Detroit Lions running back Jahmyr Gibbs carried 29 times for 116 yards, a 4.0-yard average, and caught five passes for 27 yards in Detroit’s 20-17 win over the Green Bay Packers at Ford Field on Sunday. The Lions won it on Jake Bates’ 22-yard field goal as time expired.
What Gibbs did all afternoon was move the chains. Detroit Lions PR posted after the game that Gibbs “is the only player to record 40+ rushing 1st downs & 10+ receiving 1st downs thru the first 6 games of a season since the NFL began tracking the data in 1981. His 54 total 1st downs are the 2nd-most thru the first 6 games of a season in that span.”
Why Jahmyr Gibbs’ First-Down Volume Is Unusual
The mark Gibbs cleared is a volume number, not a highlight number. No other player since 1981 has paired 40 or more rushing first downs with 10 or more receiving first downs that early in a season, and only one player has recorded more total first downs through six games in that span.
Detroit Lions RB Jahmyr Gibbs Is Having a Big Season
Gibbs has rushed for 620 yards on 134 carries with seven touchdowns, averaging 4.6 yards a carry, and has caught 32 passes for 270 yards and two touchdowns. That production put him in the Offensive Player of the Year conversation back in September.
Sunday was his second straight 100-yard rushing game after he ran for 151 yards against the Arizona Cardinals in Week 5. It was also the first game this season he finished without a touchdown, which tells you how much of his value showed up as first downs instead of points.
That is the value of a back who converts on the ground and through the air. Detroit scored 20 points on Sunday and needed a field goal on the last snap to beat Green Bay, so every first down Gibbs picked up counted.