The Running Back Renaissance That Wasn't

Saquon Barkley, Derrick Henry and others made a difference for playoff teams this year. But it wasn't that big a difference. And it won't make much of a difference for other RBs.

You were familiar with Saquon Barkley, Derrick Henry and Josh Jacobs before the 2024 season, right?

Long before he became the Philadelphia Eagles’ eraser of mistakes and forgiver of sins, Barkley was a former Rookie of the Year and a Big Apple obsession. Henry was The Colossal Titan, last of the American muscle cars and the lone true superstar of Mike Vrabel’s feisty early-2020s Tennessee Grungepuppies. Jacobs was an All Pro with a rushing title and three 1,000-yard seasons in his dossier. You were well aware of the existence of these fine football players before the 2024 Rebirth of the Running Back.

You also knew of Jahmyr Gibbs, who was a first-round pick in 2023, despite the objections of draft-value fetishists. And let’s not forget Christian McCaffrey, the two-time All Pro and 2023 Offensive Player of the Year; the hole in the heart of the 2024 49ers whose value has been starkly illustrated this year by his absence.

Yes, there were indeed great running backs before 2024. They were, in fact, the same great running backs. But it sure feels like something new and different happened this year. Running backs matter again, because that’s a fun thing to say, especially if you felt beaten down by decades of analytics rhetoric insisting that running backs did not.

The difference this year is that Barkley, Jacobs and Gibbs are on great teams, while Henry is on one that national fans actually pay attention to. Great running backs are making contributions to established playoff teams, and therefore running backs are valuable again!

Follow the thread of that logic and it should lead you right back in a circle to where we started.

To state an obvious conclusion: The Running Backs Don’t Matter movement was always silly and shrill, a bumper-sticker conclusion drawn from some irrefutable-but-subtle analytical facts. Running backs have always been a delicious part of a balanced breakfast, even if they are the Count Chocula and not the eggs or grapefruit.

To add a banal observation: running backs are more useful as value boosters for well-built contenders than they can ever be as brute-force laborers for bad teams. McCaffrey very neatly demonstrated this point when the 49ers acquired him from the Panthers in 2022. Barkley is illustrating it again this year.

But running back value remains marginal and tied to the success of the rest of the offense. The Eagles reached the Super Bowl in 2022 with Miles Sanders (1,269 rushing yards, 11 touchdowns) at running back. The Ravens reached the AFC Championship in 2023 with Gus Edwards leading a Whoever’s Healthy brigade. The value added by Barkley/Henry, while undeniable, is easy to overstate. The same can be said of Jacobs (filling a role formerly handled well by Aaron Jones) and Gibbs (a tandem rusher for an offense fueled by blocking and grrrrrr).

Barkley and the others have merely made the rich incrementally richer this season. Meanwhile, there has been little that backs like Bijan Robinson or Tony Pollard, both having marvelous years, can do for the poor. And it’s hard to imagine that Barkley, Henry and Jacobs would have done much more for their awful former teams except produce scattered heroic highlights in slightly-less lopsided losses.

Still, the way the Barkley Renaissance is sometimes talked about – Eagles fans are stopping just short of renaming their children “Saquon;” Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit gushed with deep satisfaction when discussing the supposed Rebirth during the Packers-Lions telecast in Week 13 – suggests that the NFL world craves running back heroes. The position has undergone a self-esteem crash to match its financial crash in recent years. People want to feel good about liking running backs again.

That’s fair. The nerd-bullying must have felt intense to those who are sensitive to such things (i.e. people who don’t like their overconfident ignorance threatened … wait, AM I THE NERD BULLY?) Watch them, root for them, wager on them (not for MVP) and buy their jerseys to your heart’s content.

Just please don’t be fooled into thinking that much has changed about running backs, their relative value or their employment market.

To come at this matter another way …

Barkley is in the first year of a contract that will earn him $26 million guaranteed, with a total value of $37.8 million. (All figures from OverTheCap.com)

Jacobs’ contract has a full value of $47.8 million, but everything beyond 2025 is Monopoly money. He was only guaranteed $12.5 million at signing, though next year’s compensation – including a $6-million roster bonus – is now all-but in the bank.

McCaffrey, who is “different” because of his extreme receiving value and contributions to a Super Bowl team, just signed a two-year, $38-million extension in the offseason. The 49ers already regret it.

Henry, older and with a much higher odometer reading than the others, is playing on a two-year, $18-million contract.

Chuba Hubbard just signed a reported $33-million extension to keep the Panthers from tumbling into the ACC. Hubbard’s guarantees only amount to $12 million. Rhamondre Stevenson signed a similar extension for a similar purpose in June: it’s essentially a three-year, $18-million deal covered in fondant.

Jonathan Taylor is playing under a $42-million deal (on paper, the richest in the NFL) he strong-armed the Colts into in 2023. In the fine Colts tradition, it’s a poorly constructed deal, with Taylor slated to earn a lot of cash next year ($15.5 million in salary and bonuses) as a committee chairman on a likely also-ran. It’s not a contract structure that shrewd GMs like Howie Roseman and Brian Gutekunst chose to model this offseason.

What should strike you about those contracts is both how broadly similar they are and how affordable they are. However they are reported, top running back contracts remain small, short and skimpy on guarantees. Even the biggest of these deals are tiny compared to those offered players at other positions. Barkley, who entered free agency as a household name, is earning less guaranteed money than guys like Quinn Meinerz, Sam Cosmi, Dre’Mont Jones, Dalvin Tomlinson, Tyson Campbell and many other interior linemen and defenders the average fan never thinks about.

Should running back salaries be higher? Barkley/Jacobs-caliber rushers can help quality teams on short-term, barely-ten-figure deals, and the risk-reward ratio is manageable. The “helpful committee veteran” Austin Ekeler/Gus Edwards rate is about $3-$4 million per year; after watching Thursday night football last week, I’d recommend that a playoff team pay that relative premium (or grabs a day two rookie) to have someone better than Blake Corum or Isaac Guerendo on the bench. Incurring a year or two of risk for an established running back is reasonable; it’s the four/five years of risk teams saddled themselves with as recently as the late 2010s that made no analytical or caponomic sense.

But no one cares what “should” happen. WILL running back salaries climb significantly? Probably not.

Barkley, Henry, Jacobs and Gibbs are at least one year away from the negotiating table. Their fine 2024 seasons are essentially “services rendered” in exchange for contracts they already signed. (A first-round contract, in Gibbs’ case.) A hunch: the three veterans will be all-but toast before they get a chance to renegotiate or hit the market, while Gibbs will sign a Hubbard/Stevenson-sized extension in two years.

What about other running backs? Here’s a partial list of the running backs entering free agency in 2025: Najee Harris, Aaron Jones, Javonte Williams, Nick Chubb, Rico Dowdle, Jeff Wilson, Ameer Abdullah, Alexander Mattison and, heh, Ezekiel Elliott.

The only player on that list with any chance of signing a Barkley-sized contract is Harris. Like Barkley, Harris is a former first-round pick who has put up respectable numbers in an offense that rarely provided much support before this year. Harris has never been considered a Barkley-level talent – huge swathes of the Internet loathe him for some reason – but he has already proven his value as a Jacobs-style thumper now that the Steelers offense can get out of its own way.

After Harris, there are Chubb and Jones, older backs who could sign two-year Henry-shaped contracts. Javonte Williams is supposed to be an explosive human highlight reel, but injuries and pedestrian offenses have drained him; there’s little chance that he signs anything but a one-year prove-it deal in 2025.

Jerry Jones might be fooled by Dowdle’s late-season surge, but for the rest of us, Dowdle is a reminder of the converse of the Running Back Rebirth: a great one can help a great team, but the lack of even a decent one can kneecap a bad one. Abdullah and Mattison illustrated the same lesson this year for the Raiders.

Another back who could push for an extension in 2025: Kyren Williams, entering the final year of his rookie contract. Williams, who just eclipsed 1,000-yards for the second-straight year, could get the Hubbard/Stevenson treatment. As a fifth-round pick due to make $1.1 million, he’ll be happy with the new money. The Rams won’t break the bank for a running back with one year left on his contract; they learned their lesson about goofy extensions with Todd Gurley.

Venture further down the rushing leaderboard and we find Hubbard and Taylor (already compensated), Bijan (can’t hit the market for even an extension until 2026), Alvin Kamara (old, on a wacky Saints contract), Tony Pollard (year one of a small three-year deal), Joe Mixon (similar to Pollard) and James Conner (fresh new modest extension). The only one of those backs with the potential to move the market is Bijan, eventually.

Looking ahead to the draft, Boise State’s Ashton Jeanty is a slam-dunk first-round pick. He’s potentially a worthy investment for a team that already has its quarterback and other assets but tumbled toward the bottom of the draft board: the Cowboys or Bengals, perhaps. But Jeanty can no more help a bad team than Bijan has or Barkley did. He’d be a better fit for a playoff team in need of a turbo booster, like the Chargers or Broncos.

I could see Jim Harbaugh trading a kidney for Jeanty. I don’t see any other running back in the draft class worth even a fraction of the fuss.

The “story” of the 2024 Running Back Rebirth melts away under close examination. It boils down to some smart-cookie GMs (Howie Roseman, Brian Gutekunst, Brad Holmes, Eric DeCosta) recognizing a market inefficiency (the Running Backs Don’t Matter movement reaching an illogical extreme a few years ago) and extracting high marginal value from an easily-obtained resource. It’s more of a micro-correction or market stabilization than a trend.

Most market corrections aren’t heralded by Shaun White-worthy reverse ollies over defenders, however, so it's understandable to want to make the accomplishments of Barkley and the others more meaningful than they really are. But there is no new tactic here, no roster-building or contractual innovation, not even a new superstar.

There are, however, better vibes: rooting for a team with a great running back feels good, especially at the goal line or when leading in the fourth quarter.

There might also be better clarity. Najee Harris could be worth more to the Chiefs in free agency than he would be worth to the Giants. Jeanty makes more sense 20th overall (or as the reason for a trade-up) than 10th. Hubbard/Stevenson-level stabilizers are worth modest extensions for rebuilding teams with more cap space than talent: letting a running game flatline the way the Raiders did benefits no one. Running backs retain lots of marginal, situational short-term value, in addition to being really fun to watch.

So here’s to running back excellence, running back appreciation and running back dignity. Here’s to recognizing that the best guys really are better than the next guys. And here’s to a job market that at least is no longer in deep recession. The Running Back Rebirth may not really be much of a story. But anything is better than treating some of the most exciting players on the field like interchangeable cogs. That wasn’t much fun. And by the end, it wasn’t even very good analysis.

Bonus Mailbag Question!

Tommy Ruprecht dropped (so to speak) this one in the Too Deep Zone mailbag. It’s timely and relevant to today’s essay, and I don’t plan to do another mailbag until the playoffs, so …

With the spate of guys dropping the ball before crossing the goal line, is this happening because people are super impressed when a player drops the ball the second after he crosses the goal line? Is that a thing?

Both Jonathan Taylor and Tony Pollard lost long touchdown runs to oh-so-casual ball-drops before they crossed the plane of the goal line on Sunday. Taylor’s touchdown would have given the Colts a two-score lead in a game they needed to win to remain serious Wild Card contenders. The Titans were keeping things close against the Bengals before Pollard’s drop.

I hate this phenomenon. If you want to be too cool for school, hand the ball to the referee. If you want to celebrate, spike the ball and perform your favorite video-game dance. But f**k this mic-drop, leave-your-luggage-unattended affectation. I believe touchbacks should be 15-yard penalties, not loss of possession, when a player loses his handle on the football when diving for a pylon. But dropping the ball on purpose? That should be two touchdowns for the defense. It should also be drummed out of running backs before they are old enough to shave by crazy Pop Warner dads.

You know, it’s called a “touchdown” because you are supposed to touch the ball down to the ground in the end zone to complete the play. Rugby players still do this. The touchdown evolved into the spike in American football, which evolved into the celebration, which devolved into a sociopolitical controversy, then more-or-less reemerged as players pantomiming something pun-related to their names, like the Jaylen “Waddle.” Taylor should celebrate touchdowns by pretending to alter slacks with a needle and thread. “Pollard” means to cut the top branches off a tree; I want to see Tony Pollard pretend to brandish a pair of loppers in the end zone.

Anyway, I am guessing every running back coach issued a stern reminder to the troops this week about holding onto the football until well into the end zone. So we are in the clear until some ultra-demonstrative wide receiver does it.