Why the Running Back Market Went From a Gradual Decline to a Total Collapse

Breaking down the reasons behind the Running Back Summer of Discontent, as frustration builds among the NFL’s star runners.

This has been the summer of discontent for NFL running backs, with a number of big names at the position getting cast by the wayside or failing to secure long-term contract extensions. The position’s contractual struggles have not gone unnoticed by the people who play it — after the league’s franchise-tag deadline came and went without several notable deals on Monday, a group of star RBs (including Saquon Barkley, Derrick Henry and Jonathan Taylor) took to social media to sound off on the diminishing financial state of the running back.

“At this point, just take the RB position out the game then,” Henry tweeted. “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. I’m with every RB that’s fighting to get what they deserve.”

It was a sentiment echoed last week by Los Angeles Chargers running back Austin Ekeler, who negotiated a revised, incentive-laden contract with L.A. in May. “If I'm looking at some of the backup receivers out here that are still making more than me, that's going to piss me off,” Ekeler said on the Rich Eisen Show:

The sad economics of being a running back in 2023 are driven by the way the game is currently played — with an emphasis on passing over rushing — along with analytics about the relative effectiveness, durability and replaceability of big names at the position. Take, for example, Ekeler’s comment about No. 3 receivers making more than No. 1 running backs. There’s underlying data behind teams investing more in wideouts, even ones that don’t always see the field. (League-wide, only 60 percent of plays in 2022 had “11” personnel, or one RB, one TE and three WRs.) Looking at the Expected Points Added (EPA) on offense last season by players who either led their team in rushing yards — we’ll call these No. 1 RBs — or were third among their team’s WRs in receiving yards — we’ll call these No. 3 WRs — we see that the average team got -8.2 total rushing plus receiving EPA from their top RB, and +9.5 total EPA from their third-ranked WR:

In 2022, only nine teams got more EPA value out of their No. 1 running back than their No. 3 receiver. In part, this is a product of relative efficiency between rushing and receiving — the average pass generated far more EPA per play (0.122) than the average run (-0.026) — and the favorable way third receivers are often used. (Lining up in the slot or elsewhere, No. 3 WRs are frequently deployed to exploit mismatches, adding to their statistical value.) But it speaks to the frustrating phenomenon Ekeler has noticed playing out across the league.

Another factor driving down the price tags of top RBs has been the perception that they can be easily replaced without a noticeable dip in production. This, too, has a statistical underpinning — look at what happened last season for the 14 teams who had a different primary ball-carrier than they’d employed in 2021:

While some teams with new faces in the backfield saw a decline in yards per carry from their old No. 1 running back (Seattle, for instance, fell from 6.3 YPC with Rashaad Penny to 4.6 with Kenneth Walker III), most of the teams who switched up their top rushers got more bang for the buck, rising from 4.2 to 4.7 YPC on average. Some of this is due to sample bias — teams don’t usually change starters without injury, underperformance or another good reason — but that’s also the point: Teams that have the desire to change RBs usually can do it without losing much.

It hasn’t helped, either, that Super Bowl champs tend to pay very little for their top rushers. Or, conversely, that some of the biggest contracts ever earned by running backs turned out poorly for the teams signing on the dotted line. In 2019, the Dallas Cowboys signed Ezekiel Elliott to a 6-year, $90 million contract with $50 million guaranteed, the largest ever for a player at the position. Elliott made it through just four seasons of diminishing quality before getting released this past March. A similar story played out for other massive deals like those signed by Todd Gurley, David Johnson, Chris Johnson and even — to a certain extent — Christian McCaffrey. Despite McCaffrey’s impact after joining the 49ers last season, he has spent most of his contract term struggling to stay on the field. It’s likely that front offices have shied away from big extensions for RBs in part due to these kinds of case studies.

So what is the solution to the NFL’s running back problem? Is there any way to salvage future paydays for a role that used to be the glamor position of the entire league?

One path forward might just involve diminishing returns for passing efficiency and a shift back toward running the ball. Somewhat under the radar, NFL teams set a new all-time high-water mark for yards per carry (4.5 YPC) last season while also rushing more times per game than in any season since 2011; meanwhile, passing yards per game and yards per attempt were as low as they had been in over a decade. Both factors might be related to the proliferation of nickel defenses and a lack of defenders in the box to dissuade opponents from running the ball. So the return of rushing may simply happen naturally as teams respond to an incentive to run the ball more, perhaps in an admission that they had become too reliant on passing in recent seasons (and that defenses had become too geared up to stop the pass).

Another fix may simply be increased versatility from running backs. Evidence shows that teams whose offensive weapons can line up in more different configurations tend to be more efficient — the more ways a running back can challenge a defense, the more valuable he becomes. Ekeler is a good example of this; he ended up with a positive overall offensive EPA last season because his benefits as a receiver (+9.3 EPA) outweighed his negatives as a runner (-3.5 EPA).

But whatever adjustments happen to help running backs be seen as more valuable, they can’t happen soon enough for players at the position. The frustrations from ball-carriers boiled over this week, and the trend will probably get worse before it gets better.

---

Filed under: NFL