four or five years for you, you let them go, and you draft another one,' because the joke is that running back is the only job in the world at which experience is not an asset because it's like the odometer. How much are you worn down? How much burst have you lost by the time you take so much contact, so many hits?

"So the fact that you have a team like Carolina, which has not had things going their way of late, and they're going to turn over a whole bunch of things in terms of their personnel and their roster, but they've locked into Chuba Hubbard playing the running back position, that he's a building block.

"That, in itself, is a statement."

And it's looking like Hubbard won't be the only Canadian NFLer who'll eclipse 1,000 yards rushing this season: Chase Brown, the starting running back for the Cincinnati Bengals and a native of London, Ont., has 923 yards rushing on the year. There are two weeks of regular-season games left on the NFL schedule.

That two Canadians are in line to join Mayes among the NFL '1,000 yards in a season' club is a result not only of more opportunities for players north of the border to showcase their talents to U.S. college scouts – for example, at elite showcase camps "to show that (they) can go toe to toe with the best kids that are down there but from increased exposure, Naylor says.

"Kids will upload their highlights, and if they want to, there are all kinds of people selling services to give them exposure to colleges and things like that," Naylor said.

"So the idea of being in Canada, I think it's still a significant obstacle for geographic reasons, and because a lot of American coaches don't believe in the level of competition that they're playing and that they can step up into power conference (college) football, but because of technology, their exposure comes a lot more easily than it would have in the days of Reuben Mayes."

Naylor says in recent times, more and more Canadians are playing in feature skill positions in U.S. football than in years past.

"It's really only been the last 10 or 15 years that we've started to see (Canadian) running backs, receivers, defensive backs – the real speed and skill positions of football," he said.

"For people who are paying attention to college football, you see both these guys coming. Chuba Hubbard was an NCAA rushing champion and was in the conversation for the Heisman Trophy. Chase Brown was a rushing champion up until about the last week of the season (and) finished second in the NCAA in rushing in 2022, and was briefly in the Heisman Trophy conversation. That doesn't always translate to the National Football League, but in the case of both these guys, it has, and a whole bunch of other players at those skill positions that are being taken higher in the draft and playing more meaningful roles in the NFL."

Hubbard said while reaching career highs and setting records for Canadians are rewarding, his focus is on winning an NFL championship.

"You strive to be your best every single day, every year, and things like that are a part of it, but winning games and winning a Super Bowl is the big goal for me," Hubbard said.

"But to know where I came from and all it took, and all the people that helped me, and to think that was even the tangible goal at such a young age, and then it actually happened, it just pushed things into perspective of how lucky and blessed I am to have gone to this, got this far, and I've said it a million times now, but it takes a village to do that, so I'm just thankful."