{"id":878537,"date":"2026-04-30T08:39:31","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T08:39:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/878537\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T08:39:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T08:39:31","slug":"what-are-reasonable-expectations-for-arizona-cardinals-rb-jeremiyah-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/878537\/","title":{"rendered":"What are reasonable expectations for Arizona Cardinals RB Jeremiyah Love?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Arizona Cardinals<\/a> made running back Jeremiyah Love the third overall pick in the 2026 NFL draft. There is a lot of excitement as to what he can do his rookie season.<\/p>\n

Perhaps we should not expect too much, at least not monster numbers.<\/p>\n

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Why?<\/p>\n

While Love was extremely productive in college, he comes into the NFL without a heavy workload. In 2025, he had 199 carries and 226 total touches.<\/p>\n

The Cardinals have had only two rookie 1,000-yard rushers in their history. Ottis Anderson set the record with 1,605 yards in 1979 with 331 carries. Ronald Moore had 1,018 yards on 263 carries in 1993.<\/p>\n

Would it be wise for the Cardinals to give Love that much of a workload in his first NFL season after never doing it in college?<\/p>\n

By comparison, Bijan Robinson<\/a> had 258 carries and 277 carries his final season in college. As a rookie, he had 272 total touches with 214 carries.<\/p>\n

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Saquon Barkley<\/a> had as many as 300 touches at Penn State. He had 261 carries and 352 total touches in his first season, winning Offensive Rookie of the Year.<\/p>\n

Going back to Adrian Peterson<\/a>, he had as many as 344 touches at Oklahoma. He had 199 touches in only seven games in his final season. He had 238 carries and 257 touches as a rookie.<\/p>\n

Robinson did not exceed his college workload as a rookie. Neither did Peterson. Barkley did, but he had over 70 more touches in college with his usage than Love in his greatest usage.<\/p>\n

The Cardinals have Tyler Allgeier<\/a> and James Conner<\/a>, too.<\/p>\n

Love will likely surpass 1,000 total yards from scrimmage, but getting 1,000 rushing yards might not be in the Cards for him.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

Get more Cardinals<\/a> and NFL coverage from Cards<\/a> Wire’s Jess Root and others by listening to the latest on the Rise Up, See Red podcast. Subscribe on Spotify<\/a>,\u00a0YouTube<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Apple podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Cards Wire: What are reasonable expectations for Arizona Cardinals RB Jeremiyah Love?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Arizona Cardinals made running back Jeremiyah Love the third overall pick in the 2026 NFL draft. There…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":878538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2078],"tags":[1141,375,390,2604,4127,1327,7,757,7805,6,8345,894,6957,11410],"class_list":["post-878537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arizona-cardinals","tag-adrian-peterson","tag-arizona","tag-arizona-cardinals","tag-arizonacardinals","tag-bijan-robinson","tag-cardinals","tag-football","tag-james-conner","tag-jeremiyah-love","tag-nfl","tag-rookie-season","tag-saquon-barkley","tag-the-cardinals","tag-tyler-allgeier"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116492760732569457","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=878537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/878538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=878537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=878537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=878537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}