Following his season-ending knee injury in 2023, there was a brief thought that Nick Chubb wouldn’t suit up for the Browns again. That wasn’t the case and Chubb was back out there in Week 7 against the Cincinnati Bengals last October.
Chubb’s season didn’t go as planned right along with the Browns and he broke his foot on the second to last game vs. the Kansas City Chiefs.
With the Cleveland Browns’ fan favorites contract up, there is no sure word where Chubb is going to end up. Cleveland Browns GM Andrew Berry revealed that Chubb would indeed hit the open market in a couple of weeks when free agency begins. No kind of deal will be reached before then to keep him from talking to other teams.
“I would say at this point that we do expect Nick to hit the market,” Berry said during a side interview at the combine, via Mary Kay Cabot. “Obviously his contract is up this year. We will meet with his reps and everything like that, but it’s something that obviously we will work through over the next couple weeks.”
Chubb ran for 332 yards and three touchdowns in eight games with Cleveland last season. A bit of a worry about Chubb was his 3.3 yards per carry. It was known that Chubb would take a while to get his legs back under him after a second major knee injury. Chubb has been with the Browns for the last seven seasons since he was drafted in the second round out of Georgia in the 2018 NFL Draft.
The Pro Bowl running back cleared 1,000 yards in four straight seasons from 2019 through 2022 and set a career-high in 2022 with 1,525 rushing yards. Since arriving in Cleveland, Chubb has been a player who is quiet and just puts his head down and works. It didn’t take long at all for fans to buy into his style.
Cleveland can still bring Chubb back even with him hitting the market. The Georgia product will see what is out there that teams will offer. Cleveland could bring back Chubb on a one-year deal, but it wouldn’t be the guaranteed starter with the recent injury history.
Now, many Cleveland fans will be on edge until Chubb signs a contract with an NFL team. The tampering period of free agency begins on March 10.
