The Cleveland Browns signed running back Jaret Patterson to the practice squad on Tuesday, adding a veteran depth option whose college résumé still includes some of the most extreme single-game numbers in FBS history.

Browns insider Scott Petrak reported the move.

Patterson, who starred at Buffalo from 2018 to 2020, arrives after a brief stay on the Minnesota Vikings’ practice squad. The Vikings released him on September 29, a week after signing him.

He spent the bulk of his professional career with the Washington Commanders and the Los Angeles Chargers, going undrafted in 2021 and carving out a role as a change-of-pace back and special-teams contributor.

In 27 career games, he has 126 carries for 503 yards and three touchdowns, plus 13 receptions for 81 yards. In 2025 he appeared in six games for the Chargers and ran 41 times for 159 yards and a score.

The signing is less about what Patterson has done on Sundays than about what he did on Saturdays in Amherst.

On November 28, 2020, he tied the FBS single-game record with eight rushing touchdowns in a 70–41 win over Kent State, matching the mark Howard Griffith set for Illinois in 1990.

Those eight scores also tied the FBS record for points in a game, at 48. He finished with 36 carries for 409 yards, the second-highest single-game rushing total in FBS history, 18 yards short of Samaje Perine’s 427 for Oklahoma in 2014.

That afternoon was the second half of an even rarer stretch. A week earlier, Patterson had run for 301 yards and four touchdowns at Bowling Green.

His 710 yards over those two games set the FBS record for rushing yards in a two-game span, breaking Ricky Williams’s mark of 668, and his 12 rushing touchdowns in that span also set an FBS record. He and Williams remain the only players with back-to-back 300-yard rushing games.

The rest of the Buffalo ledger was nearly as loud. Patterson rushed for 1,013 yards and 14 touchdowns as a freshman and was named MAC Freshman of the Year.

In 2019, he set school records with 1,799 yards and 19 touchdowns, finished fifth nationally in rushing, and was the offensive MVP of Buffalo’s first bowl win, in the Bahamas Bowl.

In a pandemic-shortened 2020 season he needed only six games to pile up 1,072 yards and another 19 scores, then was named MAC Offensive Player of the Year and the conference’s most valuable player.

He left as the school’s career leader in rushing touchdowns, with 52, and second in rushing yards, with 3,884.

For Cleveland, the addition is practice-squad insurance behind a thin backfield, not a claim on the starting job. Patterson has never been a featured NFL back. He has, though, already produced the kind of afternoon almost no one else in major-college football can match.