General
Of the top five rushers in the NFL entering Week 12 of the 2024 season, three are former Alabama ball-carriers.
Derrick Henry of the Baltimore Ravens leads the league with 1,185 rushing yards, Josh Jacobs of the Green Bay Packers ranks third with 838 and Jahmyr Gibbs of the Detroit Lions is fifth with 796.
For Henry and Jacobs, ranking among the NFL’s rushing leaders is old hat.
Henry won the rushing crown in 2019 and 2020, when he became the eighth player in NFL history to reach 2,000 rushing yards in a season. He finished ninth in rushing yards in 2021, even though he missed nine games with a broken foot. Henry has finished second in rushing in each of the past two seasons.
In 2022, Henry ranked second in rushing to Jacobs.
Henry has his sixth 1,000-yard season. Jacobs is headed toward his fourth.
Gibbs is a second-year player and, unlike Henry and Jacobs, is not his team’s starting running back. Detroit uses Gibbs in tandem with six-year veteran David Montgomery.
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In his second NFL season, Gibbs has 133 carries for 796 yards and eight touchdowns and 23 receptions for 256 yards and one touchdown. Montgomery has 137 carries for 595 yards and 10 touchdowns and 21 receptions for 205 yards.
One area where the two Detroit running backs have excelled is measured by a metric called rushing-success rate. A rushing attempt is judged successful if it gains 40 percent of the yards needed for a first down on first down, 60 percent of the required yards on second down and 100 percent of the required yards on third and fourth down.
Among the NFL’s top 33 rushers, Gibbs leads with a 59.4 percent success rate, with Montgomery next at 57.7 percent.
Lions coach Dan Campbell worked as the assistant head coach and tight-ends coach for New Orleans in 2017, when the Saints paired rookie Alvin Kamara with veteran Mark Ingram at running back to great success.
The former Alabama running back was the veteran in that pairing (although Kamara spent a redshirt season in Tuscaloosa without playing for the Crimson Tide). Campbell said the Montgomery-Gibbs tandem reminded him of the Ingram-Kamara duo.
“No. 1, they were both great teammates,” Campbell said on Wednesday. “AK was the young guy that came in, and he had the electric juice, as the player he is now. He was young; he was raw. And Mark, he wasn’t old, but he was a savvy veteran in his prime. Was more our hammer, but could do everything. I mean, he could run choice routes out of the backfield. He could run inside zone, wide zone. You could toss it to him. He had enough breakaway speed to finish down the field. He had this all-encompassing – protections, the whole thing. And so, AK was able to learn under him, around him, watch him and develop his game a little bit, gravitated more towards Mark, but yet he had what he’s got. He’s got the other things that Mark never had, and so I just think it makes you well-rounded, and you begin to mesh. You begin to take each other’s abilities and try to use them as your own a little bit, and it just elevates each one of them. And they’re also competing, and they’re friends.
“And I think that’s what we’ve got here. I think David and Gibbs are like brothers. I really do. And I think David’s big brother. He’s not going to let anybody mess with (Gibbs). That’s his guy. Now, he’ll mess with him, and he does something wrong, he’s going to let him know. He takes him under his wing. And I think they’ve elevated each other. He’s made Gibbs better, and I think Gibbs has helped him, too. When you have that competition, when you have that love for one another, the whole thing, to me, they’re the perfect combination. It doesn’t come any better, in my opinion. You got everything you need out of those two players – run or pass game.”
In 2017, Ingram and Kamara became the only backfield duo to each reach 1,500 yards from scrimmage in the same season.
In Detroit’s 52-6 victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars, Gibbs surpassed 1,000 yards from scrimmage in the Lions’ 10th game this season.
Jacobs also achieved that feat on Sunday. Gibbs and Jacobs join Henry among the eight players with 1,000 yards from scrimmage in the NFL in 2024.
The Alabama Game of the Week is the New England Patriots-Miami Dolphins contest on Sunday. Thirteen players from Alabama high schools and colleges are on the teams’ active rosters.
The Week 12 schedule (with all times Central and point spreads from BetMGM):
Thursday
- Pittsburgh Steelers (-3.5) at Cleveland Browns, 7:15 p.m. (Prime Video)
Sunday
- Kansas City Chiefs (-11) at Carolina Panthers, noon (WIAT, WTVY, WKRG, WAKA)
- Minnesota Vikings (-3.5) at Chicago Bears, noon
- Tennessee Titans at Houston Texans (-8), noon (WHNT)
- Detroit Lions (-7.5) at Indianapolis Colts, noon
- New England Patriots at Miami Dolphins (-7.5), noon
- Tampa Bay Buccaneers (-6) at New York Giants, noon
- Dallas Cowboys at Washington Commanders (-10.5), noon (WBRC, WZDX, WALA, WCOV, WDFX)
- Denver Broncos (-6) at Las Vegas Raiders, 3:05 p.m.
- San Francisco 49ers at Green Bay Packers (-2), 3:25 p.m. (WBRC, WZDX, WALA, WCOV, WDFX)
- Arizona Cardinals (-1) at Seattle Seahawks, 3:25 p.m.
- Philadelphia Eagles (-3) at Los Angeles Rams, 7:20 p.m. (NBC)
Monday
- Baltimore Ravens (-3) at Los Angeles Chargers, 7:15 p.m. (ABC, ESPN)
CHECK OUT MAPS OF SUNDAY’S BROADCAST TV COVERAGE
Teams on their bye this week are the Atlanta Falcons, Buffalo Bills, Cincinnati Bengals, Jacksonville Jaguars, New Orleans Saints and New York Jets.
FOR MORE OF AL.COM’S COVERAGE OF THE NFL, GO TO OUR NFL PAGE
Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.
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