The Golden Age of Running Backs Ruined the Running Back
The position hit a high point in the mid-2000s... but it's mostly been down ever since.
When researching my Penn State story a few weeks back, I went down a side alley into the history of Nittany Lion running backs — a list that contains plenty of notable names, from Lydell Mitchell and Curt Warner to Evan Royster and Saquon Barkley.
Some were productive in the pros, but there was a string of highly-drafted Penn State RBs who weren’t, starting with Blair Thomas (drafted No. 2 overall in 1990; 2,236 career NFL rushing yards) and extending through Ki-Jana Carter (No. 1 in 1995; 1,144 career yards) and Curtis Enis (No. 5 in 1998; 1,497 career yards). I don’t know if this trend scared NFL teams off of PSU rushers in the 2000s, but the next first-round RB drafted out of State College only went 27th overall in 2003 to the Kansas City Chiefs.
Which brings us to Larry Johnson, the real inspiration for this post.
Younger readers might not remember much about Johnson, but in 2005 and 2006 he became one of only three RBs ever to have at least 1,750 yards in consecutive seasons, joining Eric Dickerson and Terrell Davis.1 In the summers of 2006 and 2007, you couldn’t leave the house without seeing a fantasy football magazine without LJ’s face on it. The guy was a beast in the mid-2000s.
He wasn’t alone. Coming out of 2005, Shaun Alexander had just posted a spectacular 1,880-yard, 27 TD (then a record) season on the ground. LaDainian Tomlinson had started his career with five straight seasons of at least 1,200 yards and double-digit TDs. Tiki Barber had 1,200 yards for four straight seasons and counting. Edgerrin James had back-to-back 1,500-yard seasons. Clinton Portis just joined Earl Campbell and Barry Sanders as the only players to ever run for at least 1,300 in each of their first four NFL seasons.
And 2006 was even more of a banner season for rushing stardom. That year, 23 different runners gained 1,000 or more yards on the ground, which tied the NFL record from 2000. It was a group that once again included Tomlinson (who broke Alexander’s record with 28 rushing TDs), Johnson (who had 1,789 yards and 17 TDs) and Barber (who closed out his career with 1,662 rushing yards), but also added names like Steven Jackson of the Rams (who fully exploded on the scene with 2,334 yards from scrimmage2) and a young Frank Gore (who produced 1,695 yards in his first season as a starter).
This was the Golden Age of Running Backs.
If we look at the average Approximate Value (AV) of the league’s Top 5 RBs as a proxy for the quality of elite ball-carriers across the game, 2006 stands out for having the highest value (19.8) of any NFL/AFL season since 1960, when the stat could first be calculated:
However, it could also be argued that this mid-2000s heyday helped set the stage for running backs to struggle with their place in the game ever since.
For as great as that crop of RBs was, most didn’t stay great for very long. Alexander had already gotten hurt early in 2006; he would never again reach the heights of that dominant 2005 season. Johnson missed half of the 2007 season and had zero future 1,000+ yard seasons. James was done being a truly elite RB once he left Indianapolis in 2006. Jackson and Tomlinson had a handful of good years left, and Barber knew when to get out — he retired after 20063 — but they were the exceptions. Most of the top rushers of that era flamed out quickly due to injuries or a sudden drop in performance (itself usually caused by an injury).
And so, the greatest statistical group of RBs to ever co-exist are remembered as much now for their cautionary tales — Remember the “Curse of 370 Carries”? Or, with Portis, the Champ Bailey Trade? — as for their dominance.
But in truth, the trend of star RB deterioration was already beginning well before the mid-2000s. As we can see in the chart above, the average amount of remaining career AV for Top-5 RBs peaked in 1994, a year that contained such durable stars as Barry Sanders, Ricky Watters, Emmitt Smith and Marshall Faulk. All had at least 60 future AV in the tank at that point, breaking the previous high set in 1991.4
By 2006, though, that figure had been in freefall for a decade. Between star RBs who abruptly retired (Sanders, Robert Smith) and those who were hurt and never the same afterwards (Terrell Davis, Jamal Anderson, Priest Holmes, etc.), we had already seen a generation’s worth of great RBs fail to stay as productive as their predecessors. The fall of Johnson, Alexander and their cohort simply nudged the RB market further into its downward spiral.
Nowadays, we still have some RB performances that would not look out of place in the mid-2000s, from guys like Christian McCaffrey and Derrick Henry. But those are much fewer and further between. Plenty of ink has been spilled (by myself and others) about the current plight of the NFL running back — how trends both on the field, on the sidelines and in front offices have contributed to this once-great position being devalued. I won’t get into all of that anymore here, but for the nostalgic among us, it lends even more romance to the glory days of RBs in the mid-2000s.
There’s a certain cruel irony to the way that group’s fate served as ammunition against the position going forward. But we didn’t know that would happen at the time. What we did know was that LJ, LT, Mr. Touchdown and Edge were tough, fast and — most importantly — cool. How things played out afterward doesn’t change any of that.
Filed under: NFL
Yes, LJ just technically qualified for this — he had exactly 1,750 in 2005 — but 1,750 is a round number and it’s a cool stat, so I’ll allow it!
Still the seventh-most in a season ever.
Granted, his timing was bad if he wanted to win a Super Bowl with the Giants.
With Thurman Thomas, Emmitt Smith, Barry Sanders, Earnest Byner and Rodney Hampton.
The traditional running game strategy was long overdue for correction. Handing the ball off to a smallish player five yards behind the line of scrimmage in full view of the defense with no deception, where the point of attack is moving toward the defense which is crashing six or seven defenders into the line against five OLs is a lot of things...but smart isn't one of them.
The numbers couldn't have been clearer. The average run in the NFL for decades was around a poor 3.5 yards per play utilized, while each pass on average was more than twice that. How the running attack dominated NFL thinking as long as it did with those awful numbers is a documentary in waiting. As is the mystery of why teams continue to falsely believe today that bubble screens behind the line of scrimmage like extended handoffs - are somehow magically converted into vertical passes. They rarely gain positive yardage. Again, just like with the traditional running attack, there is zero deception in front of the defense and too much traffic to gain significant yardage.
It's easy to analogize the NFL's avoiding the forward pass to the NBA struggling to figure out that shooting 35% on 3s yields more points than 50% on 2s. Arithmetic still works everywhere but in sports front offices it seems. It's an excruciatingly slow roll to the equals sign.
The running game over the past 15 years has cratered further, and for good reason. When you use your QB to run the ball from the gun, you go from zero deception to massive deception that changes the numbers on defense in favor of the offense. Not only does your rushing YPA increase significantly, but the defense must respect the risk of a designed QB run, resulting in less blitzing and fewer defenders in pass coverage resulting in wider passing windows. It's why "run first" dual threat QBs with poorer pocket passing skills have a short lifespan in the League (Cam Newton, Russell Wilson etc.). Like the old TV show the Fugitive, the day their running stops, the show is over.
The other problem with the traditional RB is that they are typically very poor at the two competencies modern passing offenses desperately need - pass catching and blocking. Most RBs are drafted for their running ability, and a 200-pound RB is little match when blocking a 250-pound LB or end is collapsing the pocket. At some point, a team will figure out that moving an additional TE into the backfield will create better blocking (both passing and leading designed runs) as well as pass receiving from the position.
As the NFL has moved to aggressively copy college Air Raid style offenses, the college supply chain has become devoid of talented traditional RBs, and high school coaches are reticent to put their best athletes at the position - opting instead for them to be quarterbacks, wide receivers or defensive backs. The market has responded to the increasing lack of demand for the position which has further accelerated change.
The RBs that do come into the League with hype (e.g. Bijan Robinson) tend to disappoint, and virtually all running backs fall off precipitously after 1,500 touches. Joe Schoen on Hard Knocks was wrong - age isn't relevant to the aging curve, but touches are - 1,500 is the wall. Joe could still be right, however, for the wrong reason as Saquon Barkley is sitting right at 1,500 touches. A falloff would not be a surprise.
In any event, with 1,500 touches hanging over them like the Sword of Damocles, few RBs are effective for even 5 years. Like horse drawn carriages, the world has evolved and innovated traditional RBs to a much reduced role. The game for fans is better as a result.