Does this offseason indicate the NFL running back market has seen its last true reset?
No one wants to pay running backs anymore.
This isn’t a new phenomenon, but it reached its breaking point this offseason when the Minnesota Vikings released Dalvin Cook and the New York Giants and Las Vegas Raiders each placed the franchise tags on Saquon Barkley and Josh Jacobs, respectively, with neither having agreed to a contract extension yet.
Those three finished first (Jacobs), fifth (Barkley) and eighth (Cook) in total scrimmage yards in 2022, and all three accounted for sizable portions of their individual team’s total scrimmage yards. Yet, their futures remain in flux.
Cook, who was set to count $14 million against the Vikings’ salary cap in 2023, is a free agent. Many believe he’ll join his hometown Miami Dolphins. Jacobs and Barkley, meanwhile, have quietly signaled they’d hold out for a long-term extension rather than sign the franchise tag.
At any other position, production like that might garner market-setting money. Top contracts for every other position in football have seen at least a 74% increase since 2011, and the quarterback market was reset twice in a week this offseason when Lamar Jackson signed his extension with the Baltimore Ravens soon after Jalen Hurts signed his with the Philadelphia Eagles in April.
For running backs, the deals remained mostly stagnant and have risen by only 12.68% in the past 12 years. The $16 million average annual value of Christian McCaffrey’s contract hasn’t been broken since he signed the deal on April 13, 2020. The highest-paid free agent running back this offseason, Miles Sanders, signed a deal worth $6.3 million a year with $13 million guaranteed. Those numbers rank 11th and ninth in his position, respectively. And two of the positions’ top earners, Cook and Ezekiel Elliott of the Dallas Cowboys, were both cut this offseason in cap-saving moves.
“Everybody's getting paid significantly higher — besides us,” former Denver Broncos and Los Angeles Chargers running back Melvin Gordon told Yahoo Sports. “Everybody's going up and we're trending down. If it was to go up, this year would've been a year to do it.”
There are multiple reasons for this troubling trend. The biggest one is that running backs accumulate the most wear and tear on their bodies before and throughout the early part of their NFL careers, so teams aren’t champing at the bit to extend or sign veterans with lots of touches under their belt. Teams have also found replacement-level players at the position for cheaper prices either later in the draft or in free agency. And, of course, the NFL has become a predominantly passing league over the past couple decades. So it’s smarter to pay someone who can either throw, receive, block or defend the pass than it is to pay someone whose career span ranks last among all positions and almost a full year less than the league average.
As Gordon eloquently put it: "It's literally the worst position to play in the NFL right now. It literally sucks."
Take the money or try to reset the market?
Running backs tried to change this discrepancy in the past. After Todd Gurley signed the first RB deal worth more than $45 million guaranteed in 2018, the rest of the league’s top rushers wanted to eclipse that mark.
Le’Veon Bell skipped an entire season in search of a record-setting deal in 2018. Gordon held out for 64 days in 2019. Elliott went as far as Cabo during his holdout that same offseason.
Those moves had mixed results: Bell got a lucrative deal — just not the one he wanted — with the New York Jets in 2019, a four-year, $52 million deal with $27 million guaranteed, but was out of the NFL two years later. Gordon returned to the Chargers in 2019 but left in free agency for the Broncos the following offseason on a smaller deal than the one he wanted at two years and $16 million, with $13.5 million guaranteed. He’s also a free agent now. Elliott landed a massive extension but as his efficiency declined, his role on the team diminished and the Cowboys released him this offseason. Even Gurley lasted just three more seasons after he signed his contract.
Those four situations are cautionary tales for teams, and it’s a big reason why only four running backs have signed deals worth at least $50 million and at least $25 million guaranteed since 2020.
“I think the concerns teams have around the running back market is gonna be, 'can he survive the guarantee aspect of the contract?'" Mike Tannenbaum, former NFL general manager and founder of The 33rd Team, told Yahoo Sports ahead of free agency in March. “And that's where you've seen issues going back to [someone like] Todd Gurley.”
The ones who signed those lucrative 2020 contracts — Cook, McCaffrey, the New Orleans Saints’ Alvin Kamara and the Tennessee Titans’ Derrick Henry — either aren't on the same team anymore or have been subject to trade speculation for the past year. Even Joe Mixon, who signed a $48 million deal with the Cincinnati Bengals in 2020, is a possible cut candidate. Austin Ekeler requested a trade this offseason, three years into his four-year, $24.5 million deal, but couldn’t find a partner and stayed in Los Angeles on a more incentivized contract.
The true tipping point in the market came in 2021, when Nick Chubb and Aaron Jones both signed contracts that failed to reset the market despite productive seasons. Chubb finished second in rushing yards and tied for first in yards per carry in 2020 yet signed a three-year, $26 million deal with $20 million guaranteed with the Cleveland Browns in 2021. Aaron Jones, who finished sixth in scrimmage yards among all running backs in 2020, did something similar that offseason with his four-year, $45 million contract with the Green Bay Packers, and has since renegotiated.
What do both deals have in common? They’re both effectively one or two years of the franchise tag spread out over multiple seasons. The tag in 2021 for a running back was $9.57 million, and it was $10.1 million in 2022, which almost adds up to guaranteed money on Chubb’s deal. And Jones' deal initially averaged out to a little over $11 million a year, plus only $13 million was guaranteed.
Teams haven’t budged from that framework since. James Conner signed a three-year, $21 million extension with $13.5 million guaranteed with the Arizona Cardinals in 2022. Sanders got slightly more than that from the Carolina Panthers this year, while David Montgomery earned slightly less from the Detroit Lions.
Which running backs are worth the money?
There are two schools of thought when it comes to paying running backs: Either none are worth it, or only the best are. And a lot of that boils down to how much a team cares about analytics versus raw production.
Henry and McCaffrey, for instance, accounted for 38.37% and 32.78% of their teams' total scrimmage yards in 2022, which ranked first and third in the league, respectively. Their total Expected Points Added Per Play (rushing and receiving) ranked sixth and first, respectively, per TruMedia. That actually fits more in line with where their average yearly salary ranked: McCaffrey was first and Henry was sixth in 2022. They deviated in Defense-Adjusted Yards Above Replacement (DYAR), per Football Outsiders. McCaffrey finished third, while Henry finished 11th. This meant that while McCaffrey was certainly well above the average running back, Henry wasn’t.
| Player | Yds | RusY/G | Y/A | TD | Long |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 J. Jacobs Q | 1,653 | 97.2 | 4.9 | 12 | 86 |
 S. Barkley | 1,312 | 82 | 4.4 | 10 | 68 |
 C. McCaffrey Q | 1,139 | 67 | 4.7 | 8 | 49 |
 D. Henry | 1,538 | 96.1 | 4.4 | 13 | 56 |
The Jacobs and Barkley questions are even harder to answer. Jacobs tallied 34.26% of the Raiders’ total scrimmage yards in 2022, finished first in DYAR and fifth in EPA/play. Barkley, meanwhile, accounted for 29.79% of the Giants’ yardage, finished 18th in EPA/play and 21st in DYAR. In a vacuum, the analytics indicate Jacobs is worth more than Barkley, but both were invaluable to their respective teams last season.
This is where, perhaps, it’s better to pay either below market value or draft a rookie if you don’t have a McCaffrey-like difference-maker and hope you get someone like Sanders or Tony Pollard, who cost significantly less. Sanders ranked sixth and Pollard ranked in fourth EPA/play this past season, and both were tied for seventh in DYAR.
Pollard will likely command a sizable extension after he signed his franchise tag this offseason, but we already know the Panthers signed Sanders to a cheaper deal than his contemporaries.
The future of the running back market
As Gordon alluded to earlier, this figured to be the offseason for a market reset. Jacobs led the league in scrimmage yards, Barkley enjoyed a tremendous year and Pollard emerged as a true feature back. But the reset didn’t happen. Instead, all three got the franchise tag with no progress on long-term extensions. Then, three quality, albeit aging, veterans were released in Cook, Elliott and Leonard Fournette, with only Cook seemingly generating moderate interest on the market.
Barkley already said he didn’t want to overtake McCaffrey as the league’s highest-paid rusher, but it sounds like he doesn’t want to be underpaid either. Jacobs appears in a similar boat considering his breakout season.
But there’s always another ship past the horizon. If and when Barkley, Pollard and Jacobs get resolved, the subject of Indianapolis Colts running back Jonathan Taylor will come up. He led the league in rushing in 2021 before an injury-plagued 2022 campaign and will be an unrestricted free agent this offseason (there is no fifth-year options since he was a second-round draft pick). And if rookie running back Bijan Robinson lives up to the No. 8 overall draft pick the Atlanta Falcons used on him this spring, then conversations about his deal will be rampant as he's first eligible for an extension in 2026.
The downward spiral of the market concerns Gordon, who says it could lead to a mass exodus of younger players in high school and college who would normally play running back to other positions.
“The youth kind of see that and they’re like, 'well I don't wanna play running back,'” Gordon said. “For what? A good kid that was born to run the rock is forced to change his spot now because the future of that position is really in shambles.”
So what are the remedies?
The biggest one is the franchise tag. McCaffrey, Sanders and Mark Ingram, a former first-round draft pick and 13-year veteran, have all referenced its effect on the market when asked about the state of the running back position.
McCaffrey noted that there is inherent value in a position that can affect the run and the pass in an interview with NFL Network’s Rich Eisen. He also pointed out how the franchise tag played a big role in devaluing the position at the negotiation table. Sanders later claimed that “almost every running back is underpaid” in a different conversation with Eisen because the franchise tag effectively created the depreciated market for the position. Ingram, meanwhile, tweeted that the running backs “need their own union and CBA,” that the franchise tag should be abolished and deals should only run 2-3 years max.
There is no simple fix. At least not until a new precedent is set by a team or the issue is resolved during the next collective bargaining agreement negotiations, which won’t happen until 2029 or 2030.
So while many lament the state of the position, the best players continue to push for what they believe is a fair price for their production. But it’s up to the teams to agree.
