NEW YORK — Breece Hall is already widely considered one of the NFL's elite running backs. His dual-threat talents have made him a popular early pick in fantasy football drafts.
That's with only 24 professional games. And from a guy who missed the last half of his rookie season with the New York Jets in 2022 with a torn knee ligament.
“The hype and all that stuff’s there, but for me it’s just having the standard for myself to, you know, every time I step out on the field, I want to be the best player out there,” Hall said Tuesday. “I want every team to know who No. 20 is.”
Hall probably doesn’t need to worry too much about that at this point. While Aaron Rodgers runs the Jets' offense, Hall is the engine that makes it go.
The 23-year-old Hall bounced back from a torn ACL in Week 7 of his first season to lead NFL running backs with 76 receptions last season. That’s nine more than the player on the other sideline — San Francisco’s Christian McCaffrey — on Monday night when New York opens its season against the 49ers. Hall finished 12 catches shy of Richie Anderson’s franchise record for running backs and he fell just 6 yards short of a 1,000-yard rushing season, something he guaranteed during training camp he'll accomplish this year.
That's quite a comeback for a running back who dealt with plenty of doubts in the months following his injury.
“Yeah, I look back at it now and just feel like there’s nothing I can’t do,” said Hall, who's fully healthy. "I had a lot of long days, a lot of long nights. A lot of wondering if I was going to be the same again. And so it’s little stuff like that and, God-willing, I was able to work hard enough and it just took some time.
“I feel like I’m better than ever right now. And really, to me, I haven’t really done anything in this league yet.”
Tell that to anyone who watches him play — teammate or opponent.
“For me," Hall said, “like every week I've got to go out there with something to prove with a chip on my shoulder.”
And he'll carry that with him to San Francisco, where he has several ties.
Hall is the cousin of three-time Super Bowl champion Roger Craig, who was also a do-it-all running back for the Joe Montana-led 49ers in the 1980s.
“He’s actually just really respectful of my time and everything,” Hall said. “So he’ll always text me like, ‘Good luck’ or a joke or something like that, but we won’t go into too much depth because I have a lot of stuff to do. I have to lock in for the game and everything.”
Hall was also college roommates at Iowa State with current 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy, who played his way from being “Mr. Irrelevant” as the final pick of the 2022 draft to leading a team to the Super Bowl last season.
“Just being around him for two years, 2 1/2 years, it made me a better person,” Hall said. “Just seeing how he lives his life, seeing how his faith is and how he’s the same guy every day, it rubs off on you and makes you want to be a better person, a better player.”
Hall also will get a chance to see McCaffrey in person after years of watching videos of him, starting in middle school. He said earlier in the offseason the reigning AP Offensive Player of the Year is “the standard” for running backs, and he hopes to someday rise to McCaffrey's level.
“It seems like he pretty much does everything right,” Hall said. “Just seeing how he plays with minimal mistakes and great attention to detail and he has no wasted movement. It’s always been cool for me to have to sit there and watch that because it makes me want to implement that part into my game."
