Lamar Jackson is poised to surpass Randall Cunningham’s career rushing yardage total tonight against the Bengals.
Cunningham retired with 4,928 rushing yards, and Jackson has 4,918 rushing yards in his career. So if Jackson runs for 11 yards tonight — which for him is a near certainty — he’ll move ahead of Cunningham on the career list.
Widely regarded as the best running quarterback of the 20th Century, Cunningham has been surpassed on the career rushing list by three more recent quarterbacks: Michael Vick is first all time with 6,109 rushing yards, Cam Newton is second with 5,628 and Russell Wilson is third with 5,167.
All the quarterbacks ahead of Jackson on the list played a lot longer than Jackson has: Vick played 143 games in his career, Newton played 148, Wilson has played 181 and Cunningham has played 161. Tonight will be the 81st game of Jackson’s career, so he’ll have more rushing yards than Randall Cunningham in about half as many games.
Jackson is only 26 years old, so it seems to be a near-certainty that he’ll be No. 1 on the quarterback career rushing list eventually. And he may put the record out of reach for any other quarterback for many, many years.