Jacksonville Jaguars running back Leonard Fournette was expecting to find the NFL to be much faster than he did in his preseason debut.
The Jaguars rookie, who collected 31 yards and a touchdown on nine carries, admitted that he was warned frequently that the league would be much faster than college football, but he simply didn’t find that to be true.
“It’s a lot slower than I really thought,” Fournette told James Palmer of NFL.com after Thursday night’s preseason victory at New England. “That’s how I’ve been since I first got into the NFL. A lot of people were like, ‘It’s going to be fast.’ But by me playing in the SEC, that kind of helped me a lot. I think, to me, it was really easy.”
In fact, Fournette believes he can repeat Ezekiel Elliott’s feat from 2016 and win the rushing title as a rookie.
“Yeah. I think so,” Fournette said.
Fournette might not even be the team’s undisputed lead back at the start of the season, so he may have to temper his expectations a bit. Plus, regular season games are definitely more intense and more hotly-contested than the preseason game Fournette is judging things by. Still, it’s a good sign that he didn’t find it overwhelming.
