Four years ago this month, former Chargers running back Melvin Gordon announced that he would hold out from training camp without a contract extension. After an offseason of negotiations with Los Angeles, while his name was in the headlines, Gordon would miss the first four games of the 2019 season. In early September, Tom Telesco announced that the team tabled all negotiations until the 2020 offseason.
Without the services of Gordon, the Chargers had three running backs on their 2019 roster. Western Colorado’s Austin Ekeler was in line to have the top job in the running back room alongside Justin Jackson and Troymaine Pope.
In that first month of the season that Gordon missed, Ekeler planted his flag in Los Angeles. He had 490 scrimmage yards and six touchdowns in that four-game span. Gordon probably wouldn’t have ended up re-signing with the Chargers anyway, but Ekeler’s performance officially put the kibosh on any potential return.
After he racked up 1550 scrimmage yards and 11 touchdowns in that 2019 campaign, the Chargers rewarded Ekeler with a four-year, $24.5 million contract extension in the offseason. LA locked up a running back who was starting to enter his prime for four years. Telesco also got an average annual value discount relative to Gordon, who signed a two-year, $16 million deal with Denver that offseason.
Since that original Gordon holdout, things have gotten more challenging for running backs. Christian McCaffrey was the last running back who reset the market three years ago, while yearly wages at other positions have skyrocketed.
As a result of the 2021 collective bargaining agreement, players who want to hold out of training camp now due to a contractual situation also get an increased fine of $50,000 per day. The owners went out of their way to prevent a situation like Gordon’s.
Before McCaffrey’s extension, the top deal on the market was Ezekiel Elliott’s. In a way, Gordon and Elliott are linked from the 2019 offseason when their respective organizations chose different directions. Dallas eventually gave into their star running back’s infamous holdout in Cabo with a six-year, $90 million extension.
Elliott is now out of a job as he waits to see if a team will come calling during training camp. His original holdout gave rise to a fourth-round pick named Tony Pollard in Dallas’ 2019 training camp. Pollard was franchise tagged by the Cowboys this offseason and seems unlikely to reach a long-term deal anytime soon after the tag extension deadline passed.
Been saying it for years:
1. Draft a RB
2. Play the RB…if he's good…
3. Franchise tag the RB ONE TIME
…and then…
1. Draft a RB…
— Matt Miller (@nfldraftscout) July 17, 2023
ESPN’s Matt Miller received a lot of pushback from running backs like Ekeler and Tennessee’s Derrick Henry for what he tweeted as the tag deadline passed. But what he said is the modern reality for NFL front offices and ownership. Is it problematic from a labor standpoint? Probably. But it’s what every front office is thinking right now.
Telesco was, to some extent, on the cutting edge of this philosophy four years ago. What maybe wasn’t expected was that Gordon’s replacement in Ekeler would end up suffering the same fate just four years later. The market has further contracted because almost all 32 front offices align with Telesco’s original 2019 vision.
Don’t like our contract? We’ll replace you. And then we’ll replace the replacement when his time is up. Ekeler referred to the league’s view of running backs as “discardable widgets” in his response to Miller. And he’s right. Next year, whether it’s Isaiah Spiller or someone else, Los Angeles will have a new starting running back. The three to four-year cycle will continue without structural changes to the market.
The Chargers’ story over the last four years is the NFL’s story regarding running backs. There may not be a better example of a franchise that demonstrates the current failures of the market to pay running backs appropriately. The only difference between now and 2019 is that Telesco’s original philosophy has spread across the league. Every team is trying to hand the ball to their Ekeler instead of their Gordon until they “discard” both.
