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Week 15 Prediction: Chuba Hubbard More Than 19.5 Rushing Attempts
The three drivers of this play are the Panthers' typical run rates, potential game state, and injuries.
The Panthers are slightly more run-heavy than the NFL average in neutral situations. And when they are in positive situations, with a lead at any point, they run the ball on 55% of early downs.
The issue is they have only 94 such plays, the fourth-fewest in the NFL.
Meanwhile, they have over double that number of plays where they are trailing by double digits (200 plays, fourth-most).
As a result, they go 37% run on early downs in those situations.
But for the first time in years, the Panthers are favored over the Cowboys.
This makes the likelihood of them being in 55% run situations instead of 37% run situations far more likely. That means many more RB rushing attempts.
And then there are the injuries.
The team started the year with a primary rotation of two backs: Hubbard and Miles Sanders.
After four weeks, the backfield turned from 55 rushes for Hubbard to 25 for Sanders (69%/31%) to 106 rushes for Hubbard to 13 for Sanders (89%/11%) from Week 5 through their Week 10 bye.
But Sanders was injured, the team activated Jonathon Brooks, and in the last several weeks they have worked Brooks into the rotation, giving him 8 rushes to Hubbard’s 28 (77%/23%) in Weeks 12 and 13.
But then Brooks was injured.
And so in the last game, Hubbard handled 26 of 27 total rushes, a large volume in both percentage as well as total rushes considering the Panthers trailed for virtually the entire game against the Eagles.
The Panthers will be looking at Mike Boone to backup Hubbard, but Boone hasn’t taken any carries since Week 1 where he was terrible (4 rushes for 7 yards).
This is Hubbard’s backfield by himself unless he needs a breather or gets injured.
Even with sharing work, Hubbard hit this total in two of the last four games. He also hit it in two of the three Panthers wins.
Now he’s not sharing and his team is a favorite for the first time in years.
I expect he tops this number.
