When a Running Back Reminds Us Why We Fell in Love With Football in the First Place

You know, I've been watching football for more years than I care to admit, and there's something that happens every now and then that just stops you in your tracks. You're sitting there in the middle of October, the leaves are starting to turn, and some player does something so clean, so fundamentally sound, so absolutely devastating that you forget all about the noise and the hype and the endless debate about who's the best and who's not. That's what Kenneth Walker III is doing to us right now. Here's a kid who most people didn't even think would last past the first round, who fell to the ninth pick in the second round of the draft, and he's forcing us to rethink everything we thought we knew about running backs in the modern NFL.

Let me tell you something about running backs. There was a time, not so long ago really, when if you wanted to talk about the most valuable player in football, you started with your running back. You started there because the running back had to be able to do it all. He had to be able to take a handoff and follow his blocks and cut back and hit the hole with authority. He had to be able to catch the ball out of the backfield and make a defender miss in space. He had to be smart enough to know when to slide and when to get down so he didn't get hurt. And he had to do all of this, game after game, play after play, because if your running back wasn't doing his job, then your whole offense was going to struggle. That's just football.

Then something happened. The passing game got easier with the rules changing, the defenses got smaller and faster, and suddenly everybody decided that running backs weren't all that important anymore. You started hearing people say that any running back could do the job if the line was good enough and the scheme was right. They started using running backs less, drafting them later, paying them less money. And you know what? Some of that made sense because the game was changing and you had to change with it. But like a lot of things in life, we might have overcorrected just a little bit.

Enter Kenneth Walker III and the Kansas City Chiefs. Now, Andy Reid has won a lot of football games, and he's not going to win them because he's following everybody else's trend. Reid does things because they work, and right now, what's working is having a running back who runs with actual conviction. This kid doesn't run like he's afraid of hitting somebody. He doesn't run like he's trying to protect his body for next season. He runs like he actually enjoys the physical part of the game, and let me tell you, that's refreshing to watch.

What's been remarkable about Walker's start to this season isn't just that he's been piling up yards, though he certainly has been doing that. It's how he's been getting them. He's running low and hard. He's finishing runs. When he hits the second level, defenders have to make a real tackle, not just touch him and watch him continue. He understands leverage in a way that you don't see very often anymore. That's the kind of thing that makes coaching staffs and front offices sit up and take notice, because that's the kind of thing that wins football games in September when the weather's getting cold and the margins get tighter.

The thing about Josh Allen that everybody keeps talking about is legitimate. The man can beat you about fifteen different ways. He's got an arm that can deliver the football from any angle, to any spot on the field, sometimes when conventional wisdom says it shouldn't be possible. He's got legs that would make a lot of defensive backs nervous if he lined up in the slot. He's got a competitiveness that's just burning inside him all the time. These are all things that should make him the most valuable player in football on any given week, and some weeks they do. But here's what's interesting about the MVP race this year: it's not one thing that matters. It never has been, really. The MVP is supposed to be the player who means the most to his team's success.

And Kenneth Walker III means something to the Kansas City Chiefs right now. When he's running the football the way he has been, the entire offense changes. Patrick Mahomes gets to operate in a different space. The defense can't pin its ears back and just rush the quarterback because they've got to respect what's happening in the backfield. Play action becomes dangerous again. The offense gets easier because defenses have to account for more things. It's not complicated football theory. It's just sound football sense, and it works because Walker is executing at a level that makes it impossible to ignore.

What you're really seeing when you watch Walker is a player who's been well-coached and who's bought into what his team is asking him to do. There's a discipline to his running that reminds you of guys from an earlier era, players who understood that their value wasn't just measured in the individual statistics but in how they made the whole machine run better. He's not necessarily always going for the home run. Sometimes he's just getting what's there and moving the chains and letting the offense stay on the field. That might not sound as exciting as a sixty-yard touchdown run, and I suppose in some ways it isn't, but it's the kind of thing that wins playoff games in January.

Now, Brock Purdy is an interesting story all by himself. You've got a kid who was the last pick in the entire draft, who most people had never even heard of, and he's playing some really good football for the San Francisco 49ers. The offense he's in is tremendous. The talent around him is tremendous. But what he's doing with his opportunities has been impressive because he's managing the game and not turning it over and making the plays he's supposed to make. That's harder than it looks, especially for a young quarterback, and the fact that he's doing it in Kyle Shanahan's system, which is about as demanding as it gets, has to count for something.

Bijan Robinson is another one of those guys who's been climbing the charts, and you can see why. He's got the tools to be really special, and he's starting to put it together in ways that matter. But here's the thing about October football: there's a lot of season left to play. These rankings aren't just about what you've done in the last four weeks. They're about what you're going to do for the next twelve plus weeks, and nobody knows exactly how that's going to shake out.

What Kenneth Walker's emergence tells us is something important about the game that we might have forgotten. Running back still matters. It still matters in a way that affects everything else on offense. It still matters when you're trying to build a team that can win games in different ways, and it still matters when you're trying to be successful when the stakes are highest. That's why fans should care about this. Because this isn't just about some abstract ranking. This is about watching a team figure out how to win, and watching a young player prove that hard work and doing things the right way still counts for something.