Who on Earth is Craig Reynolds?

NFL Week 14 – It was a good week for running backs you have never heard of. Injury absences forced desperate teams in Detroit and Washington to hand the ball to anonymous runners with little experience or name value, but those players delivered with some big numbers. It inspired us to look back at the list of runners with brilliant games in short careers, a list that might have grown a little longer in Week 14.

Motown’s Latest Star

Our story begins in the Motor City. With D’Andre Swift out with a shoulder injury, Jamaal Williams on the COVID list, and Jermar Jefferson dealing with an ankle issue and a case of the flu, the Lions were left with two options at running back: Godwin Igwebuike, whose only NFL experience before this season was as a defensive back for San Franciso and Tampa Bay in 2018, and practice squadder Craig Reynolds, who had been waived or cut seven times by four teams (including the Lions) in his three professional seasons.

Reynolds played his college ball at Kutztown University (go Golden Bears!), where he was three times an All-Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference East first-teamer. He went undrafted in 2019 and spent his first two seasons with Washington, Atlanta, and Jacksonville, usually on the practice squad. Entering this week, he had appeared in only five regular-season games, getting one carry for 4 yards and one catch for 3, both with Jacksonville in 2020.

Igwebuike officially got the start against Denver on Sunday, but Reynolds finished with one more offensive snap (29 to 28) and got the bulk of the team’s handoffs starting in the first quarter. He was by far the more productive runner too, finishing with 83 yards on 11 carries while Igwebuike had 25 (and a fumble) on eight. The game ended with Denver winning 38-10, but it’s not as if Reynolds built his numbers against prevent defenses in garbage time. He had seven carries for 60 yards in the first half and one for 5 while trailing by one score in the third quarter, with only three carries for 18 yards while down by multiple scores in the fourth.

Reynolds showed some explosiveness—his 35-yard run in the second quarter was the longest allowed by the Broncos this year—but what really set him apart was his consistency. Each of his 11 carries gained at least 1 yard, and seven gained 5 yards or more. That was all enough to put Reynolds in our top five running back tables this week, both in total DYAR (he also caught two passes for 16 yards) and in rushing DYAR.

Meanwhile, in Washington…

Compared to Reynolds, Jonathan Williams looks like Frank Gore, but he’s still probably unknown to you unless you’re playing in a stupidly deep fantasy league, or you had season tickets at Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium a few years ago. Williams ran for over 2,000 yards at Arkansas before the Bills drafted him in the fifth round in 2016. He lasted just one year in Buffalo, and since then has bounced around the practice squads and rosters in Denver, New Orleans, Indianapolis, Detroit, Washington, Detroit again, and finally Washington again. His best season came with Indianapolis in 2019, when he averaged 26.1 rushing yards per game, second-best on the team behind the 77.9 of Marlon Mack. But he had just one carry in all of 2020 (a fumble, at that) and was unemployed for the first 13 weeks of 2021. With J.D. McKissic out due to a concussion, the Football Team re-signed Williams on December 8 to back up Antonio Gibson and Jaret Patterson against Dallas just six days later.

He wasn’t expected to do much, but Williams nearly saved Washington’s season. Gibson was benched after a third-quarter fumble, clearing time for Williams. Though Williams finished the game with only 10 offensive snaps, he touched the ball five times in six plays during a furious fourth-quarter rally:

• A 6-yard gain on second-and-10.
• A 19-yard reception on the ensuing third-and-4.
• A 7-yard gain on first-and-goal from the 10.
• A 2-yard gain on second-and-goal from the 3.
• Following a failed Kyle Allen sneak, Williams scored on fourth-and-goal from the 1.

The next time Washington’s offense took the field, they were down by just seven points with more than three minutes left in the game, but Allen fumbled the ball away and that was that. Williams finished with an average of 7.0 yards per touch and a 100% success rate. You won’t find him in our tables below, but if we expanded from a top five to a top 10, he would have finished in ninth place, right behind his teammate Patterson and ahead of Kansas City’s Darrel Williams.

Unknown Runners with Big Games

Neither Reynolds nor Williams threatened our list of the best games ever, but they inspired us to seek out other running backs with big games in otherwise forgettable careers. The following table shows the best games ever by running backs who finished with fewer than 300 NFL carries:

Time and space prevent us from going into too much detail, but here’s a bullet-point look at the names on this list:

• Even though our parameters were specifically designed to seek out one-game wonders, Lionel James still makes this table twice. The 5-foot-6, 171-pound Little Train was a dynamo in 1985, breaking the all-time record with 2,535 all-purpose yards, a mark that has been topped only three times since. He was especially electric as a receiver, leading all running backs with 1,028 yards through the air (though San Francisco’s Roger Craig narrowly topped him in receiving DYAR). James suffered knee injuries the following offseason and was never the same again. He played 35 games over the next three seasons before being released.
   
• Jonas Gray went undrafted after tearing three knee ligaments at Notre Dame. He spent a year and a half on practice squads in Miami and New England before making his NFL debut in Week 7 of 2014. His first three games were promising: 32 carries, 131 yards, a 4.1-yard average. Then Gray destroyed the Indianapolis Colts, running for over 200 yards and setting a franchise record with four rushing touchdowns. But then Gray broke one of Bill Belichick’s three rules, oversleeping and missing a team meeting. Gray was a healthy scratch the next week against Detroit and only carried the ball 20 more times the rest of the season. He played one more year, rushing for 176 yards in eight games for the Dolphins and Jaguars, and then was done. But hey, he does have a Super Bowl ring.
   
• Kelvin Bryant is an anomaly. He rushed for over 1,000 yards three times at North Carolina and three more times for the USFL’s Philadelphia Stars, winning two championships and an MVP award in the short-lived alternative league. By the time of his first NFL season, he was a 26-year-old with a lot of mileage on his tires. He lasted four years in Washington, mostly as a backup to George Rogers, Earnest Byner, and Gerald Riggs, though he did lead the team with 49.8 yards per game in 1988. He too has a Super Bowl ring.
   
• Chase Edmonds is only here on a technicality. He’ll be disqualified from this list with just seven more carries, a mark he has already hit in six of his nine games this season. He has not played since Week 9 with an ankle injury, but was a game-time decision on Monday night against the Rams and could return at any time.
   
• LeShon Johnson ran for 200-plus yards against New Orleans in the only 100-yard game of his career. He averaged 5.3 yards per game (not per carry!) in 19 appearances before that, 17.3 yards in 37 games afterwards. A bull rider in high school and an All-American and Heisman Trophy finalist at Northern Illinois, he left football in the middle of the 1998 season to undergo treatment for lymphoma before returning to start four games for the Giants in 1999, then played for the Chicago Enforcers for the original XFL in 2000. In 2005, he was embroiled in a dog-fighting scandal.
   
• Paul Palmer was a star for head coach Bruce Arians (yes, that Bruce Arians) at Temple in the mid-1980s. In 1986, he led all Division I players in rushing yards (1,866) and all-purpose yards (2,633), breaking Marcus Allen’s single-season record in the latter category. He was Kansas City’s first-round draft choice in 1987, but in two years with the Chiefs he failed to surpass Christian Okoye on the depth chart. Over one-third of his yards from scrimmage on his best day came on one play, a 71-yard touchdown catch. He split 1989 backing up Barry Sanders in Detroit and Emmitt Smith in Dallas (man, he sure played with a lot of good backs) before spending time on practice squads in Cincinnati and Philadelphia, and also with the Barcelona Dragons in the WLAF. He is currently a radio analyst for Temple football.
   
• The Rams drafted runner/receiver hybrid Trung Canidate in the first round in 2000, which … well, let’s turn to Canidate’s Wikipedia page:
  

  With the presence on the Rams’ roster of Marshall Faulk, 1999 NFL Offensive MVP, there was much confusion with the selection of Candidate and most fans thought it was wasted. [citation needed]

  Canidate and Faulk played three seasons together with the Rams. In those three years, Faulk gained 5,849 all-purpose yards and scored 57 touchdowns; Canidate had 945 and six. In 2003 Canidate was traded to Washington for a fourth-round pick and a backup offensive lineman. He led the team with 600 rushing yards in only 11 games, but Washington traded for Clinton Portis the next year and Canidate never played in the NFL again.
   

• Branden Oliver set rushing records for the Buffalo Bulls in college before joining the Chargers as an undrafted free agent in 2014. He joined Donald Brown and Ryan Mathews in a running back rotation and actually led the team with 582 rushing yards. San Diego drafted Melvin Gordon the next year, however, and Oliver played only 16 NFL games afterwards as his career was derailed by a series of foot injuries. He spent time with the AAF’s Salt Lake Stallions and then signed with the CFL’s Hamilton Tiger-Cats, but their season was canceled due to COVID and Oliver subsequently retired.
   
• Onterrio Smith is best known for how his career ended, but he was a better player than you probably remember. A fourth-round draft pick out of Oregon, Smith spent two years in Minnesota as part of a rotation with Moe Williams, Michael Bennett, and Mewelde Moore. He averaged 4.9 yards over his 231 career carries, leading the league in DVOA as a rookie in 2003. But in May of 2005 he was caught at the Minneapolis airport with dried urine and something called a “Whizzinator.” (Do not click this link. You have been warned.) That marked Smith’s third violation of the NFL’s substance abuse policy and a earned him a year-long suspension. He signed with the CFL’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers, showed up 20 pounds overweight, and suffered a foot injury during his first practice. He never played pro football again.

What the Future Holds

It’s hard to see much of a future for Williams. He may get some more playing time until McKissic returns from his concussion, but he’s a 27-year-old journeyman on his fourth team in four seasons, and we shouldn’t forget that because of one nice drive.

Reynolds is more unknown, and thus more intriguing. As soon as the Lions traded Matthew Stafford away, it became clear that their season would be devoted more to finding young, cheap, available talent than to winning games. Reynolds would certainly fit the bill. With four weeks to go, he’s already second on the Lions in rushing DYAR behind Williams. If he can maintain that level of production over the next four weeks, he could make himself a big part of their plans in 2022.