And I’m not saying you have to do it now. But between now and July 17 (the deadline for franchise-tagged players to sign long-term deals), Saquon Barkley, Josh Jacobs and Tony Pollard figure out just how far the Giants, Raiders and Cowboys are willing to go financially, and then clean all that money off the table.
To be clear, if you’re looking at what receivers or pass rushers or corners who play at the level those guys do, then, no, you wouldn’t be happy with what’ll be offered if you were them. But, in the end, it’s not really relevant how unfair it is.
What matters is where the market is and how a running back’s valued.
I’ve been on record saying that contracts done for guys such as Derrick Henry, Joe Mixon, Nick Chubb and even Ezekiel Elliott (where the wheels fell off at the end) were worth it for the teams. All those guys were paid significantly less than their peers at other positions, all were pivotal guys for their offenses, and each played a role in either helping to ease the development of a young quarterback or managing the deficiencies of an average one.
What’s more, those guys did the right thing taking the money, because very few tailbacks get a shot at the type of life-altering second contract every player wants, and even fewer get more than one shot. Indeed, there are six guys on multiyear deals at eight figures per year, and all six of those guys signed their contracts with the team that drafted them after their third year. Conversely, only two backs over the past decade, Shady McCoy and Le’Veon Bell, have gotten anything resembling a top-of-the-market deal after leaving the team that drafted them, and Bell actually wound up taking less than the Steelers were willing to give him the year before. The reality of the situation is that all the protesting in the world isn’t going to change any of this, and history hasn’t favored the back who’s gambled on himself. So, yes, Saquon, Josh and Tony, draw hard lines over the next month. Push your agent to keep pushing the team to make concessions, and sweeten your deal. But don’t do anything to jeopardize the money that you have worked so hard to earn. It’s also, in my estimation, a result of there being fewer truly special backs—with the 230-pounders that can produce on all three downs, Barkley, Elliott, Mixon, Todd Gurley, today’s outliers. And that, as I see it, is at least in part due to the top athletes coming into a sport matriculating to other positions. Would Odell Beckham Jr. have been Marshall Faulk in a previous generation? Could Micah Parsons have ended up the next Adrian Peterson had he grown up in the 1980s? Might Derwin James have become Eddie George if his date of birth was different? I think all those things are possible, and worth considering. There is a way to measure it, too, in looking at recruiting rankings that list the top athletes going into the college game—because so many of those kids play multiple spots in high school, and are more or less being groomed to pick one to focus on at the next level. Here, then, are some numbers … • In the 2021 recruiting class, per the 247Sports Composite (which averages out all the recruiting services’ rankings), 15 of the top 100 players were receivers, and seven were running backs. • In the 2022 recruiting class, 16 receivers and eight running backs were in the top 100. • In 2023 there were 18 receivers and five backs in the top 100. • In this coming year’s senior class, it’s 15 receivers and nine backs in the top 100. • And if you put those four classes together, and drill down on players ranked inside the top 25, it’s 13 receivers and three backs, with it being 7–0 for the receivers in the class of 2024. It wasn’t that long ago that any high school powerhouse’s best athlete would be its starting tailback. That’s just not where we are anymore—and even in cases where that’s still true (Parsons was one), those athletes are often projected to other positions in college. Which, in the end, is how the Barkleys and Elliotts of the world become so far and few between.
