Chris Rodriguez Jr. has been nicknamed a lot of things over the years. When he was a kid playing at Panhandle Park in Clayton County, Ga., they called him “the man-child” because he was that much better than others his age. This year, in the months before the Washington Commanders picked him in the sixth round of the NFL draft, analysts labeled him a bruising ballcarrier, a bulldozing runner, a bully and a banger. His former Kentucky teammate Jamin Davis calls him “the bowling ball.”
Another former teammate, linebacker Jacquez Jones, who transferred to Kentucky from Mississippi in 2021, said the first time he tried to tackle Rodriguez, in 2020, it left him sidelined.
“I ended up with a concussion,” Jones told local media in Kentucky last year. “That’s probably the first concussion I ever had because I ran into a knee. I laid down on the sideline, and I didn’t know where I was at. I didn’t know C-Rod was that powerful, so it kind of caught me off guard.”
But perhaps the most fitting description of Rodriguez, the two-time captain at Kentucky who finished his career with the third-most rushing yards (3,644) in school history, was bestowed by one of his college offensive coordinators, Liam Coen.
“[Rodriguez] was just a man on a mission,” Coen said.
He still is.
In January, Rodriguez’s mother, Stephanie Thornton, died of complications from lupus, a chronic disease in which the body’s immune system attacks its own tissues and organs. She was only 42.
Since then, Rodriguez has made it his mission to honor his mother at almost every opportunity, raising money and awareness for the Lupus Foundation of America at the NFL combine and wearing purple — her favorite color and the color for lupus awareness — at the Senior Bowl. He even had custom shoes painted with his mother’s image that he showed off during the draft.
“Sometimes, if I’m laying there and I’m not keeping busy, I just start to think of her, think of her voice, think of her face,” Rodriguez said. “My mom, she used to call me every day at school. Didn’t want anything. She’d say, ‘I’m just trying to aggravate you.’ You miss those small moments.”
When asked about his mother the day he was drafted, Rodriguez’s voice cracked.
“My mom, she’s my biggest motivation in life,” he said.
‘Watch when people have to tackle him’
Chyna Thornton still recalls watching her younger brother excel at almost every sport he attempted. Baseball, football, basketball, track — whatever he did, he did it well.
In both his junior and senior seasons at Ola High, Rodriguez topped 1,600 rushing yards and had at least 25 rushing touchdowns.
In one game, against Eagle’s Landing High, where years earlier Commanders running back Antonio Gibson starred as a wide receiver, Rodriguez ran for 391 yards and six touchdowns — then flipped to defense to tackle three players on a game-ending lateral.
“He was one of those kids you hear about when you come back to the town,” Gibson said. “We’ve got a lot of schools, but it’s a small town at the end of the day. So I remember coming back to the games, and it was like, ‘Oh, this kid from Ola rushed for 300 yards.’ I’m like, ‘Gah, y’all let him do that?’ ”
At 5-foot-11 and 224 pounds, Rodriguez lives up to his myriad nicknames with downhill power and speed, similar to his favorite running back, Marshawn Lynch. At Kentucky, Rodriguez averaged 4.0 yards after contact on rushes and totaled 176 forced missed tackles.
“In spring practice [in 2021] … we’re playing tag, two-hand touch, and that’s not Chris’s forte. That’s not the world that he likes to live in,” Coen said. “So I’m sitting there, like, ‘Guys, is this kid really all that you say he is?’ And they said, ‘Liam, just watch when people have to tackle him.’ It showed up in the first scrimmage that we actually let him go live. People are just bouncing off of him.”
Rodriguez’s physicality showed up in the first game that season, too, when Kentucky crushed Louisiana Monroe, 45-10. Rodriguez had 125 rushing yards, including a run that could have ended as a loss but instead resulted in a 31-yard gain after he forced at least four missed tackles.
Chris Rodriguez Jr. went beast mode 😳 pic.twitter.com/8IJJsGumOA
— SEC Network (@SECNetwork) September 4, 2021
It showed up again in the final stretch of the season, when Rodriguez rushed for more than 100 yards in each of his final five games.
“He really challenged himself to be disciplined, to really study and be on the screws,” Coen said.
His mission that year culminated with Kentucky’s Citrus Bowl win over Iowa. Rodriguez caught a five-yard touchdown pass in the first quarter, then scored the game-winning six-yard touchdown in the final two minutes, dodging a tackle behind the line of scrimmage before bolting to the end zone.
A fit with the Commanders
Last year, the Commanders drafted Brian Robinson Jr. (6-1, 228) out of Alabama to add more power to a group that also featured Gibson (6-2, 220), the versatile wideout convert. In drafting Rodriguez, Washington showed it has a preferred type for running backs: big ones. The team has also shown, perhaps inadvertently, that it values backs with a proven ability to quickly adapt.
Rodriguez played for three offensive coordinators at Kentucky, and over his past four years (he redshirted in 2018) he averaged 3.97 yards after contact per rush, which ranked seventh among qualified Football Bowl Subdivision players in that span, per the website TruMedia. He also converted 66 percent of his third-down rushes, which ranked sixth. Robinson (79.5 percent) sits at the top of that list.
Rodriguez’s past two seasons in Kentucky’s pro-style offense, which featured concepts from Sean McVay’s and Kyle Shanahan’s systems, perhaps offered the best glimpse of how his skill set may translate to Eric Bieniemy’s West Coast attack in Washington.
Bieniemy’s system will inherently be pass-focused, with an emphasis on run-pass options. In Kansas City, where Bieniemy spent five years as running backs coach and another five as offensive coordinator, the Chiefs benefited from a diverse rushing attack, parts of which he could carry over to Washington. Plus, Bieniemy was one of college football’s most productive backs himself; he’s still the all-time leading rusher at Colorado.
“In Eric’s mind, this is a guy that will fit what he wants,” Commanders Coach Ron Rivera said of Rodriguez after the draft. “We’re pretty excited about being able to pick him.”
The Commanders had a third-round grade on Rodriguez, according to two people familiar with their draft plans. But to impress at training camp — and to make the roster — he will have to prove himself on special teams, a mandate Bieniemy emphasized in the offseason.
“If you’re becoming best friends with that special teams coach, that means that you’re finding a way to become a four-phase special teams player,” he said. “Chris hasn’t taken that for granted at all.”
Purple for his mom
Over the past four years, Rodriguez said, he has grown even closer to his sister. Maybe age and maturity played a part. Maybe the sense of missing home did, too. But almost certainly his mother played a role.
“I’ll never forget: My mom called me and was like, ‘Hey, your sister doesn’t think you love her, because you don’t call her,’ and it made me feel some type of way,” Rodriguez said. “After that, me and my sister and my mom became so close. We used to FaceTime almost every day. … Now, my sister, she bugs me every day, like, ‘Why aren’t you calling me?’ ”
Chyna, a mother of four, is part of Rodriguez’s large support network, along with Rodriguez’s fiancée, Jordyn Gauvin; his future in-laws; and his newest teammates in Washington.
“I honestly feel that him having people in his corner is what keeps him going,” Chyna said.
As Rodriguez grapples with the loss of his mother, football is a source of comfort.
“It never gets easier,” he said.
Roughly three weeks after his mother’s death, Rodriguez returned to the field for one of his first major NFL tryouts, at the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Ala. His family planned to wear Stephanie’s favorite color, and his agency wanted to get the okay from Jim Nagy, the executive director of the Senior Bowl, that Rodriguez could wear some purple throughout the week, with wristbands and other tributes.
Nagy suggested they take it a step further.
The Senior Bowl’s head of equipment, Greg Stringfellow, is also the director of equipment at LSU, so Nagy asked him whether he could send up a purple face mask for Rodriguez.
It arrived in the mail the next day and was promptly screwed into Rodriguez’s helmet. Rodriguez led the Senior Bowl’s American team with six carries for 27 yards to go with two catches for 36 yards.
“I know she’s looking down,” he said after the draft. “She’s proud of me, and I’ll continue to make her proud.”