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I’m flying to Detroit’s training camp today. And away we go with the 2023 NFL season …
There’s no easy solution to the running back problem. And that, to me, was illustrated in a discussion I had with one prominent agent Sunday on the topic, with his central point being that the very best at the position have to find a way to transcend the letters next to their names.
“If you’re deserving of more money, and the team feels like you can get it, they’re gonna give it to you,” the agent says. “Some running backs are considered by their teams to be difference-makers, more than they are running backs. Those guys get paid.”
The four guys left making $12 million per year or more illustrate that, really, to get there, you need to be a difference-maker in one of two ways.
Cary Edmondson/USA TODAY Sports
- So good in the passing game that you’re not really a running back. The two in this grouping are Christian McCaffrey and Alvin Kamara. Both have four 80-catch seasons to their names. Interestingly enough, McCaffrey’s broken 1,000 yards rushing (the old benchmark for great backs) only twice, and Kamara’s never gotten there. But that hardly matters because of everything else they bring to the table.
- Such a good running back that an entire offense is built around them. The two here are Derrick Henry and Nick Chubb. Chubb’s had two 1,400-yard years. Henry’s had three 1,500-yard years. Chubb’s finished second in the NFL in rushing twice, was third last year and has been over five yards per carry every year of his career. Henry’s a two-time rushing champion and was AP Offensive Player of the Year in 2020.
Ezekiel Elliott, who just exited that pay tier, is a two-time rushing champion with three 50-catch seasons (and another at 47 catches) on his ledger. Joe Mixon, who also just left the group, has gone over 1,100 yards three times and, as his ground production declined last year, managed 60 catches, which motivated the Bengals to keep him on a reduced deal.
Here’s the crux of it—these guys are proving to be the exceptions, and bring something their teams don’t think they’ll be able to easily replace. And in an environment where one Super Bowl team started a seventh-round rookie (Isiah Pacheco), and the other let its starter (Miles Sanders) walk months later for $6 million per year, more teams than ever believe they can find a guy who’s good enough without paying the freight.
Of course, that isn’t the only problem. And, yeah, I know we’re starting to belabor the point because this is the last week before things really pick up, but I do think it’s worth, one last time, giving you a quick rundown of what the running backs are up against.
I think there are five real problems.
- Replaceability. More teams are convinced they can find players for a song deep in the draft, and churn the position over years. We mentioned Sanders. He’ll get $6.98 million in cash in Carolina this year. Philly is spending $7.92 million total on the six players it’s rostering at the position to replace him.
- Their prime is on their rookie deal. Teams will tell you over and over that they pay for projected, not past, performance on contracts. The problem for backs is that because of the nature of their position—where it’s easy to assimilate to the league and produce quickly, but hard to last over time—their best years are usually within the four or five years on their first contract.
- Because of that, the franchise tag is too good an option. If you’re a team that’s run your workhorse into the ground, and you’re unsure of what that’ll add up to in his sixth or seventh year in the league, it might make sense to go through the motions in negotiating a long-term deal, and use the tag to go year-to-year with him. If that seems harsh, well, it is. But there’s also logic to it.
- Analytics have wreaked havoc on certain positions, and running back is one. It’s not an accident that you see more teams skewing toward over-investing in premium positions (QB, LT, WR, edge/pass rusher, CB), and figuring they can just make it work everywhere else. That dynamic has been tough on guards and centers, but the fact that they’re grouped with tackles for franchise-tag purposes protects them from being tagged. Ditto for off-ball linebackers, who are protected by edge rushers who happen to play from a stand-up position. There’s no such protection for backs.
- The 2011 CBA took away two important levers. One was the ability for drafted players to do new deals before Year 3—running backs previously would often push for deals after two years, knowing the clock is always ticking on stars at the position. The other was strengthened holdout rules, which were strengthened again in 2020, making wildcat strikes that used to be common at the position much less practical.
So, yeah, there’s no magic wand to wave over all this. In the words of one great coach you might know, it is what it is.
(That coach, by the way, did a five-year, $25 million extension with Corey Dillon in 2005. It stands today, 18 years later, as the richest contract he’s ever given a running back.)
Jimmy Garoppolo’s on schedule. And that probably shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows the blow-by-blow on how the Raiders quarterback’s foot injury has been handled over the past seven months.
Garoppolo initially suffered the injury against the Dolphins in December. At that point, surgery was on the table. The quarterback and the Niners opted, at that juncture, to pass on having the procedure done because it kept the most doors open, leaving open the possibility that Garoppolo would make it back at some point in the playoffs. It also allowed for the idea that, if all went well, the pending free agent would have a full offseason with his next team.
Obviously, all didn’t go well. Garoppolo wasn’t cleared before the Niners were eliminated in the NFC championship (he’d have had a chance at the Super Bowl, if San Francisco made it there, and might’ve started given that Brock Purdy got hurt), and then he failed his physical with the Raiders, which prompted Las Vegas to put the waiver in the contract, have the surgery done and shelve him until now.
The good news is that since then, things have gone according to plan, or at least to the one I heard in May. And Garoppolo, for his part, was at the facility throughout the spring and spent considerable time, in particular, with Davante Adams.
So maybe this isn’t how anyone drew it up. But it’s as good as the Raiders could have hoped for in March.
Vincent Carchietta/USA TODAY Sports
Of all the things said through the first couple of days of Jets training camp, one coming from an old Packers teammate of Rodgers’s stuck out most to me. I’ll let Allen Lazard take it from here.
“He’s opening his arms, putting his hand out, trying to help guys, trying to teach,” Lazard said. “That’s not to say he was hard to play with in Green Bay. He was a little more like, You have to pick it up. He’s a little bit slower here in realizing there’s a lot of new players. He’s taking his time. I’m seeing it. I’m seeing how much he cares for those guys and how much he really just wants to put the icing on the cake as far as his career.”
Seeing that immediately brought me back to something Robert Saleh said to me in June, on how Rodgers has built relationships within his new team—and how important that is to him after spending the first 18 years of his career in a single place.
“He’s very thoughtful and deliberate in the way he goes about things,” Saleh said. “During OTAs, he’s gone out with the guys. And every weekend, he’s gone out with a different set of guys to get some time with everybody. So that’s the stuff in the locker room. When he is in the building, it’s very important for him to know everyone’s name, whether it’s the chef, the equipment guys, the trainers, people upstairs. It’s very important to him to understand the building. I call it love language; everybody has it.
“Relationships and connecting with people is very important to him. And that’s not something you’d have thought based on narratives. But it clearly is.”
And it probably goes a long way in explaining the difference Lazard is seeing.
I will admit I thought the Chiefs would have Chris Jones done by now. Still just 29, the four-time All-Pro is probably Kansas City’s second-best all-around player—behind Patrick Mahomes and maybe just ahead of Travis Kelce—so the idea of a third contract for him has always been viewed as not an if but a when.
That it hasn’t happened yet is eye opening.
That Jones still hadn’t shown as of late Sunday night, and was willing to incur mandatory fines of $50,000 per day, which can’t be waived, in protest is doubly so.
Now it’s July 24. So I don’t think anyone should be sounding the alarm. But that’s a pretty important player who’s not in camp right now, and also one who seems to be doing all he can to get the attention of the Super Bowl–winning franchise he’s such a big part of.
It feels to me like the list of available free agents this summer has more big names on it than usual for just before training camp. Here’s a quick rundown …
• RB Dalvin Cook
• DE/OLB Jadeveon Clowney
• CB Marcus Peters
• DE Yannick Ngakoue
• RB Ezekiel Elliott
• RB Kareem Hunt
• RB Leonard Fournette
• OL Dalton Risner
• QB Teddy Bridgewater
• DE Trey Flowers
• OLB Kyle Van Noy
• CB Byron Jones
• WR Kenny Golladay
• DE Justin Houston
… and you get the idea.
Now that teams have gotten a good look at their rosters through the spring, and a chance to catch their breath since, I’d imagine some of these guys will come off the market. But it sure feels like there are more name players than there are jobs out there for them at this point.
Luv Ya Blue! 💙 pic.twitter.com/eR9BpvAIqx
— Tennessee Titans (@Titans) July 24, 2023
I love all the throwbacks that have come out the past few weeks. The Seahawks are the ones that really did it for me. The Buccaneers’ creamsicles come off a lot better now than they did in the 1990s, too. And the Titans’ Oilers look great … but those are the ones that are just a little off to me.
The Titans are in the same division as Houston, and Houston’s the city where the Oilers played (yes, I know that the Tennessee Oilers did exist for two seasons), and where that logo, and the accompanying uniforms, were born and worn. Which is why I think it sucks that fans there, especially those who were around in the mid-’90s, have to have this reminder of a really bad memory running around on the field, and the feeling that even the good stuff they got from that era doesn’t belong to them anymore.
Imagine if the Ravens wore Browns throwbacks. Taking the logistics of the whole thing out of it, that would suck for Clevelanders, just like this sucks for Houstonians.
Anyway, that’s my two cents. And that I’m sitting here burning a takeaway on uniforms is a pretty good indication that we all should be ready for camp to start.
For me, that means getting to Detroit for Tuesday morning’s practice. See you then.
