It’s official. Raiders are letting Josh Jacobs test the free agent market. The bell rung on free agency as of 9am Pacific time this morning. At which point teams were allowed to begin talking numbers with players’ agents (and players who have no agents).
It didn’t take long before we had news of the first expected deal. And it was with a running back.
Former Eagles RB D’Andre Swift agreed to terms on a three-year, $24 million deal with the Chicago Bears.
The #Bears are expected to sign former #Eagles starting RB D’Andre Swift as their new starting running back, per me and @MikeGarafolo.
He gets a 3-year, $24M deal that was negotiated by Trevon Smith of @AthletesFirst. pic.twitter.com/WH993kz6Oj
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) March 11, 2024
According to these raw numbers, that would be an $8 million per season. Which is pretty decent for a running back, and not too bad for the team either.
Shortly after the Swift deal was made known, former Cowboys RB Tony Pollard signed a reportedly similar deal to join the Titans. Setting what appears to be a baseline for the market among expected starters.
Swift’s deal comes with $15.3 million guaranteed according to Adam Schefter. How much is *fully* guaranteed is not known and how much is available via incentives is also unknown.
These deal don’t exactly set the top of the market for running backs, but it could offer some insight into what we might expect.
Swift is coming off a Pro Bowl season. The best season of his four-year career. And he’s just 25. But for him, it’s the injuries that might give teams pause when considering how much they want to invest in him.
The top two backs figure to be Jacobs and Giants RB Saquon Barkley. Though both were coming off their best seasons last year when each were slapped with the franchise tag, and now are coming off down years, their agents will likely be looking for something that tops what Swift is getting.
My guess would be something that averages a couple million above Swift’s $8 million per season, which would put Barkley right around what he made on the tag last season and Jacobs just below the $11.8 he earned. Only now with a higher salary cap, so it’s a lower percentage of the total cap.
The question is whether the Raiders would be willing to pay what Jacobs is asking to keep him or if they’d bow out and let him leave. If they are serious about going with a two-back system with Zamir White, they could balk at paying double digits per season to Jacobs.
Letting him seek out his worth on the open market suggests they are prepared to lose him.
