Veteran Running Backs Have Been NFL Market Inefficiency

The 2024 NFL season has been a lot of things, but one feature that is extremely hard to miss is the high performance of running backs of a certain ilk. The group is young by the standards of other positions—still in their mid-to-late-20s—but older for the running back position. And the group is defined by recently being told their services were no longer needed by teams they had served admirably for years, all teams that let them leave without putting up much of a fight to keep them. For lack of better phrasing, let’s call them the “You really thought I was washed?” club, a group of running backs that has had a remarkable impact on the league.

The Tennessee Titans let Derrick Henry walk into the waiting arms of the Baltimore Ravens, as they were content to replace him with another group member, Tony Pollard, whom the Dallas Cowboys let leave with minimal resistance.

The Cincinnati Bengals thought they had seen the best of Joe Mixon, now perhaps the Houston Texans’ most important player.

The Las Vegas Raiders were fine allowing Josh Jacobs to head to free agency, where he was scooped up by the Green Bay Packers, who had held the financial line with the beloved Aaron Jones, who was welcomed into the Minnesota Vikings’ fold. Both Jacobs and Jones have been highly productive for their new teams.

And, most notably, the New York Giants decided, in front of the peering Hard Knocks cameras, to take an apathetic approach to their most popular player, Saquon Barkley, while their owner muttered: “I’ll have a tough time sleeping if Saquon goes to Philadelphia.” I hope John Mara has plenty of melatonin supplements.

Say hello to the “You really thought I was washed?” club of older (but not too old), used (but not too used) running backs. They have all performed much more impressively than the teams they served for so long thought they would.

The position

I have said for years that the running back position is the most financially disadvantaged position in football, as they suffer economically on all sides of their career.

On the way into the league, the NFL draft eligibility rule—requiring a player to be three years removed from high school—negatively affects running backs more than any other position. Running backs have the shortest shelf life of any position, and their prime “earning years” could be much earlier, but for this requirement. It is one thing for a quarterback or offensive lineman to wait to enter the NFL; these positions regularly play into their 30s. It is much different, though, for a running back. Were a running back allowed entry into the NFL at, say, age 19 instead of 22, they could then reach their second contract at age 23 instead of 26, which would seriously impact their career earnings.

Barkley played out a five-year rookie contract, followed by a sixth-year franchise tag, not seeing free agency until his seventh year in the NFL. Jacobs’s career was similar, not seeing free agency until his sixth year in the NFL. With such a short high-earning period of their career, that is a huge disadvantage for the financial realities of this position.

Speaking of those finances …

The marketplace

Recent NFL offseasons have seen an explosion in the wide receiver marketplace, starting in 2022 with the trades and signings of Davante Adams and Tyreek Hill, pushing the top of the market beyond a $25 million annual average. Similar contacts followed for a cavalcade of receivers, not only for proven veterans such as Cooper Kupp, A.J. Brown and Calvin Ridley, but for younger players such as Michael Pittman Jr., Jaylen Waddle, Devonta Smith, Amon-Ra St. Brown and Brandon Aiyuk. And now the top of the market features two players—Justin Jefferson and CeeDee Lamb—who have eclipsed the $30-million-a-year mark.

Somewhere deep under that high-water mark for receivers lies the ceiling for running backs. If we remove the outlier of Christian McCaffrey, making roughly $19 million a year, the top of the running back market settles in at $12 million to $13 million a year with, more notably, very little security beyond that number, meaning a lack of guaranteed money beyond this season. Here is what these players are making this year and their amount of guaranteed money after this year:

• Jacobs: $14.8 million (nothing)
• Barkley: $13.5 million ($12.5 million)
• Mixon: $9.5 million ($4 million)
• Henry: $9 million (nothing)
• Pollard: $8 million ($2.5 million)
• Jones: $7 million (nothing)

The inefficiency

The top-end market for veteran running backs is barely half the top market for wide receivers and barely a quarter of the top market for quarterbacks. Barkley is the seventh-highest-paid player on the Eagles’ … offense! Henry has been prominently discussed in the NFL MVP conversation, yet earns roughly 20% of what his backfield mate, Lamar Jackson, earns.

We seem to have reached an inefficiency in the marketplace, which smart teams such as the Philadelphia Eagles, Packers, Ravens and Texans have pounced on. While wide receiver pay has skyrocketed, running back pay has stagnated or even declined. All the players above made more, sometimes significantly more, in 2023 than they are making in ’24. And their former teams—the Giants, Raiders, Titans and Bengals—possess some of the worst records in the league.

To be fair, most NFL teams have wrestled with whether to pay veteran running backs; we certainly did when I worked for the Packers. And most teams subscribe to the credo that, “It’s better to move on from a player a year too early than a year too later.” We certainly operated that way at the Packers as well. But in recent years, the market has shifted for other positions, but not for this one. To pick up a running back with strong productivity in his career for $8 million to $12 million with minimal future guarantees is a bargain, especially with this group.

Yes, there is always the issue of a shorter shelf life with running backs and the “tread on the tire” discussion is more frequent at that position than any other. But offenses are more diverse, workload can be shared through the game and the season, and those tropes don’t apply as much as they used to.

The “You really thought I was washed?” club is a feel-good business of football story for 2024. 

Two further quick thoughts on the business of the NFL …

Joe Douglas is now in a better place

The New York Jets acquired Aaron Rodgers last year, and top-tier players such as Haason Reddick and Davante Adams this year. Now they’re 3–8, they’ve fired their head coach and general manager, and Rodgers looks to be in decline. They’ve gone from all-in to all-out.

Douglas is a good scout and a good man. He was in an untenable position once the team’s brass flew to Rodgers’s home to beg for his services. Then, in a position of weakness with that trade, he caved to the Packers, who had already replaced Rodgers with Jordan Love. Green Bay received a first-round pick swap plus two high second-round picks, and offloaded over $100 million in future payroll, all for a player who was never, ever going to play for them again.

Douglas has brought in some developing talent, but was done in by a “win-now” philosophy that came from the top. A scout at heart, his life will get better doing that scouting for some team besides the Jets.

The power of NFL socialism

In watching the most prominent matchup of the 2024 season last week, it occurred to me that this kind of A-list battle could not happen in most other professional sports leagues, especially Major League Baseball. Usually, market size matters. But not in the NFL.

The Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs, who played Sunday in the matchup of the year in front of 32 million viewers, represent two of the smallest markets in all of professional sports, let alone the NFL. And this year in the NFL, the two New York teams are abysmal, yet the league has not suffered. And, of course, my old team the Packers, playing in a market of 100,000 people, continues to thrive.

There are several reasons for this, but the two primary pillars are equal sharing of national revenue, primarily media revenue, and a restrictive salary cap. These fundamental tenets of competitive balance level the financial playing field in a way that has been instrumental to the NFL’s unrivaled prosperity and popularity.

Yes, other leagues have salary caps and revenue sharing, but no other league has both pillars to the extent of the NFL. And this “socialistic” business model is clearly working.