Kansas City Chiefs: Clyde Edwards-Helaire on pace to break rookie record
By Cullen Jekel
Kansas City Chiefs rookie running back Clyde Edwards-Helaire continued his march toward the record books by adding another 77 yards from scrimmage.
In Week 11, Kansas City Chiefs‘ rookie running back Clyde Edwards-Helaire showed once again what made him the last pick of the first round of the 2020 NFL Draft out of LSU. On just 14 carries, Edwards-Helaire racked up 69 rushing yards and added another eight through the air with lone reception.He also added two touchdowns in the affair, tying the game at 14-14 early in the second quarter before putting the Chiefs up 21-17 midway through the third.
For the season, Edwards-Helaire now has 655 rushing yards to go with 232 receiving yards. In total, he has five touchdowns, four of them rushing. During Sunday Night Football’s broadcast, NBC showed a graphic about Edwards-Helaire and his historic yardage pace. The record is rather obscure, but he’s on this list with a running back from a hated rival and one of the best players in the NFL’s history.
The record is for total yards from scrimmage by a rookie on a defending Super Bowl champion. Right now, Edwards-Helaire is third on that list but is projected to break the 21-year-old record by a bit over 100 yards.
Here, we’ll take a look at the other former rookies in a similar situation that Edwards-Helaire finds himself inching closer to. We’ll start with Hall of Fame wide receiver Jerry Rice.
Jerry Rice
In 1985, Jerry Rice set the record that would last for 15 years. The San Francisco 49ers drafted Rice out of Mississippi Valley State with the No. 16 pick in the first round just months after defeating the Miami Dolphins in Super XIX, the franchise’s second Super Bowl victory in four seasons.
As I wrote about before the Chiefs’ Super Bowl win this past February, the 49ers selected Rice one spot after Kansas City took tight end Ethan Horton out of North Carolina. Horton played just one season with the Chiefs.
Rice joined the best franchise of that era led by head coach and offensive mastermind (sound familiar?) Bill Walsh. The 49ers also boasted arguably the best quarterback of that era (sound familiar?) in Joe Montana.
As a rookie, Rice caught 49 passes for 927 yards and three touchdowns while he rushed the ball another six times for 26 yards and one touchdown. In all, he collected 953 yards from scrimmage for a 49ers team that went 10-6 and lost 17-3 in the Wild Card round to the Giants.
But Rice’s career boomed after that season. In fact, Rice then rattled off 11 straight 1,000-yard receiving seasons until an injury-shortened 1997 campaign. Even after that, he returned at age 36 to play another seven seasons, surpassing the 1,000-yard receiving mark another three times.
Fortunately for Rice, he joined a strong team when the 49ers took him 1985, and he turned that team into a booming dynasty. Over 16 years in San Francisco, Rice set a myriad of receiving records while winning three Super Bowls.
He first caught passes from Montana and then Steve Young, the best left-handed quarterback ever. (Not to mention his 2002 season with the Raiders in which he was league MVP Rich Gannon’s main target.)