The first two weeks of the season, the 49ers lost two of their top running backs to injuries. Things looked bleak. Then Jeff Wilson Jr. stepped up.
It’s easy to overlook Wilson, because he has been on the 49ers since 2018, mostly as a backup. And last season, he didn’t play, because he tore his meniscus during minicamp and never quite recovered.
Now he’s back, and he’s averaging a whopping 5.1 yards per carry this season while carrying a large workload. He has carried the ball 74 times through five games. Of all the running backs in the NFL with at least 70 carries, only Nick Chubb, Saquon Barkley and Josh Jacobs are averaging more yards per carry than Wilson.
There’s more.
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If you throw out 2021, the season Wilson was injured, and take his stats from his five games so far from 2022, and add them to his stats from 2020, you get 17 games (a full season), 200 carries, 1,178 yards from scrimmage, 12 touchdowns and 4.9 yards per carry. Elite numbers.
Wilson absolutely could establish himself as a top-10 running back in the NFL if he stays healthy.
Today, I asked Kyle Shanahan what makes Wilson special and unique. Here’s what Shanahan said: “He doesn’t mess around. He knows himself. He puts his foot down and goes forward. You look at that long run he had versus the Rams and the one that he had in the first quarter against Carolina, he gets a big lane, but a lot of people get a big lane and they see that one guy left and they start to stop set up a really big move to make that guy miss — you don’t even see Jeff make a move , because he just goes to space and takes it right away and changes the angle of the defender. He plays so fast and hits it so hard, usually he gets a little more than you block it for.”
What an endorsement.
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