A SOLUTION FOR NFL LOWBALLING: KIDS SHOULDN’T BE RUNNING BACKS ANYMORE
A league hellbent on devaluing the position — once dominated and glamorized by Jim Brown and Walter Payton — shouldn’t be surprised if parents direct talented young sons to safer, less abusive roles
The question isn’t whether football parents are noticing. It’s how many are protesting en masse. Why would anyone want a son to suffer years of relentless punishment — as a player whose major responsibility is to carry a ball until he’s tackled — only to be paid like a peon if he becomes an NFL starter someday?
Once the celebrated domain of Jim Brown, Walter Payton and Emmitt Smith, the running back position has been devalued to the level of crash-test dummies and fight-card tomato cans. Teams have become so enamored of quarterbacks — and rightfully so, as they trigger the potent offenses that inspire wild shootouts and encourage rampant wagering — that they’ve unfairly tossed rushers into the dumpster with used jock straps and painkiller syringes. Would you believe their franchise-tag category is higher only than that of kickers and punters, who rarely are touched much less subjected to collisions and concussions in the most violent of sports?
No aspiring prospect wants to be used and abused like, say, Josh Jacobs. He was summoned for a league-high 393 touches last season and converted those assignments into substantial production, also leading the league with 1,653 rushing yards and 2,053 yards from scrimmage. How did the Las Vegas Raiders respond? By refusing to offer a long-term contract, instead hiding behind the tag that has become the enemy of running backs everywhere and a management weapon against the NFL Players Association. He is scheduled to make $10.091 million this season, tied for 201st among league players. At the moment, Jacobs has left Sin City and may not be seen again until Week 1 of the regular season, assuming he returns at all.
“If you want me to come back and be the hero,” he said, “you’re going to have to pay me like a hero.”
Understand this: No one is saying the best quarterbacks are overpaid. Patrick Mahomes is worth his $450 million deal, soon to be reworked at a higher per-year average with fuller guarantees. Justin Herbert reaped a whopping $218 million in guarantees. Jalen Hurts cashed in appropriately at $51 million a year. Joe Burrow will get his bag. Lamar Jackson got his, though not without teeth-pulling. It’s the disproportionate-to-reality contracts that infuriate running backs. Deshaun Watson, lucky not to be in jail, continues to play on a fully guaranteed, $230 million deal that defies logic. Kyler Murray? Russell Wilson? They sabotage teams, yet take home preposterous sums while protected by safety rules.
The depressed marketplace prompted Jacobs and other aggrieved backs to participate in a Zoom call last weekend. Frustrations rose to the point Tennessee Titans workhouse Derrick Henry, who is paid an average of $12.5 million a year, suggested a nuclear solution. “At this point, just take the running back position out of the game then,” he tweeted. “The ones that want to be great & work as hard as they can to give their all to an organization, (it) just seems like it don’t even matter. I’m with every RB that’s fighting to get what they deserve.”
In the same situation is Saquon Barkley, responsible for 30 percent of the New York Giants’ offensive success in his 352 touches last season. While quarterback Daniel Jones was receiving a new contract averaging $40 million a season — the same Danny Dimes who didn’t awaken from a career snooze until last year and still rates as a work in progress — Barkley was offered the same franchise tender. He rejected it, then made a decision that doesn’t help the overall labor cause, agreeing to a slightly adjusted tag worth up to $11 million for the 2023 season. To reach $909,000 in incentives, when a quarterback makes $909,000 for sneezing, he must rush for 1,350 yards, catch 65 passes, score 11 touchdowns and help the Giants to a playoff berth. Obviously, such a workload would be a central reason for any advancement to the postseason. Doesn’t matter. They think they can pull any schmo off the street, though they thought enough of Barkley to take him second overall in the 2018 draft.
These aren’t just raw deals. These are workplace atrocities.
“Everyone knows it’s tough to win without a top running back and yet they act like we are discardable widgets,” tweeted Austin Ekeler, who averages $6.1 per year as the top back of the title-minded Los Angeles Chargers. “I support any running back doing whatever it takes to get his bag.”
Christian McCaffrey, who averages $16 million as the best-paid running back, was sent to the San Francisco 49ers in a blockbuster deal last October. He runs with the football. He catches the football. In the NFC championship game, he was used as an emergency quarterback after Brock Purdy’s injury. He’s as incensed as anyone, referencing the plight of Jacobs, Barkley and Dallas’ Tony Pollard when he tweeted, “This is Criminal. Three of the best PLAYERS in the entire league, regardless of position.”
Always seeking a sneaky edge against the union, the league has placed an absurdly low salary cap above a position markedly more important than the pay scale indicates. The backs can file a collective grievance and go to court, but they’ll find no success while under the terms of a signed collective bargaining agreement. In a league merrily locked into labor peace through 2030, they have no dramatic recourse unless they hold out like Jacobs — and start preaching to parents of talented young players. Franchises will keep citing analytics in an era when quarterbacks have become the most important, glamorized players in team sports. In the past 15 years, only three Super Bowl champions boasted a 1,000-yard rusher. Patrick Mahomes won his second ring with a seventh-round pick, Isiah Pacheco, and Damien Williams, an undrafted free agent, behind him in the backfield. Tom Brady won championships with no-name rushers and might have had postseason success with his new running back, model Irina Shayk, who …. never mind, not going there.
“Right now, there's really nothing we can do," said Cleveland’s Nick Chubb, who averages $12 million a season, though he’s called “the best running back on the planet” by Henry. "We're kind of handcuffed with the situation. We're the only position that our production hurts us the most. If we go out there and run 2,000 yards with so many carries, the next year they're going to say, you're probably worn down. It's tough. ... It hurts us at the end of the day.”
So be prepared for a revolution, coaches. When prospects in their early-to-mid teens try out for teams, watch how few want to be running backs. Plenty of hands will shoot up when the call goes out for quarterbacks, of course, along with wide receivers, linebackers, defensive ends and cornerbacks.
Running back? You’re better off punting. At least you won’t end up with brain damage.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.