This story has been updated with more information.
Nick Chubb is calling it a career.
The former Cleveland Browns running back announced on Instagram his decision to retire from football. He spent the first seven years of his career with the Browns before signing as a free agent in 2025 with the Houston Texans.
“Today’s the day I’ve been avoiding for a while,” Chubb’s lengthy retirement post begins. “Twelve year old me could never imagine this day, and 30 year old me is wondering where all the time has gone.
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“I’ve known for some time now, but I’m finally ready to share that I’m done playing football.
“I wanted to end my career on a healthy note, along with a winning season, and I was able to do that.
“At the beginning of this journey, I made many promises to myself. The #1 promise I made was that I would always stay true to who I am and never forget the things that made me, me.
“That promise meant always being the hardest working person, no matter where I was or what the circumstances were.
“And that started in Cedartown, Georgia.”
Chubb’s announcement covers multiple pages on the post. However, it ends with these four lines:
“‘Till the day that I die, it will always be:
GO DAWGS.
GO BROWNS!!!
Batman out (bat emoji)”
The irony of Chubb’s career ending with a year in Houston is that the No. 35 overall pick in the second round of the 2018 NFL Draft that Cleveland used to pick him came from the Texans. The Browns acquired the pick in exchange for Houston taking on the Brock Osweiler contract.
Chubb retires No. 3 on the Browns’ all-time rushing list with 6,843 yards in 85 career games. The only two in front of him are face-of-the-franchise Pro Football Hall of Famers Jim Brown and Leroy Kelly.
Chubb retires with 7.349 rushing yards on 1,462 attempts in exactly 100 career games, with 54 rushing touchdown. He rushed for 506 yards on 122 carries with three touchdowns in 15 games in his one season in Houston.
“Football was a huge blessing in my life,” Chubb said in his retirement post. “It opened so many doors, gave me opportunities I never could have imagined, and allowed me to meet some amazing people.
“I’m grateful for everyone I crossed paths with along the way, and I promise I took something from each of you.
“Thank you to my teammates, my coaches, the fans, my family, my friends, and anyone who ever cheered me on.
“Twelve year old me could have never imagined where this game would take us.
“But 30 year old me can look back and say we gave it everything we had.”
It was Brown who announced the Browns’ selection of Chubb with the No. 35 pick out of the University of Georgia. Much like in college, where he departed second only to Herschel Walker in UGA rushing yards, Chubb found himself following in the footsteps of a certifiable legend.
“Yeah, it’s definitely special, definitely an honor to come behind Herschel Walker at Georgia and now Jim Brown,” Chubb said on June 2, 2023, just weeks after Brown died. “That’s two greats who I’ve been around and I’ve been able to meet and just talk to them and learn a lot from them. So it’s definitely a blessing. And, yeah, it’s also honor to come behind them. I got to keep the legacy going.”
Chubb did so with a quiet ferocity, typically eschewing the spotlight by not doing a lengthy list of television endorsements. Instead, he let his punishing running style and historic career numbers do the talking for him, until injuries slowed him down his final two seasons in Cleveland.
The four-time Pro Bowler wasn’t just top three in the Browns record books in career rushing yards. His 30 100-yard rushing games are second most all-time, and his 51 career rushing touchdowns are third most.
Chubb’s average of 5.0 yards is 11th-highest all-time in NFL history. At the time of his departure from Cleveland, his rushing total was the fourth highest in the NFL since 2018, behind Derrick Henry (10,189), Saquon Barkley (7,216) and Josh Jacobs (6,874).
The Cedartown, Ga., native contextualized what he had accomplished when he spoke shortly after Brown’s passing of the legendary running back’s impact on him.
“I feel like the biggest thing that he taught me was something he never even said,” Chubb said. “Just probably just me watching his film and playing here in Cleveland behind him. Just knowing that the greatest running back played here, and that’s enough inspiration and motivation for me. Just to know, I’m coming behind Jim Brown, so people around here expect a lot from a running back.”
It was that approach that endeared Chubb to the fan base. The player proclaimed his love to the city of Cleveland in an essay in “The Players Tribune” before his return in 2024 from a devastating knee injury, writing, “We always hear that NFL isn’t the same as college, but I can’t tell the difference here in Cleveland. It’s the same love that I had in my college town in UGA.”
That fan base, in turn, saved some of its loudest cheers for Chubb, even when injury kept him from playing. On Dec. 28, 2023, before the Browns’ playoff-clinching win over the New York Jets and just over a month after a second knee surgery, he stood on a platform wearing a Batman mask, smashing a guitar into a pyrotechnic device to draw deafening cheers from the sold-out crowd.
Chubb had never reached the open free-agent market before 2025. He signed a three-year, $36.6 million extension in 2021 that kept him through the most recent season.
Injuries hampered the final two seasons of that deal. The biggest of those came in a Week 2 loss at the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sept. 18, 2023, when Chubb sustained a season-ending knee injury when safety Minkah Fitzpatrick rolled into his leg.
Chubb sustained tears to his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), medial collateral ligament (MCL), the medial capsule and meniscus, all of which except the ACL he had previously torn in a 2015 injury while at Georgia. The first surgery, on Sept. 29, repaired the MCL, medial capsule and meniscus; the second, on Nov. 14, 2023, repaired the ACL.
“I was down mentally for a while,” Chubb said after a Browns OTA on June 5, 2024. “Just when you get hurt, I mean, it’s one thing. But when you get hurt again and you already know what you’ve got to go through and the entire process — surgery, rehab — it’s a nonstop battle every day.”
Berry vowed after the 2023 season the injury in Pittsburgh would not be “the last time he carries the ball for the Cleveland Browns.” The Browns and Chubb restructured the final year of the deal, lowering the base salary while raising the amount of incentives.
Chubb missed the first six games of the 2024 season before returning Oct. 20 against the Cincinnati Bengals. He rushed for 332 yards and three touchdowns on 102 carries over the course of eight games.
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Two of those touchdowns and 59 of those yards came in a snow-covered win over the Steelers on “Thursday Night Football” on Nov. 21. Three weeks later, in the Browns’ next home game against the Kansas City Chiefs, he sustained a broken foot in the third quarter that ended his season.
Much like after the injury the previous year in Pittsburgh, the foot injury brought out a visceral emotional reaction from Chubb’s teammates. Jerome Ford, who was once again called upon to serve as his replacement, summed up the reason for that response.
“Just the way he comes to work every day,” Ford said in 2024. “He comes, he in early, out late. The way he work, how much work he put in and you being able to see it on the field, bursting in practice. It’s a bunch of little things that he do that we all get to see day in and day out, and just to see it coming to fruition on game day, everything that he do, it is like a proud moment for us. Like, dang, he do it every day in practice and now we get to see it in the game.”
Chris Easterling can be reached at ceasterling@thebeaconjournal.com. Read more about the Browns at www.beaconjournal.com/sports/browns. Follow him on X at @ceasterlingABJ. Sign up for Browns Insider newsletter at https://profile.beaconjournal.com/newsletters/browns-insider/
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Former Cleveland Browns great Nick Chubb announces retirement
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Reporting by Chris Easterling, Akron Beacon Journal / Akron Beacon Journal
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By Chris Easterling, Akron Beacon Journal | USA TODAY Network
