Entering year 5, Panthers’ Chuba Hubbard remains one of the NFL’s best-kept secrets
Carolina's workhorse has quietly become indispensable while flying under the NFL's radar.
Five years into an NFL running back's career, the league has usually made its verdict: you're either a household name commanding touches and headlines, relegated to a committee role sharing carries, or you're fighting for roster spots as teams look toward the next draft class. The position rarely offers middle ground — you're either the feature back, part of the rotation, or you're not.
Yet Chuba Hubbard has carved out something rarer: the productive middle. He's not generating MVP buzz or among the top-selling jerseys, but he's also not scrambling for carries. He’s simply been getting the job done in relative obscurity.
No fanfare. No headlines. Just production.
The 25-year-old enters 2025 not just as the Panthers’ starter, but as one of the most quietly effective backs in football. The Canadian-born back’s fourth NFL season was a coming-of-age performance — nearly 1,200 rushing yards, double-digit touchdowns, and a string of games where he looked like the only functional piece in a broken offense. While others faded around him, Hubbard found daylight. Consistently and decisively.
For anyone unfamiliar with how Hubbard became one of the NFL’s most overlooked players — or for anyone overdue for a reminder — here’s a closer look at one of football’s best-kept secrets.
How’d Hubbard end up in Carolina?
Long before he was Carolina’s steadying force, Hubbard was a human highlight reel in Stillwater. The Alberta native at Oklahoma State led the nation in rushing in 2019, exploding for over 2,000 yards in just 13 games. That season wasn’t just statistically dominant — it was unforgettable. One of his finest outings came against a Baylor team led by then-head coach Matt Rhule. Hubbard rushed for 171 yards and two touchdowns.
Apparently, it stuck.
Two years later, Rhule, who was Carolina's head coach at the time, found himself in the fourth round of the 2021 NFL Draft with a decision to make. That's when a text popped up on his phone from his wife, Julie, who must have watched that 2019 game too.
The text read: “Please take Chuba Hubbard.”
The staff made the call, and Hubbard became a Panther. The message was passed along to him afterward, and it became one of those oddly endearing NFL stories. But beneath the charm was something deeper: someone in that building remembered what Hubbard could do when the ball was in his hands.
Turns out, they were right.
From backup to backbone
The early years in Carolina were complicated. Hubbard arrived as a developmental runner behind Christian McCaffrey, and his rookie season showed flashes — nearly 800 total yards, six touchdowns — but also inconsistency. His vision needed sharpening, and his pass protection was raw. And when McCaffrey was healthy, there weren’t many carries to go around anyway.
But Hubbard stayed ready. And when McCaffrey was shipped to San Francisco in 2022, the door opened. Slowly, methodically, Hubbard walked through.
By 2023, he was the team’s leading rusher. By 2024, he was its identity.
That identity crystallized in Week 16 against the Arizona Cardinals — 25 carries, 152 yards, two touchdowns, and a walk-off score in overtime. On that final play, Hubbard showcased everything that’s made him quietly indispensable: patience, vision, agility, and burst. He hesitated just long enough for the field to open, cut to the right, planted, and accelerated with nothing but green turf in front of him. Twenty-one yards later, he slow-stepped into the endzone and was immediately surrounded by a throng of black and blue uniforms.
At the season’s end, Hubbard totaled 1,195 rushing yards and added 11 total touchdowns. The numbers are impressive, but they don’t capture the context. He ran behind one of the league’s most injury-ravaged offensive lines. His quarterback situation was largely unstable, albeit Bryce Young's late-season renaissance provided some offensive continuity. Yet under those circumstances, he managed to average 4.8 yards per carry while accounting for nearly a third of Carolina’s total yardage over the final two months of the season.
Ask anyone who watched the Panthers closely: Hubbard was the offense.
So when Carolina signed him to a four-year extension last fall — worth a little north of $33 million with significant guarantees — it didn’t come as a surprise. In a season where little went right, Hubbard gave the front office something rare: a clear answer at a cloudy position.
The extension seemed like perfect timing — until you remember the Panthers also spent a second-round pick on Jonathan Brooks just months earlier.
In April 2024, the Panthers drafted the Texas running back, widely considered the draft's most complete back. The catch? Brooks was rehabbing a torn ACL from his final college season. At the time, this seemed like a calculated risk worth taking, especially before Hubbard's breakout year.
Then disaster struck twice. Brooks tore the same ACL again in Week 14 against the Philadelphia Eagles, just his second game back. For the second time in 15 months, he'd spend a year rehabbing instead of running. Last month, the Panthers officially placed him on the PUP list, ruling him out for the entire 2025-26 season.
Brooks complicates the long-term picture, but the short-term remains clear: this is still Hubbard's backfield. And if 2024 was any indication, the Panthers are perfectly fine with that.
Hubbard has proved he’s anything but a placeholder
What makes Hubbard's emergence so compelling isn't just his numbers — it's his path to them. In a league that typically sorts running backs into clear categories, he's thrived in the space between stardom and obscurity. He isn’t the fastest back in the league. Or the biggest. Or the flashiest. But he is, increasingly, one of the smartest and most consistent.
His footwork is better now. His patience is evident. And his understanding of blocking schemes — zone or gap — is what allows him to hit holes decisively, before they close. There’s a subtlety to his game that doesn’t show up in fantasy stats or highlight reels. But it’s there, especially when you see the difference between Hubbard and everyone else the Panthers trotted out at running back last season.
He’s not just surviving. He’s thriving.
Now, with a second-year coaching staff and a reimagined offense, the question becomes whether Hubbard is the long-term solution or merely a bridge to whatever Brooks becomes.
But maybe that question misses the point. Because every time Hubbard is asked to prove himself, he does. Every time the league seems to look past him, he looks straight ahead. And maybe the better question isn’t whether he’s the long-term answer, but why we keep asking.