Nick Chubb, born 3 days after that fateful Christmas Eve 1995, has 10-3 on his Cleveland Browns wish list
'Twas the night before Christmas, and the house was all gone.
On Dec. 24, 1995, the team that arrived in Jacksonville as the Cleveland Browns flew home as the Baltimore ???s.
There was no new name yet, but whatever the team was henceforth belonged to Baltimore.
Nick Chubb was born three days later, on Dec. 27, 1995. He works for the team that came back as the Browns in 1999. There haven't been many games as big as the one in which he will compete 25 years after that fateful Christmas Eve.
"Before I got here, I didn't know much at all about the history," said Chubb, who grew up in northwestern Georgia, four counties south of Tennessee. "When I got to Cleveland, I found out real fast about Jim Brown and stuff like that. But I still don't know that much about it."
Quick history lesson: Art Modell sabotaged one of the great NFL towns for reasons that will never make good sense, and here Browns fans are a quarter century later, waiting for Cleveland's first win in the NFL playoffs since 1994.
In Monday's game against the Baltimore Ravens, the expansion-era Browns can get to 10-3, something the "all-time Browns" last did in 1968, when the postseason ended with a 34-0 loss to the Baltimore Colts in the NFL championship game. The '69 Browns were a slightly better 10-2-1, and they, too, lost in the NFL championship game, this time to the Minnesota Vikings.
More quick history: In Jim Brown's epic Cleveland career, he had just one season of averaging more than 5.9 yards per carry. Chubb leads the league in 2020 at 6.0.
Despite losing four games to a knee injury, Chubb has run 133 times for 799 yards. In 12 games, teammate Kareem Hunt has run 171 times for 739 yards.
Chubb and Hunt are arriving as the duo originally imagined. They helped make the flow that got the Browns a 38-7 halftime lead at Tennessee on Sunday on their way to the 41-35 win.
NFL POWER RANKINGS: Steelers drop to third after suffering first loss of 2020
MORE: NFL uses flex scheduling, moving Browns at Giants into Week 15's Sunday night slot
Hunt is from the Cleveland area, but even so, he can't fully understand the 1995 move to Baltimore. The Browns' last won a playoff game on New Year's Day, 1995; Hunt was born seven months later.
Hunt, though, well understands what a Monday night win and a 10-3 record would mean to the region.
"Being born and raised here, it's huge," he said. "Everybody's happy. People haven't seen winning. I've never seen it growing up."
To get to this point, Chubb and Hunt had to prove they could work with each other after they became teammates in February of 2019. Chubb was fresh off a strong rookie year. Hunt had been NFL rushing champion in 2017, with the Chiefs.
In separate interviews Wednesday, both said they weren't sure at first how it would work out. Behind the scenes, John Dorsey, the general manager who drafted Chubb and signed Hunt, saw Chubb as an ideal influence on Hunt, who had an eight-game suspension hanging over him when he arrived. Long before the 2019 season, Dorsey said Hunt and Chubb had become best friends.
"We both knew we needed to find a way to work together," Chubb said.
Hunt sensed a fit in his second game back from his suspension, when the Browns beat Buffalo. Chubb ran 20 times for 116 yards. Hunt provided 77 yards on four runs and seven catches.
They weren't the problem as the 2019 season disintegrated. They are a reason the 2020 Browns are rolling.
At 5-foot-11, 227 pounds, Chubb is a bit larger than Hunt (5-11, 216). A former 6-foot-8, state-qualifying high jumper at Willoughby South, Hunt is slightly more electric as an athlete.
MORE: Each top Super Bowl contender has a significant statistical weakness
THE RULING OFF THE FIELD: If you enjoy talking football, join our Facebook Group
"Kareem can do a lot of things I probably can't do, to be honest," Chubb said, with a nod to Hunt's skywalking 5-yard TD run in a key moment of the recent Philadelphia game.
"Kareem is funny. He's a cool guy to be around. He makes you laugh."
Everyone, including Chubb, sees Chubb as the strong, silent type.
"Kareem probably gets me laughing more and talking more in the locker room than anybody," Chubb said.
It can be hard to get a response from Chubb.
"I'm gonna keep talking until he answers me," Hunt said. "I get Nick. We see eye to eye on a lot of stuff."
They get that beating the bejabbers out of Baltimore on Monday night would be tremendous fun.
Whatever one's knowledge of the history, imagine the laughter 10 days before Christmas.
Follow The Repository's Steve Doerschuk on Twitter @sdoerschukREP.