Running backs have an NFL problem: Here's how to fix it

This is nothing new: Seaside Joe 1575

Over the weekend, I watched a video about the devaluation of the running back position and the YouTuber—Football Analysis, who has 78,000 subscribers—made an interesting point. Although not one that I haven’t heard before.

It follows a growing sentiment around the league, especially amid the contract disputes of Josh Jacobs and Saquon Barkley and on the heels of Dalvin Cook being released by the Vikings, that “actually, running backs are getting a terrible deal”. Something I’ve been saying since at least the inception of Seaside Joe over four years ago.

“All of this will trick down to the youth level of football. If you legitimately have a future in football, or could, why would you play running back? I think this is going to have a significant impact on the future of the running back position at the NFL level because guys are going to opt for a safer position in receiver. And also a position where they can get a heftier contract, as well.”

This idea that the nature of the running back position is so unattractive that it would have a trickle down effect to high school and youth football so that no talented players would dare stay on the track is something that I know a writer covered almost a decade ago.

And for that reason, we might also see a departure of talent from the position as well over the next 5-10 years and onward. Why would any parent in their right mind want to coach someone to be the next Darren McFadden or Maurice Jones-Drew if they might be able to teach them to be the next Darrelle Revis or Kam Chancellor? In fact, if  you wanted to see an example of that coming up in the draft right now, UCLA linebacker Anthony Barr is being regarded as a early first round pick, but the former running back may not have even been much of a draft prospect if he stayed on offense.

Other examples would include defensive tackle Chris Whaley of Texas; Originally one of the top running back prospects in the state, Whaley bulked up and is going to play DT in the NFL. Safety Jeff Lewis at Wisconsin also switched away from RB. Indiana's Damon Graham went from the backfield to defensive back.

Sean Smith of the Chiefs was a running back as a freshman at Utah, and now he's entering his sixth season in the league as a cornerback.

This was posted on Field Gulls on April 11, 2014 in an article called “Running downhill: The slow but sure death of the NFL running back.” The author would go on to make some interesting points about why we’d see a dearth of athletic talent at the running back position and one day create the greatest newsletter in the history of sports, but if you’re not on Twitter, do you even matter?

Here were the pros and cons laid out by the writer over nine years ago, which are the same points only now being made by everyone else:

So what are the cons of being a running back right now?

- Higher chance of injury

- More work (and more hits taken) on game day

- Less pay

- Lower draft value

- Likelier to be replaced with a low-round pick

- Fewer touches in a passing league

- Less respect

- You ruined my fantasy team!

Pros of being a running back

- Maybe there's the one-in-500 chance you're Marshawn Lynch or Adrian Peterson

- But you're not.

Where do I sign up*?!

I would continue to make this point several years later and although I can’t find that article, I know that I did because I’ll never forget writing about the case of Quavaris Crouch. After rushing for over 3,142 yards and 31 touchdowns as a junior in high school (he’s no Nick Bellore though), Crouch was getting advice from everywhere to switch positions and so he did.

Maybe as a running back, Crouch could have been the next Derrick Henry. We’ll never know. But he transitioned to linebacker and started his career as a four-star recruit at Tennessee starting in 2019. He transferred to Michigan State in 2021 and most recently he may be going to Charlotte to finish his college career.

It’s unfortunate when any elite high school recruit fails to live up to his potential, but it’s hardly uncommon. We can’t say that players like Quavaris Crouch blew their chances at NFL career simply because they changed positions. But I CAN say definitively that if Crouch were playing in another era of the game, he almost certainly would not have continued his college career as anything other than as a running back.

And for that reason, perhaps no less than college football fans were robbed of an opportunity to potentially see a player who could have become one of the most exciting running backs in the country. Why?

Because what sort of a fool who has a chance to play in the NFL would risk his body for a position that will probably rip him off if he even makes it that far?

I’ve said this before and I’ll repeat it now because—well, because to me it’s an interesting part of Internet NFL history—but I helped create a monster when I went to Ben Baldwin and asked him to write an article for Field Gulls based on his tweets that “running backs don’t matter”. At the time, I agreed with him. To a degree, I still agree.

But because that article went viral and made him into an NFL Twitter superstar based on that premise (which many of you may not know because maybe you’ve avoided Twitter and analytics), at a certain point I felt like that entire narrative just got out of hand. Suddenly the idea of “running backs don’t matter” wasn’t about trying to build a better football team; it was just about one person trying to prove that he was smarter than other football fans on how to build a better football team.

And that “he” isn’t just Ben, it’s countless wannabes, copycats, and lost souls just looking for a group to belong to. If it wasn’t Baldwin, it was “Baldtwin”; a copy of a copy.

When I wrote those articles about running backs and the brutal nature of the position at least nine years ago, I never intended to be anti-running back. It made me feel bad for running backs, it didn’t make me feel like running backs are bad, which is seemingly what it turned into for so many of those people in the “running backs don’t matter” crowd. The people who would jump for joy every time a running back tore his ACL or his Achilles and was lost for the season simply because it made that person feel like he was proven right.

The people who would immediately run to Twitter to give themselves a pat on the back and say “I told you so” with a grin every time a running back who got paid a second contract would get seriously hurt or simply have a bad game.

To me, that’s not being a football fan. That’s being a “Me” fan. “I’m not a fan of the players who risk their bodies to try and do the thing I like to watch athletes do. I’m a fan of ME and people thinking that I’M SMART.”

As soon as I noticed this shift away from trying to build a better football team and towards “winning the war of analytics vs. anybody who may think that running backs are good”, I took the handoff and ran in the other direction. (I’m a bad running back.)

From that moment forward, I set out to prove that running backs DO matter. I don’t even care if I’m right or wrong, I just care that rooting against players because they play a certain position is right.

And I am right: Running backs absolutely do matter.

You can say that the position typically has as much value as center, guard, tight end, or safety, and that may be correct. But no other position has to simultaneously fight against a now narrative that they “don’t matter”, leading to loud criticisms (on ESPN and any other major media outlet) for teams drafting awesome football players in the first round, where no skepticism would exist if that player was a tight end like Kyle Pitts. Or a center like Billy Price. Or a guard like Chance Warmack.

The media just says, “Oh he’s an exception” and they move on.

Because Twitter and Baldtwins exists, that won’t happen with running backs. Picking Bijan Robinson in the top-10 “was a huge mistake”. The Lions selecting Jahmyr Gibbs was “the worst move of the first round”. It won’t matter what Robinson and Gibbs do in their careers, it’s already been proven with the criticism for the Seahawks selecting Kenneth Walker III in the second round that the anti-running back crowd won’t even budge after a 1,000-yard rookie season.

So yeah, for the last decade, at least, I’ve said that great football players should choose another position other than running back if they have the slightest opportunity to make the league as a receiver or a cornerback or something else. But I have NEVER been against the players who are running backs. I root FOR THEM. I want them to be EXCEPTIONS. I want them to stay HEALTHY. And I want them to GET PAID.

Rooting for anything else is not being a football fan. It’s being a Me fan.

What to do next

With that, I’ve been trying to think of ways for the NFL to help running backs for the last couple of years and I still believe that eventually something will have to change. Running backs have a major “NFL problem” and that is that the league has no problem featuring them as football stars (you’ll see Bijan Robinson promoted on Sunday Night Football before you’ll see anyone else on the Falcons, including Pitts and probably including Drake London or Desmond Ridder), running them into the ground, and then spitting them out into free agency without ever having to reward them for their efforts on rookie contracts.

Robinson and Gibbs are two of the lucky ones, the small percentage of current NFL running backs who get fully-guaranteed first round contracts.

The stand-offs between Jacobs and the Raiders and Barkley and the Giants will showcase the growing rift between some of the NFL’s biggest stars at the running back position and the players who beat their bodies down for the least amount of money, which Melvin Gordon recently made clear on The Jim Rome Show:

"It's just so tough for running backs right now, man," Gordon said to Jim Rome on CBS Sports Radio this week. "You have a lot of running backs that's out there and we just don't get no love. It's literally the worst position to play in the NFL right now. It literally sucks."

Gordon is 30 and if he doesn’t sign with an NFL team and is forced to retire, the former first round pick will see his career end as last being a member of the Chiefs practice squad. Some would say that at $31 million, Gordon made a lot more money that his on-field value and that might be true. But again, it goes back to classifying the negatives of this one position as “end of the world” as if these same problems and miscalculations don’t happen at every other position.

As if most big name veteran free agents aren’t overpaid. As if Odell Beckham, Jr. is worth his $18 million contract with the Ravens in 2023.

As if most first round quarterbacks aren’t busts.

As if cornerbacks don’t get hurt at an alarming rate.

Every position has busts, injuries, and overpaid disappointments. Running backs just happen to get the least amount of residual rewards in return for their failures, despite perhaps being the second-most publicized position after quarterbacks.

What can running backs do about their NFL problem? I have ideas. I'll share one of them today.

Speaking of pay, Seaside Joe has posted ANOTHER bonus article on Saturday, this time a deep dive on Nick Bellore, so please consider joining the premium Regular Joes club if you haven’t already. We are now 25 days shy of reaching 1,600 straight days of a Seahawks newsletter and it would be exciting to hit 2,400 total subscribers before then. So sign up for a FREE daily newsletter and also get the bonus content for as little as $5 per month. That’s couch money.

Player Opt Out Options Based on Incentives

As I said, I’ve spent a couple of years thinking over this inevitable problem with running backs and one thing I know for sure is that they should not be classified the same as other positions. They need exceptions to help incentivize athletes to play running back despite the obvious health issues that come with a team asking you to take by far the most dangerous hits of any other players on the team. You could argue that running backs take more dangerous hits than literally every other player on the field combined.

But if you keep your best athletes at the running back position, the game of football will be better for it: You don’t move Barry Sanders to safety. You don’t move Walter Payton to receiver. You don’t move Jim Brown to linebacker. I mean, we recently talked about why Marshawn Lynch might have been the MOST IMPORTANT PLAYER ON THE BEST SEAHAWKS TEAM OF ALL-TIME but would a high school Beast Mode want to play running back?

This is the stupidity that we’re seeing now because “Why in the world would a promising young football player stick at running back unless he had no other choice or if he didn’t realize how good he was until it was too late?”

The NFL needs to do something to get back to incentivizing young players to want to play running back and to not move all of those great athletes to other positions. You could even look at Kenneth Walker III and see a case of a running back who didn’t realize how good he was until his third year of college: Walker was a 0-star recruit who barely got any touches during his freshman and sophomore seasons at Wake Forest, but it was apparent to everybody that he was by far the best player on the field.

Needing to showcase his ability to be an NFL running back, Walker transferred to Michigan State in 2021 and proved he was the best player at his position in the country, rushing for a 75-yard touchdown on the first play of the season. Why would you want to move that guy to receiver?

Now here’s a problem I see for Kenneth Walker III: What if he’s scared?

Josh Jacobs went into the 2022 season unsure if he was even going to have an NFL career past then. He had missed a few games with injury and he was not very good over his second and third campaigns. Then the Raiders gave him 340 carries in 2023 and he led the NFL with 1,653 yards and was a first-team All-Pro.

Fun success story, right?

Wrong.

Las Vegas happily gave Jacobs 393 touches last season because he wasn’t signed past 2022. Worst case scenario, they could give him the franchise tag, pay him $10 million for one year, and the Raiders give Jacobs another 400 touches knowing that they won’t re-sign him. It’s almost the exact scenario that we saw play out for DeMarco Murray on the Cowboys.

Murray was a good player for his first three seasons, but then the Cowboys gave him 449 touches in 2014 in a contract year. He won Offensive Player of the Year but Dallas had no plans to reward him for his 449 touches, they just wanted to squeeze all of the juice out of his body that they could. Luckily for Murray, he wasn’t tagged and he signed a lucrative deal with the Eagles, but he had the worst season of his career. After a bounceback season with the Titans, Murray was soon replaced by Derrick Henry and out of the NFL.

Murray got just $18 million guaranteed on his contract after winning OPOY. That same year, receiver Demaryius Thomas got $35 million from the Broncos despite being older and Thomas was out of the NFL almost as quick. But nobody complained about Thomas (or any other non-running back really) falling off after his contract.

What do?

Well, what if the NFL gave running backs the opportunity to get out of their contracts and become unrestricted free agents—no franchise tag—if they reach certain incentives at certain points on their rookie contracts?

I know that some Seahawks fans are cringing at the thought because what if Walker rushes for 1,500 yards and becomes the NFL’s best running back in 2023? That would wash away Seattle’s incentive of having a bargain at the position and they’d potentially lose one of their best players before his fifth season in the league.

But then again, what if running backs are holding back before their contract year because they’re scared? What if teams are keeping running backs from playing as much as they should because they’re scared? What if FANS aren’t getting the full experience of their teams best players because both sides are scared?

It’s great that the Seahawks are going to have Walker and Zach Charbonnet as a tandem for at least the next three years, should neither of them get injured or fall on their faces, but I still feel sympathy for those running backs out there who are being exploited and abused by their franchises simply because those teams have absolutely no reason NOT TO DO IT. NOT TO EXPLOIT THEM. In the cutthroat business of the NFL, that’s the nature of the beast.

This is just one idea and it’s not a fully-fleshed out thought yet, but there are ways for the NFL to make it more feasible and acceptable for teams to be able to draft running backs in the first round than the current model. If fans are scared that first round running backs are poor value because they make almost as much—if not more—than their veteran counterparts, then fix it.

If players are worried that they’ll be exploited and never paid for it, then fix it.

If teams are worried that they’ll sign a running back to a large contract only to have him hurt in Week 2 because he’s taking the most hits of anybody on the team, then fix it.

I may not have all the solutions, or any answers for that matter, but at least I want to acknowledge that the system is broken. It’s something I’ve been trying to highlight for almost a decade. We aren’t at the beginning stages of the consequences of running back devaluation like suggested in that YouTube video…we’re well past that.

This is the end stage. Now is the time to flip it in reverse.