148 yards on the ground, 98 yards through the air and three total touchdowns. If you told me that would be KC Chiefs RB Kareem Hunt’s line in his first NFL game I would have taken that in a heartbeat. It’s one of the best games for anyone’s first career NFL game.
The way it started was less than ideal. He fumbled the ball on his first carry in the league. An awful start and I felt bad for him. You knew his whole family and all his friends were watching and his first carry and it felt like the game was over because of him.
“I just had to forget about it,” Hunt said on NBC. “I had guys like Justin Houston telling me to forget about the bad plays and play ball. I knew I’m better than that. I had to recover and go out there and make plays.”
You know what happened. It all turned around. Chiefs QB Alex Smith gushed about his game.
“What a day for the kid,” Alex told Michele Tafoya. “After that first play, not many guys could come back and do what he did tonight. To have the game he did after that start, he put us on his back for quite a while there. He played like a vet.”
Indeed, like a vet is how I thought he played. He made big time plays late in the game when the Chiefs needed it the most.