DETROIT — Jahmyr Gibbs didn’t look tired.

He says he didn’t feel tired, either.

And in the aftermath of the Detroit Lions’ 31-30 overtime win over the New Orleans Saints in their season opener at Ford Field on Sunday, it appeared the only thing that Detroit’s Pro Bowl running back found exhausting were the questions about his Week 1 workload.

In his first game as the Lions’ unofficial “bell cow” — a label head coach Dan Campbell affixed back in June — Gibbs finished with a career-high 29 carries while rolling up 156 rushing yards and scoring two touchdowns. He caught five passes for another 30 yards, and his 182 all-purpose yards accounted for more than half of the Lions’ offense Sunday.

But if you’re wondering just how sustainable that is, you should know that Gibbs … well, he isn’t.

“I have no idea,” he said with a playful shrug in the postgame locker room. “It doesn’t matter to me. I’m just trying to help my team, whatever that looks like.”

Campbell, for his part, looked like he’d been through the wringer after this game. He watched his team blow a 21-0 lead in the second half, then escape with the win after stopping the Saints’ two-point conversion attempt late in overtime. And after that emotional rollercoaster ride, any questions about Gibbs’ usage rate understandably were met with a weary, if wary, smile. Especially with a short, sleepless week awaiting before Thursday's showdown against the Bills in Buffalo.

“You know what I like?” Campbell replied. “Winning a game, man. We were going to win this game, and that guy's our hot hand.”

At times, it felt like he was the only sure hand early on, what with some of the dropped passes — Jameson Williams, in particular, had a frustrating season debut — that compounded problems for a Drew Petzing gameplan that probably skewed a bit too conservative.

Gibbs touched the ball on 11 of the Lions’ first 20 plays Sunday, with 10 carries for 52 yards and one catch for 11 more. That included seven touches alone on Detroit’s first scoring drive, a 13-play, 89-yard march that chewed up nearly 6 1/2 minutes of game clock and ended with Gibbs punching it in from the 1-yard line.

But it’s not as if he ever really slowed down Sunday. Gibbs had six touches in the second quarter, five in the third, six in the fourth and six more in overtime. And in so doing, he ran right past the previous career-highs of 26 carries and 31 touches he set as a rookie in a prime-time win over the Raiders in 2023, when he shouldered a full load with David Montgomery sidelined by a rib injury.

“Ultimately, do I want to set records with how many carries? No, that's that's not something I want to do,” Campbell said. “But … I mean, he had a really good camp, and he’s in the best shape I've seen since he's been here. Now, that doesn't mean we're not going to monitor and we're not going to keep an eye on this guy, because we understand that, too. But we did what we had to do today.”

When the work was done, Gibbs seemed to think nothing of it. He was asked if there was a limit to how many carries he could handle, particularly over the course of a 17-game season, plus the playoffs. At Sunday’s pace, he’d finish with nearly 500 for the season, or twice as much his career high.

“Do I think there’s a number? Nah,” Gibbs said, shaking his head. “I’m good. I feel fine. I coulda took 40 today.”

His teammates tend to agree, not surprisingly.

“I mean, he doesn't get tired,” said Amon-Ra St. Brown, who led the Lions with 10 catches Sunday, including a terrific touchdown grab on a rub route in overtime. “I don't know how he does it. He's running the ball every play. He’s catching it out the backfield. And I'm looking at him in the huddle and he's not even breathing hard.”

That’s not entirely true, of course. Gibbs admitted to taking himself out of the game to catch a breather at one point. He also acknowledged it took him some time to find his footing against the Saints, who were intent on playing two safeties high and forcing the Lions to methodically move the chains for most of the game.

“But it’s like that for a lot of backs, just feeling it out for the first quarter or first half, to see how it’s going,” Gibbs said. “Then you start to get your rhythm.”

Of course, Gibbs isn’t like a lot of backs. He’s arguably the league’s most dynamic threat at his position, and after signing a three-year, $67.5 million contract extension in early August, he’s now the highest-paid as well.

With that kind of investment, it’s no surprise the Lions plan to get their money’s worth, especially after trading Montgomery — his former backfield mate and the "Knuckles" to Gibbs' "Sonic" — to Houston in the offseason. But so far, so good, on that front.

And while Gibbs laughed about the friendly banter he knew was coming later Sunday night — Montgomery topped him with three TDs in Houston’s opener, albeit in a loss — he also smiled while talking about the tough running between the tackles he did, time and time again.

“Yeah, I’m trying to,” he said. “I didn’t want to just like a running-around type of guy."

Campbell didn’t need any proof of that concept. He deemed Sunday's effort a “very promising” debut for the Lions’ ground game, particularly behind a retooled offensive line.

“And certainly we know what Gibbs is, what he's capable of, and he's still not there yet,” Campbell said. “And I mean that in a good way. I'm telling you, we were this close to breaking three or four more of these (runs). Like, breaking them wide open. A shoestring away, just a little longer block at the second level … I mean, we were close. And we're gonna get that cleaned up, and he's gonna get better. So Week 1, yeah, I like where he’s at.”

Where it goes from here is anyone’s guess, obviously. But at first glance, Gibbs is going to get a lot of run.

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