If you weren’t watching Matt Forte run and catch all over the Jacksonville Jaguars yesterday, you might have missed the stat pop up in which Forte, the Bears rookie running back that everyone except Peter King fawns over, broke the Bears’ single season rookie record for total yards from scrimmage. This record was  previously held by Gale Sayers. Which obviously means Forte is better than Sayers. Duh.

And the better news? By the transitive property, Forte is better than Reggie Bush! That doesn’t mean a whole helluva lot, unless you really like slamming Bush, which I do to the nth degree.

Most inspiring about the accomplishment? He was humble about it.

“That’s a blessing and a great accomplishment. I’m glad I had the opportunity to do it. I never looked at anybody’s stats. I just go out and play every weekend. I really worry about the win column.”

Now, it’s clearly too early to say Forte is better than Sayers. But the reality is, that in the context of total yards accumulated by a rookie Bears running back, Forte is the all-time best (so far). When you think about the way he has impacted this team, both with his attitude in the locker room and the play on the field, it’s kind of tough to think that he might not have a legitimate shot at winning ROY.

That’s because, as King noted in his column this week, Matt Ryan exists as the top dog in an extremely competitive and offensively-talented rookie class. But imagine for a second the Bears run the table, win the NFC North and somehow the Falcons fail to make the playoffs (both legitimately plausible scenarios given the NFC South situation at hand).

If that situation occurs — and presumably if it does, Forte will play a tremendous part in it — and Forte can manage to average 125 all purpose yards over the last three games, he’ll finish with 1,851 all purpose yards. Maybe it’s a stretch, but maybe it will also give him a top 100 all-time YFS season. And maybe — I believe — that’s worth more than any hype Matt Ryan can receive.