NFL Network: David Johnson will be league’s 5th leading rusher in 2016

Arizona Cardinals running back David Johnson has been getting a lot of love on the national scale lately.

On Monday, ESPN named him one of the hardest running backs to tackle in the NFL. Early this month, one NFL.com writer said that Johnson is primed to make his first Pro Bowl this season.

Now NFL Network thinks Johnson will be the fifth-leading rusher in the entire league in 2016.

“When Chris Johnson got hurt last year, this guy came in and was a beast for them, and I said that earlier in the show,” NFL Network analyst Elliot Harrison said. “Bruce Arians is aggressive, but sometimes that gets mistaken for being aggressive only passing. He loves to run the football. The Cardinals were 10th in run-pass ratio last year.”

NFL Network projects David Johnson will run for 1,231 yards this season. If that number were to hold, that would be the most rushing yards by a Cardinals running back since Ottis Anderson ran for 1,270 yards in 1983, when the team was still based in St. Louis. The 1,231 projected yards would also give Arizona its first 1,000-yard rusher since Beanie Wells ran for 1,047 yards in 2011.

Last season, Chris Johnson was the starting running back for most of the season until he got injured in Week 12 at the San Francisco 49ers. David Johnson came in and excelled in the lead back role, as he rushed for 537 yards and five touchdowns in seven games after Chris Johnson went down.

“He ended the season so great,” said NFL Network’s Adam Rank. “It was so amazing. I think that he can make that leap, because the team is good. That’s what we’re looking for, teams that are good that can also be winning at the end of games. You get into those situations where you try to salt away the clock at the end of the game; I think the Cardinals will be doing that a lot this year.”

Projected to finish with more rushing yards next year were Buffalo’s LeSean McCoy, Pittsburgh’s Le’Veon Bell, Minnesota’s Adrian Peterson and Todd Gurley of the Los Angeles Rams.

Gurley, the second-year pro from the University of Georgia, is projected by NFL Network to finish with 1,631 rushing yards, a mark the Rams haven’t seen a single rusher achieve since Eric Dickerson had 1,821 in 1986.