Four years after he signed with Toledo as a little-known, three-star recruit, Kareem Hunt will start at running back for the Kansas City Chiefs in a Week 1 Thursday night opener at the defending Super Bowl champions.
Kareem Hunt has been turning heads for years, therefore while it's not new to him, many football fans still have no idea where he came from or what he did to get here.
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Here are five eye-popping stats from his four-year career at Toledo that prompted the Chiefs to use a third-round pick on him.
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7.96
Hunt was terrific as a true freshman in 2013, rushing for 866 yards and six touchdowns on 137 carries (6.3 yards per carry), but his breakout year came in 2014, when he was one of the nation's elite offensive players.
He rushed for 1,631 yards on just 205 carries. His 7.96 yards-per-carry average ranked fifth nationally and second among players with at least 200 carries (Devon Johnson, Marshall). He had at least 100 yards in all 10 games played.
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41, 0
One knock against Kareem Hunt's draft stock entering last season was his lack of receiving production. It wasn't that Hunt couldn't catch the ball out of the backfield; it's that he rarely did it during his first three seasons.
After recording 32 total receptions during his first three seasons, he topped that number in 2016 alone, registering 41 catches (14th among FBS runningbacks) for 403 yards. He had zero dropped passes.
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855
Kareem Hunt fumbled once his freshman year but the ball went out of bounds. He did not fumble again.
He had 855 touches over four seasons with the Rockets and did not lose a single fumble.
"Uhhh," Hunt said when asked about high school fumbles last April. "I only fumbled once really in high school, too, and that was going into the end zone. I ran a guy over, stretched the ball out and it like popped up in the air and then bounced around and my center recovered it. So he got the touchdown off that."
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98
Hunt ranked third the nation last year with a Pro Football Focus elusive rating of 112.1 last year (calculated using missed tackle rate and yards gained after contact).
He was one of three running backs in the 2017 draft class to have forced at least 200 missed tackles between 2014-16. Ninety-eight of those forced missed tackles came last year, second-most in the country.
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1,717
Hunt was a three-star recruit (247Sports) in the 2013 class who had Power Five offers and interest. However, he was buried in player rankings.
He was ranked behind 107 running backs and 1,717 total recruits.
