Cleveland Got My Back

“Damn, I really did that s*** again.”

That was my first thought after I went down against Pittsburgh last season. When you get hurt like I got hurt, the weird thing is that you don’t even really feel anything. But you hear everything. You hear that weird silence in the crowd. You can sense your teammates kind of gathering around you. 

You’re hearing a lot of “It’s gonna be alright, bro.”

That’s never a good sign. Once guys start getting down on one knee, you know it’s pretty bad. If it’s my teammates praying over me, maybe it’s just a bone bruise. Maybe I’ll be back by the playoffs. 

But now I got Steelers praying over me? 

That’s when you know it’s serious. The dark thoughts start creeping in. 

“I really did it again, huh? 

They might not be able to put me back together again this time. 

This might be a wrap. 

Why me, Lord? 

Just …….. Why me.”

This was not my first rodeo. My sophomore year at Georgia, just as I was really starting to make a name for myself, I had one of those freak injuries that can end your career. I was just trying to finish out a run, get an extra yard … and the next thing I know my leg buckles under me kind of funny … and then the whole stadium goes silent. I didn’t even realize how bad it was until they loaded me into the police SUV to get me to the hospital, and I finally checked my phone. 

I had like 100 text messages. That’s never good when you’re in college. You’re not that important. I’m seeing prayer hands emojis. I’m seeing Bible verses. “Praying 4 you bro.” Oh Lord … what happened?

I go on Twitter and my name is trending. The first thing I see is a video of me. With one of those warnings like *GRAPHIC*

*VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED*

Bro, what happened to me?

I watched the video of me going down, almost like it wasn’t really me, and I’m like, “Dang, dude’s leg is bent backwards. It’s definitely not supposed to do that.”

But I was so young and naive, and my leg was still numb, so I’m thinking, “I’ll be back. Don’t you worry about it. Whatever happened, I’m the exception. I’m coming back stronger.”

When I was lying on the ground against Pittsburgh, I wasn’t so naive anymore. I had so many metal nails and plates in my knee from the first one. I’m thinking: Please don’t let those nails be splintered all over my leg right now. I knew what rehab from something like this actually meant. I knew what nine weeks in a straight-knee brace does to a leg. When I finally got out and saw my leg the first time, it had atrophied down to the size of my arm. I thought I was never gonna walk the same again, let alone run. 

So I’m lying there, and I’m thinking: This could be it. 

I got back to the locker room and they ran the tests. I’m waiting for the results, and I grab my phone. 

Like 300 messages. I’m not that popular. Not good. Go on Twitter. It’s like déjà vu. I’m trending. Now I know not to even watch the video. 

First tweet I see….

LeBron James. 

DAMN MAN!!!! 🤦🏾‍♂️. 🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾 Nick Chubb. Praying for the absolute best.

The funny thing is he didn’t even tag me, but the algorithm knows who I am, so it served it right up. 

“Praying for the absolute best.” 

I’m like: Oh my God, what happened? I’m alive right? 

For real though, those messages meant the world to me. Just LeBron and everybody showing me love in a really dark time. But I can’t lie to you. At that moment, I was thinking that I had probably played my last NFL down. 

There was one thing that got me through it. One thing that kept me positive. And it’s been the same thing since I was young. My why…….. My family. 

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“At six o’clock, the laughin’ stops.” 

You only need to understand two things about me, and you got a pretty solid picture of who I am. 

1. I don’t talk a lot, unless I really know you. And even then….

2. Everything I ever did, I did for my mom. 

Any time the media ever did a story on me, it was always about my father’s side of the family. And I can understand why. It’s a great story. My great-great-grandfather helped to found a town of free Blacks called Chubbtown. They built up a thriving community of businesses in Georgia during the Civil War era. It was a little miracle, honestly. That’s my name, my history, my family’s legacy. But it’s only half of me. My mother’s side of the family is my heart, my compass, my why. 

She raised me, and she was on her own for most of my childhood. Not just me, but my older brother and younger sister. I was the forgettable middle child. My brother was the super popular star athlete. Light skinned. He’d be like the Disney Channel main character. My little sister was the baby. I never even saw her walking anywhere until she was like six years old. They used to carry her around like the Queen of England. 

Me, I was just … Nick. Chilling by the PS2. Minding my business. 

My mom worked her ass off just to provide for us. She was working double shifts from when I was super young. I used to sneak down from our bedroom and see her crying over bills late at night. Like you see in the movies. That was our real life…. Just super poor, super stressed all the time. 

When I was around 10, my mom took on an extra night shift, and so we moved in with our grandma. 

And my grandma…. How can I say this without her taking it the wrong way? Because I love my grandma. 

My grandma was super strict. Super. She took no mess. 

When the sun went down at night, we had to stop laughing. 

“At six o’clock the laughin’ stops.”

That was the rule. Because once the sun went down, that meant it was time to get serious and start thinking about your work the next day. But we were little kids, and so of course we would start cutting up and trying to make each other laugh, right? When we got out of line, she’d make us do the Bart Simpson. 

You know the Bart Simpson picture, where he’s at the chalkboard in detention? 

My grandma would make us do that in a notebook. Whatever we did, we’d have to write it 100 times. 

I Will Not Talk Back to My Grandma

I Will Not Talk Back to My Grandma

I Will Not Talk Back to My Grandma.

Your hand would be cramping up like crazy. 

“Grandma, I can’t….”

“You should’ve thought of that before you were sassing me. Keep writing.”

When I say she taught us the value of hard work…. Let me paint the picture for you. She had this hill in the back of her house. Like a bank, real steep, with all these plants and gravel and stuff. In the summertime, she used to have me and my brother go out there and do landscaping. (The Queen didn’t have to do anything.) She’d have us picking weeds from underneath the rose bushes. No gloves, mind you. 

You ever get cut up by a rose bush? It’s not funny. 

“Gloves? I don’t got that kind of money. Toughen up.” 

One day, she gave us a new assignment: Pick up all the rocks from the bank. Load them all into these buckets….

“Come on now, those rocks ain’t going to move themselves.”

All day, we were gathering up these rocks. And she’s out there overseeing us, like a project manager or something. Finally, we got all the rocks picked up. 

“OK, grandma, what do we do now?”

“Dump them back on the bank again.”

What????

“Yeah, but I want them even. Spread out.”

Grandma. Be serious. 

“Take this rake. Rake all the rocks. I want ’em smooth.” 

Bro, when I tell you we were tired…. 

I don’t even know what the purpose was. It was some kind of grandma lesson that I will never fully understand. But you know what? When we were done, it honestly looked amazing. It was like one of those Japanese zen gardens, bro. And it was one of the best workouts of my life. 

I Will Not Talk Back to My Grandma
I Will Not Talk Back to My Grandma
I Will Not Talk Back to My Grandma.

- Nick Chubb

You have to understand, my grandma was from a very different era. A lot of racism. A lot of hardship. That definitely shaped her as a person, and she was trying to shape us for the world. Every night before we went to bed, she would make us stand in front of the mirror and repeat the same mantra. 

“I’m smart, I’m intelligent, and I believe in myself.”

But we had to say it like we meant it. You couldn’t stop until she believed that you were sincere. 

“Say it loud, like you mean it.” 

“I’m smart, I’m intelligent, and I believe in myself.”

“Don’t be mumbling, Nick.”

She had to hear that bass in your voice.

“I’M SMART. I’M INTELLIGENT. AND I BELIEVE IN MYSELF.”

It worked. I started believing, for real. 

By the time I got to high school, I really had one mission, and that was to make sure that my mom didn’t have to worry about paying for my college tuition. For me, that path was football. But it could’ve been anything. I just wanted to take care of her, and not have her stress about anything. 

I remember when I first started getting recruiting letters from colleges in the mail, and it kind of dawned on her like, “Oh, so they’re really gonna pay for your school? My son? That’s amazing.” 

Like I said, I was the forgettable middle child. 

We started getting so many letters that we put them in this big garbage bag. I had the Hefty bag going. I still have it at my house to this day. 

By my senior year, I was committed to the Georgia Bulldogs. (I always wanted a dog as a kid. That was my dream. That mean little bulldog was always the coolest mascot to me.) I was just so locked in at that point. I was barely even playing video games. It was a 24/7 grind. I remember I used to be searching my name and reading all these comments like: “Yeah, Chubb is a bigger back. They already got Sony Michel, and he’s a five-star. They might move Chubb to fullback.”

Fullback?

I am not gonna be no fullback. 

Seeing that stuff, I was a man on fire….

I remember I had saved up my P.E. classes all four years in high school. You could pick when to do your P.E., and I waited until my last semester so I could have two every day. I’m like: Finally. I’m chilling. I can’t wait to just be playing some dodgeball or some badminton or something. 

But my P.E. teacher was also my football coach.

Mike Worthington. 

And I can say this because Mike Worthington is like a second father to me. 

Mike Worthington is crazy. 

He’s like, “You think you’re going to be playing badminton? You think they play badminton at Georgia?”

There’s literally a picture of our gym class — and you got a bunch of kids playing pickup basketball in the middle of the gym, having the time of their lives, and you can see me over in the corner of the gym doing hot knees on the Vertex machine. 

Mike got me jumping around cones, doing speedwork, while my buddies are playing freeze-tag or whatever. 

I was so mad, man. But in my head, as I was suffering, I was just thinking: “I am not going to Georgia to be no damn fullback.” 

That was the hardest A+ I ever got in my life. 

But I thank God for Mike Worthington, and for my grandmother, and for the way that I was brought up, because when you’re young like that, you have no idea everything that life is going to throw at you. 

Obviously, life has thrown two major injuries at me now. 

Were there dark days? Oh yes. Listen, I’m 28 years old. What’s that in running back years these days? 57? I know the business. I saw the rumors. 

“Maybe they’ll just cut Chubb.” 

“Man, they should cut Chubb.” 

“Matter of fact, they’d be stupid not to cut him.” 

It’s a cold world! I get it! 

The only thing that I could control was the work. As soon as I got out of my brace, and got back on my feet, I was back in the gym. I’m not a guy who likes fancy trainers and gyms that look like the club or whatever. I always go back to where it all started. The Cedartown High Weight Room. Membership is cheap. They got a water fountain. 

For me, just being in there and smelling that old smell ... it hits different. I draw power from it for some reason. It takes me back to being a 14-year-old kid — young, poor and hungry — stepping under that squat bar for the first time. Just thinking: I gotta get stronger. I gotta make a name for myself. I gotta get my family to a better place. 

I never want to lose that edge, and when you get to the NFL, and you get some money in your pocket, it’s so easy to lose it. 

So that’s why I always go back. That’s why I went back there this off-season, once I finished my rehab. Me and Mike were just putting in the work. Putting them rocks in the bucket….

Eight months after I blew out my knee, I was putting up 540 on the squat rack. (It’s not real work unless you see that bar bending.) 

I don’t say that to brag at all. I say it because I know how much doubt I had that I’d ever be the same — back at Georgia, and then again last year. 

What’s amazing to me is how much support I had from the city of Cleveland. I know I’m not a guy who says a lot, but I do read the comments. I saw how much love you guys showed for me. In the NFL these days, that’s rare. It seemed like at times Browns fans were the only ones who weren’t seeing it as “just a business.” 

You believed, so I believed. 

I remember my agent calling me at the start of the off-season, when the rumors were swirling, and he told me that there was nothing to worry about. He had talked to the front office, and they definitely wanted me back. 

But that wasn’t just about numbers on a computer or something. Their reason was a lot deeper. Before I tell you what they said, you gotta understand something about me and Cleveland. When I got drafted here, I didn’t know a single thing about it. Never been. Barely knew where it was. I’m a Georgia Boy. All I knew was that they were really, really bad at the time. Like, historic. 

On Draft Night, when I slipped into the second round, it was so crazy because it wasn’t just that I slipped — it was that my dog, my roommate Sony ended up getting drafted by the Patriots in the first round, and of course I was super happy for him, but then my other dog, our roommate Isaiah Wynn, he gets picked by New England, too. So I’m sitting there with my family at a Buffalo Wild Wings, and everybody’s trying to put on their game face and not act all disappointed, and I’m on the group text with my guys like: Mannnn, y’all going to Foxborough with Tom and Bill….. 

I’M SMART. I’M INTELLIGENT. AND I BELIEVE IN MYSELF.

- Nick Chubb

I had to go to bed that night not knowing who was going to call my name.

Next morning, I got to the high school for a workout, and Mike Worthington is on his phone … and we already established how Mike Worthington is a little crazy … so he comes up to me and shows me his phone. He’s got ESPN up. 

It’s the draft order. 

He’s pointing at no. 35. 

All he says is, “Man, when they call you tonight, don’t pick up the damn phone.”

He’s pointing right at the Browns logo. 

Now remember, the Browns had just gone Zero and 16. Zero and 16. I wasn’t hating on the Browns, but all I’m saying is, you weren’t exactly picking them in Madden. It was the dark days. 

“Don’t pick up the damn phone.”

So of course, that night, we’re all back at the Buffalo Wild Wings, and a couple minutes into Round 2, I get a phone call. 

216. 

I see that Cleveland, OH pop up on my caller ID. 

I go numb. 

Honestly, can’t even really remember what the coaches said to me, because my family was all jumping up and down and screaming and I could barely hear anything. 

I look up at the TVs, and I see the legend, the GOAT, Jim Brown coming up to the podium to announce the pick for the Browns. 

Still can’t hear anything. Everybody going nuts….

Then I see my name flash up on the screen. 

RB NICK CHUBB — GEORGIA. 

216. 

Cleveland, OH.

That was the best phone call I ever got. 

I turned to my mom like, “You know as soon as I get a couple of those NFL checks, I’m retiring you, right?”

The Browns changed my life that night, but more importantly, they changed my family’s life. 

Now I think you understand what I mean when I tell you I was meant for this city. I’ve tried to work my ass off every day to get us where we need to go, and even though we have gotten close, I feel like I have serious unfinished business. That’s why it hurt me so bad to go down last season. We were just starting to cook……

I can’t stop until I prove to everybody that I’m the undisputed best running back in this league, and I definitely can’t stop until we get the Browns back to the top of the AFC. It’s been too damn long. 

Thank God that I healed. 

Thank God that I can continue to play this great game. 

Thank God that I get the chance to run it back. 

You want to hear what the Browns told my agent, by the way?

When my agent called me to tell me the news, he said, “I’ve never actually had a front office tell me anything like this. But they said that part of the reason they never entertained cutting you is because of how much you mean to the city.”

That really meant the world to me. Look, I know the deal. I had no guaranteed money left. The Browns had all the leverage. They could’ve left me high and dry, like so many guys in this league. But they had my back. You all had my back. 

That’s enough talking for me. There’s only one thing left to do now. I gotta pay ya back. 

These rocks ain’t going to move themselves. Let’s work. 

— Nick