PITTSBURGH — Wow, did ESPN's Matt Miller touch a nerve. And all he did was express an opinion that reflects the sensible thinking of most NFL teams these days — that running backs are replaceable and you don't need a great one to win a championship.
Hard truth: Just three of the past 15 Super Bowl champions had a 1,000-yard rusher — and one of them was LeGarrette Blount. Another was Ray Rice, who wound up splitting time with Bernard Pierce for the 2012 Ravens.
Quick trivia: Name the leading rushers for each of the last three Super Bowl champs.
Wrong. They were Isiah Pacheco for the Chiefs, Sony Michel for the Rams and Ronald Jones for the Bucs. I could keep going here. The running backs who win championships these days include James White, Corey Clement, Damien Williams, Ronnie Hillman, Mike Bell, Michel, Pacheco, Cam Akers and Brandon Jackson.
All you need to know is that Blount was the leading rusher on consecutive Super Bowl winners (2016 Patriots, '17 Eagles).
Anyway, things exploded this week when star backs Saquon Barkley and Josh Jacobs did not come to long-term deals with their respective teams (Giants, Raiders) and will have to sign one-year franchise tags if they want to play this season.
Dallas' Tony Pollard also failed to strike a deal but agreed to the franchise tag worth $10.1 million — a figure that has decreased by more than $2 million for running backs over the past six years, while the tag for several other positions has dramatically increased.
Miller's tweet:
"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 ..."
This prompted understandable but misplaced outrage from all corners of the NFL running back world.
Titans star Derrick Henry subtweeted: "At this point, just take the RB position out the game then. The ones that want to be great & work as hard as they can to give their all to an organization, just seems like it don't even matter."
Chargers star Austin Ekeler also directly addressed Miller's tweet, responding: "This is the kind of trash that has artificially devalued one of the most important positions in the game. Everyone knows it's tough to win without a top RB and yet they act like we are discardable widgets."
San Francisco's Christian McCaffrey called the situation "criminal," and the Steelers' Najee Harris tweeted the following: "I agree with my running back brothers around the NFL — history will show that you need running backs to win — we set the tone every game and run through walls for our team and lead in many ways — this notion that we deserve less is a joke."
I do agree that star running backs deserve better, from college onward. I often point to case of Le'Veon Bell, of all people — who had about a million touches in college — couldn't leave even if he wanted to because of the ridiculous rule that keeps players out of the NFL for three years after high school, then was 800 touches into his NFL career and still couldn't get paid.
By Bell's third season, he had become arguably the best running back in the league, absorbing all the punishment that goes with football's toughest position. Yet his salary ($1.03 million average) put him behind the likes of Brandon Bolden, Taiwan Jones, Donald Brown, Lance Dunbar and Anthony Dixon. Part of the problem, of course — and I'm not sure if Henry, Ekeler, McCaffrey & Co. ever look this way — was within his own union.
How is it that a player could sacrifice the prime earning years of his career for a relative pittance compared to other positions?
Let's go back to 2011 to answer that. The NFL's CBA changed that year. Former NFL executive Andrew Brandt wrote about the changes on espn.com:
"The CBA took a sledgehammer to the old rookie compensation model. Owners thought top rookies made too much, and so did veteran player leadership at the union. Slashing the pay of incoming players, who had no voice in the CBA negotiations, was an easy item on the collective bargaining checklist."
Bell wound up getting paid, of course, barely sneaking in that contract with the Jets before his skills quickly deteriorated. He thus became another cautionary tale on paying star backs.
Obviously, having a star running back is helpful. You'd rather have a star. But you certainly don't need one. If teams behave as if backs are "discardable widgets," as Ekeler says, can you blame them? Did you read the list of championship backs above? And when he says, "Everyone knows it's tough to win without a top RB," he is just objectively wrong.
Harris was technically correct when he said, "History will show that you need running backs to win." You definitely need running backs on your roster. You need functional ones. But do you need first-round picks, or stars, or highly paid backs to win?
Sure doesn't look that way.
