Bijan Robinson was the highest-paid running back in football for all of about 48 hours.

Atlanta handed him a three-year extension worth $66.75 million on Aug. 4th, then Detroit immediately responded by locking up Jahmyr Gibbs for $67.5 million two days later. Now the real question is whether either of them can turn that payday into something even bigger.

Because while the contracts made headlines, both backs might be on a collision course with a record that's stood untouched for 15 years. Chris Johnson’s 2,509 yards from scrimmage in 2009 still sit at the top of the NFL record book, and even in a 17-game season, nobody has seriously threatened it.

That’s what makes this year different. For once, there are two legitimate challengers in the same conversation.

Robinson just led the league with 2,298 scrimmage yards, putting him within striking distance of Johnson’s mark. Gibbs wasn’t far behind either, finishing with 1,839 yards despite sharing touches in Detroit’s backfield and playing behind an offensive line that never quite hit their stride.

The paths aren’t the same. Robinson is basically trying to repeat — and slightly expand on — the season he already had. Gibbs needs Detroit to reshape his workload without taking away the explosiveness that makes him dangerous every time he touches the ball.

It’s a tough ask either way. But for the first time in a long time, the record doesn’t feel untouchable — it just feels like everything has to break right.

Chris Johnson Made 2,509 Look Easier Than It Is

The extra game definitely makes Johnson’s record look a little more reachable on paper, but once you actually sit with the numbers, it’s still a monster of a mark.

To break it, a player needs 2,510 yards from scrimmage. Over a 17-game season, that comes out to about 148 yards per game. That sounds doable until you remember Johnson averaged 156.8 yards per game back in 2009 over a 16-game season. If you just stretch that same pace into a 17th game, he’d have landed somewhere around 2,666 yards. So even with the extra week, you’re still chasing a guy who was playing on another level entirely.

And that season wasn’t just about efficiency — it was a full-on workload marathon. Johnson carried the ball 358 times, caught 50 passes, and piled up 408 total touches while averaging 6.1 yards every time he got the ball. That kind of combination just doesn’t happen anymore. He’s still the only player in NFL history to go over 2,000 rushing yards and 500 receiving yards in the same season, which kind of tells you everything you need to know about how unique it was.

What makes it even more wild is the context around it. Tennessee started that year 0–6, shuffled through quarterbacks, and still somehow clawed their way back to 8–8 by winning eight of their last 10 games. And Johnson wasn’t just along for the ride — he basically dragged them there. He topped 100 rushing yards in each of the final 11 games, including some absurd outings like 228, 154, 151, and 134 yards down the stretch. There just wasn’t really any “off” days for him that season.

That’s a big part of why the record has survived everything thrown at it since. Christian McCaffrey got to 2,392 in 2019. Tiki Barber hit 2,390 in 2005. Saquon Barkley reached 2,283 in 2024 and even sat out the final game. And even with the 17-game schedule now in place, nobody has cracked the 2,400 mark. Robinson’s 2,298 last year is incredible, but it still only ranks 12th all time.

So yeah, the extra game helps, but it doesn’t really change the math in a meaningful way. You still need a rare mix of health, volume, and production as both a runner and a receiver — and you need a coaching staff willing to basically build the entire offense around you for four straight months.

Atlanta Already Knows How To Get Bijan Close

The Falcons don’t need to reinvent the wheel for Robinson. Honestly, they just need to keep doing what they already did last year… and maybe lean on him a little more.

Robinson ran the ball 287 times for 1,478 yards and added 79 catches for another 820 in 2025. That’s not just “good,” that’s video game stuff. He became the first player ever to hit 1,400 rushing yards and 810 receiving yards in the same season.

He touched the ball 366 times, which was about 35% of everything Atlanta ran on offense. And he was responsible for over 40% of their total yards. And the thing is… that might actually go up.

The quarterback situation in Atlanta is still kind of a mess. Michael Penix Jr. is coming off a torn ACL, and the Falcons haven’t even fully committed to him or Tua Tagovailoa yet. Tua's on a one-year prove-it deal after Miami moved on, and Penix hasn’t exactly been super consistent either, completing just under 60% of his passes so far in his young career.

So if the passing game is shaky? Yeah, Robinson's probably going to be the safety blanket for everything.

Early downs? Hand it to Bijan. Protection breaks down? Dump it to Bijan. Nothing open downfield? Guess who’s getting the ball again.

And it’s not like this is some forced idea. He already caught 79 of 103 targets last year. That part of his game is real, not theoretical.

Plus, Kevin Stefanski has a long track record of building offenses that run through elite backs. He helped turn Dalvin Cook into a monster in Minnesota, and Nick Chubb became a weekly problem for defenses in Cleveland under him. The system is built to feed a guy like Robinson.

The wide-zone scheme fits him perfectly too. It gives him those cutback lanes where he’s already dangerous, and then everything off play-action opens up because defenses have to respect the run.

Even the math isn’t crazy here. Robinson averaged about 6.3 yards per touch last season. If he keeps that up, he’d need around 400 touches to break Chris Johnson’s record. That’s only about 34 more than he already had.

Essentially two extra touches a game.

Atlanta doesn’t need to turn him into a 30-carry-a-game workhorse. They just need to bump him up a little, stay healthy, and let the explosive plays happen.

Losing Tyler Allgeier actually helps that. He was a legit second option, not just a guy you ignore. Brian Robinson Jr. steps in now, but he’s coming off a pretty quiet year in San Francisco with just 100 touches. He’ll handle some short-yardage stuff, but this is still Bijan’s show.

Of course, there’s a flip side. If the passing game doesn’t scare anyone, defenses are going to load the box. And if Atlanta can’t stay on the field, there just won’t be enough touches to go around. Being stuck in bad game scripts can kill even the best running back seasons.

Robinson can catch passes, so he’s not totally dependent on the run game, but even he can’t turn a broken offense into a record-breaking season by himself.

And then there’s the obvious part: health. He’s been durable so far — 51 straight games played — which is huge. But asking him to push toward 400 touches again is still a big ask. That’s the kind of workload only a handful of guys in the league can survive.

Chris Johnson needed 408 touches to set the record. McCaffrey was the only guy to even get past 400 last season.

Gibbs Needed More To Change — And It Has

Gibbs’ case starts with a number that, honestly, doesn’t feel all that friendly.

He’s 671 yards short of Chris Johnson’s record. At his 2025 pace, that basically means he’d need something like 430-plus touches to get there. And let’s be real — nobody's lining up and saying, “Yeah, let’s give the 5-foot-9, 200-pound guy 430 touches and see how it goes.” That’s just not how modern NFL teams think anymore.

The interesting part is that we’ve already seen the version of Gibbs that could make this feel possible. In 2024, he put up 1,929 yards on just over 300 touches and looked like he was playing a different sport at times — nearly 6.4 yards every time he touched the ball. If you take that version of him and just bump the volume up to around 400 touches, suddenly you’re in the 2,500-yard range and actually talking about the record instead of just admiring it from a distance.

And that’s really what Detroit's betting on. More usage, plus a bounce-back from an offensive line that wasn’t nearly as steady as the box score made it look.

The efficiency dip in 2025 tells the story. He went from 5.6 yards per carry down to 5.0, and his success rate dropped with it. Some of that is on the line, some of it is just how volatile run production can be year to year. Detroit lost Frank Ragnow and Kevin Zeitler, Taylor Decker wasn’t fully healthy, and the interior never really settled in.

And yet, the offense still looked fine on paper — top five in scoring, top five in total yards, top three in passing. But the run game? That was the shaky part. The Lions were closer to the middle of the pack in efficiency than people probably realized. They actually finished with a negative EPA per rush.

Even with that, Gibbs still finished with 1,839 scrimmage yards, 13 rushing touchdowns, and a career-high in basically every receiving category.

Now Detroit has tried to clean things up up front, but it’s not like all the questions disappeared. There’s still turnover, still injuries, still some uncertainty about how stable the line really is going to be early on.

Which, weirdly enough, might actually help Gibbs in a different way.

If the offensive line isn’t consistently opening lanes or giving Jared Goff clean pockets, the easy answer becomes getting the ball to Gibbs in space. Screens, quick hitters, motion stuff — basically turning him into a high-end extension of the run game. And we already know what happens when he gets even a little room. He’s had games like the 218-yard explosion against Tampa Bay and that 264-yard franchise record against the Giants. Barry Sanders' franchise... Those aren’t flukes. That’s just what he looks like when things break right.

The catch is Detroit can’t live on that stuff. Defenses adjust fast, and the Lions’ screen game wasn’t exactly elite last year. So the real challenge is finding ways to use him beyond just “throw it behind the line and hope.”

That’s why the coaching staff keeps talking about expanding his role — more slot work, more mismatches, more ways to get him into space without telegraphing it.

Dan Campbell basically said it out loud:

He's going to be our bell cow now... We're going to ask a lot of him... [we're going to] put a lot on his plate in both run game and pass game.

And you can see it in the usage already. Gibbs jumped to 67% of the snaps last year after being under 60% in his first two seasons. With David Montgomery gone, that number is only going to climb even higher. There’s just not much left in the way of a true split anymore.

Isiah Pacheco will take some of the early-down pounding, but he’s not coming in to replace Montgomery’s workload. This is Gibbs’ backfield now, whether it’s 15 touches or 25 on a given week.

So the “record path” for him would look something like 300 carries, close to 85 catches, and just maintaining anything close to his 2024 efficiency. That alone puts him in the 2,500-yard conversation.

But that’s also the hard part — keeping that efficiency while adding more volume. Gibbs has never really been a 20-carry-a-game guy. Detroit's been careful with him for a reason. And asking him to suddenly jump into a 380–400 touch season is a different level of responsibility.

That’s where Robinson feels a little more straightforward. He already showed he can handle a massive workload without falling apart, and Atlanta doesn’t need to reinvent anything to get him there.

Gibbs is the more explosive swing. If everything clicks — line improves, usage jumps, passing game keeps defenses honest — he can stack yards in a way most backs simply can’t.

But that’s a lot of “ifs.”

All stats courtesy of NFL Pro.

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