• Mamas don’t raise your boys to play running back.
Three of the six players franchised in March went into Monday—deadline day for those tagged to do long-term deals—without multi-year contracts. All three were running backs. All three remain without multi-year contracts. And that’s a really tough result for Las Vegas’ Josh Jacobs and the Giants’ Saquon Barkley, in particular (and a little less so for Dallas’ Tony Pollard, just because of his lower mileage and the style of back he is).
Next March, Jacobs will be going into his sixth year in the NFL, and Barkley will be going into his seventh season. Both have logged a lot of time for their respective teams, and would qualify as high-mileage players. Both have battled injuries (Barkley moreso than Jacobs). It’s hard to say either will be any sure thing to remain as productive as they were in 2022 in 2024 and beyond. Which is why walking away from a long-term offer is different for a back than it would be for a pass rusher, receiver or corner, who’s just hitting his prime at that age.
Conor Orr: Running Backs are Sadly Out of Options Financially
To explain it simply, if the Giants offered Barkley or the Raiders offered Jacobs $26 million over the next two years, and they decided to play on the $10.09 million tender instead, then that’s putting about $16 million on the line, knowing there’s a good chance that making that money up after this year won’t be easy—even if those guys it in the fall, their teams still have the option to tag them a second time at just $12.1 million next year.
It's why it’s almost always the right move for a running back to be as militant as he can be in negotiating a contract, but to take all the money he can before it comes off the table.
And there’s history that says Barkley and Jacobs will regret not doing that.
But it’s the reality of the situation these guys are in. Le’Veon Bell knows.
• While we’re here, the problem that Barkley and Jacobs have isn’t that they aren’t good enough. It’s that the position is too replaceable. The Chiefs started a seventh-round rookie, Isiah Pacheco, in the Super Bowl. Their opponent let its starting tailback from that game, Miles Sanders, go to another team for around $6 million per year. And there are a lot of teams that view it in those simple terms—.
The flip side to the argument would be that teams that have done big deals in recent years with backs have largely not regretted their moves to do so. The teams the Chiefs and Eagles beat in the conference title games both had big-money backs (Christian McCaffrey in San Francisco and Joe Mixon in Cincinnati). And what those guys actually make is a pittance compared to top receivers. Courtland Sutton’s contract in Denver ($15 million average annual value), in fact, would rank second among running backs. It’s 20th among receivers.
Derrick Henry ($12.5 million AAV) makes the same as Corey Davis. Nick Chubb ($12.2 million AAV) makes a little more than Michael Gallup. Would you say the Titans and Browns got their money’s worth? Even in cases such as Ezekiel Elliott’s or Dalvin Cook’s, where the player slowed down at the end of the deal, those guys were so central to their teams’ identities for years that it’d be hard to argue their contracts were bad value for the teams. Elliott, in fact, helped Dallas develop a quarterback.
And that’s another thing with Barkley and Jacobs. They were important for their first-year coaches in 2022, arguably becoming bigger pieces of their offenses than their teams’ quarterbacks. That, of course, is why the Raiders and Giants took those negotiations right up to the 4 p.m. ET deadline Monday. It’s also why it’s not great for those coaches that their locker rooms will see such well-respected, accomplished players go unrewarded.
But that’s the situation for these teams, and these players. And it’s where that position is at, too.
• One last thing—running backs got screwed in the 2011 CBA. It was in that agreement between owners and the union that stronger holdout rules went in, as did a rule that prevented any drafted player from signing a new contract until after his third year.
In the old system, workhorse backs such as Chris Johnson and Clinton Portis would rattle cages after Year 2 to try and leverage their value when it was at its peak, and get paydays as a result. It was accepted that backs almost had to do that. But the current system allows teams to milk more out of those guys, and then prepare ahead of time to offload them if they won’t do deals on team-friendly terms.
The reality? This way a tailback can be on the back end of his best producing years by the time he’s even eligible to do a second deal. Which has obvious, and very apparent, impact on his earning power.
• Part of the running back argument goes for tight ends, too. Jacksonville’s Evan Engram, who’s had trouble staying healthy, but has proven a unique weapon as a positional tweener, did a three-year, $41.25 million deal Sunday, a day ahead of the deadline.
That’s $13.75 million per year for a guy who’s really a high-level, matchup-dictating slot receiver.
Worth it? Well, what he got wasn’t dissimilar to the deal Corey Davis signed with the Jets (if you account for inflation) in 2021. Last year, Engram had more than twice as many catches as Davis (73–32), more than 200 more yards (756–536), and more touchdowns (4–2). And he’s more of a chess piece for his coordinator than Davis is.
That cuts back to the crux of the argument, which is there are different levels of value. Because the market at tight end isn’t what it is at receiver (mostly because there are few great players at tight end to push the market forward), you’re getting a significantly better player at that price point at the one position versus the other. And that really does matter, if this is about surrounding the quarterback with the five best skill players you can.
