Saquon Barkley, Josh Jacobs Fall Victim to a Position That’s Too Replaceable

Teams know they can find a good enough running back, and the Chiefs starting a seventh-round rookie in the Super Bowl hurt the future value of the position.

Vacation’s over. Football season is here. Let’s go …

• Mamas don’t raise your boys to play running back.

Three of the six players franchised in March went into Monday—deadline day for those tagged to do long-term deals—without multi-year contracts. All three were running backs. All three remain without multi-year contracts. And that’s a really tough result for Las Vegas’ Josh Jacobs and the Giants’ Saquon Barkley, in particular (and a little less so for Dallas’ Tony Pollard, just because of his lower mileage and the style of back he is).

Next March, Jacobs will be going into his sixth year in the NFL, and Barkley will be going into his seventh season. Both have logged a lot of time for their respective teams, and would qualify as high-mileage players. Both have battled injuries (Barkley moreso than Jacobs). It’s hard to say either will be any sure thing to remain as productive as they were in 2022 in 2024 and beyond. Which is why walking away from a long-term offer is different for a back than it would be for a pass rusher, receiver or corner, who’s just hitting his prime at that age.

Conor Orr: Running Backs are Sadly Out of Options Financially

To explain it simply, if the Giants offered Barkley or the Raiders offered Jacobs $26 million over the next two years, and they decided to play on the $10.09 million tender instead, then that’s putting about $16 million on the line, knowing there’s a good chance that making that money up after this year won’t be easy—even if those guys crush it in the fall, their teams still have the option to tag them a second time at just $12.1 million next year.

Barkley and Jacobs are both guaranteed $10.09 million on the franchise tag, if they decide to play :: Bill Streicher/USA TODAY Sports (Barkley); Gary A. Vasquez/USA TODAY Sports (Jacobs)

It's why it’s almost always the right move for a running back to be as militant as he can be in negotiating a contract, but to take all the money he can before it comes off the table.

And there’s history that says Barkley and Jacobs will regret not doing that.

But it’s the reality of the situation these guys are in. Le’Veon Bell knows.

• While we’re here, the problem that Barkley and Jacobs have isn’t that they aren’t good enough. It’s that the position is too replaceable. The Chiefs started a seventh-round rookie, Isiah Pacheco, in the Super Bowl. Their opponent let its starting tailback from that game, Miles Sanders, go to another team for around $6 million per year. And there are a lot of teams that view it in those simple terms—I can find a good enough running back.

The flip side to the argument would be that teams that have done big deals in recent years with backs have largely not regretted their moves to do so. The teams the Chiefs and Eagles beat in the conference title games both had big-money backs (Christian McCaffrey in San Francisco and Joe Mixon in Cincinnati). And what those guys actually make is a pittance compared to top receivers. Courtland Sutton’s contract in Denver ($15 million average annual value), in fact, would rank second among running backs. It’s 20th among receivers.

Derrick Henry ($12.5 million AAV) makes the same as Corey Davis. Nick Chubb ($12.2 million AAV) makes a little more than Michael Gallup. Would you say the Titans and Browns got their money’s worth? Even in cases such as Ezekiel Elliott’s or Dalvin Cook’s, where the player slowed down at the end of the deal, those guys were so central to their teams’ identities for years that it’d be hard to argue their contracts were bad value for the teams. Elliott, in fact, helped Dallas develop a quarterback.

And that’s another thing with Barkley and Jacobs. They were so important for their first-year coaches in 2022, arguably becoming bigger pieces of their offenses than their teams’ quarterbacks. That, of course, is why the Raiders and Giants took those negotiations right up to the 4 p.m. ET deadline Monday. It’s also why it’s not great for those coaches that their locker rooms will see such well-respected, accomplished players go unrewarded.

But that’s the situation for these teams, and these players. And it’s where that position is at, too.

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• One last thing—running backs really got screwed in the 2011 CBA. It was in that agreement between owners and the union that stronger holdout rules went in, as did a rule that prevented any drafted player from signing a new contract until after his third year.

In the old system, workhorse backs such as Chris Johnson and Clinton Portis would rattle cages after Year 2 to try and leverage their value when it was at its peak, and get paydays as a result. It was accepted that backs almost had to do that. But the current system allows teams to milk more out of those guys, and then prepare ahead of time to offload them if they won’t do deals on team-friendly terms.

The reality? This way a tailback can be on the back end of his best producing years by the time he’s even eligible to do a second deal. Which has obvious, and very apparent, impact on his earning power.

• Part of the running back argument goes for tight ends, too. Jacksonville’s Evan Engram, who’s had trouble staying healthy, but has proven a unique weapon as a positional tweener, did a three-year, $41.25 million deal Sunday, a day ahead of the deadline.

That’s $13.75 million per year for a guy who’s really a high-level, matchup-dictating slot receiver.

Worth it? Well, what he got wasn’t dissimilar to the deal Corey Davis signed with the Jets (if you account for inflation) in 2021. Last year, Engram had more than twice as many catches as Davis (73–32), more than 200 more yards (756–536), and more touchdowns (4–2). And he’s more of a chess piece for his coordinator than Davis is.

That cuts back to the crux of the argument, which is there are different levels of value. Because the market at tight end isn’t what it is at receiver (mostly because there are few great players at tight end to push the market forward), you’re getting a significantly better player at that price point at the one position versus the other. And that really does matter, if this is about surrounding the quarterback with the five best skill players you can.

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Hopkins has played in just 16 games over the past two years :: Michael Chow/Greenville News/USA TODAY Network

• So why did DeAndre Hopkins pick the Titans?

Easy. Money.

For the 31-year-old, five-time All-Pro, getting $12 million in base pay and upside to $15 million in the week leading up to the opening of camp is, unequivocally, a win—at a point when a team’s cap and cash budgets are mostly spent. And, sure, if Hopkins plays like he has at many points of his career, paying him less than what a lot of good No. 2 receivers make will be a bargain.

But this is a guy who’s played in just 16 games over the past two years, and needs to be managed injury-wise in a way (with his practice time very limited) that some teams, or coaches, aren’t comfortable. So you’re banking on him being, again, who he was three years ago, and while he might get there, as he’s promised, that’s a tough bet to make on a player who’s on the other side of 30 at that position.

That’s why it’s really hard to blame Hopkins for taking that one last bite of the financial apple. Because it’s tough to know whether he’ll get another one like it.

(And while we’re here, Hopkins’s relationships in Tennessee certainly didn’t hurt—he was with both head coach Mike Vrabel and offensive coordinator Tim Kelly in Houston, and has a good enough rapport with Vrabel to have texted with him while he was on his visit with the Patriots).

• That leaves some cleanup work on the teams that didn’t get Hopkins, and there are three here in particular to hit on.

The first is the Patriots, the presumed runner-up. New England was willing to match the max total ($15 million) for 2023, only with a far higher percentage of that total tied to incentives as part of an offer that, structurally at least, looked a little like Kansas City’s offer before the draft. Which leaves Bill Belichick and Bill O’Brien with JuJu Smith-Schuster, DeVante Parker, Kendrick Bourne and second-year man Tyquan Thornton at the position.

That brings us to the Chiefs, who I believe would’ve considered circling back. Teams involved felt Hopkins would consider taking less to go to KC or another top contender if the money didn’t get closer to what Odell Beckham Jr. got prior to camps opening. Remember, the Chiefs worked diligently on a deal in April, and had most of it worked out then (they’d talked about a deal with a $4 million base and upside to $10 million, and had worked through trade terms with Arizona), only to have Beckham’s deal (one year, $15 million) poison the well.

Then, there’s the Bills. They, too, had worked through particulars both with Hopkins and the Cardinals pre-draft. But even then, my sense is there was trepidation because of how such a signing could upset the balance of the offense, with Stefon Diggs needing his touches, and Hopkins being a volume receiver. Then, they drafted Dalton Kincaid to play the sort of inside receiver spot Hopkins would have, the Diggs drama escalated, and I’m not sure—as much as they liked Hopkins when they talked to him—they had a another run in them.

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• One camp storyline maybe only I am interested in—the Eagles’ young corners.

One was a fourth-round pick (Georgia’s Kelee Ringo), the other was undrafted (Alabama’s Eli Ricks), and what’s unique about this situation is both have a boatload of potential athletically, and each comes with strings. Both faced character questions pre-draft, and those questions are what prevented these big, strong, fast guys from fulfilling what many saw as first-round potential earlier in their college careers.

Ricks started as a true freshman for LSU. Ringo started for Georgia’s historic 2021 defense after getting injured as a freshman and redshirting. Both have had flashes.

And the truth is, with Philly set to open the season with two really solid 30-something corners (Darius Slay and James Bradberry), both of whom appeared to be on their way out earlier in the offseason, the Eagles could really use an infusion of youth at the position. Ricks and Ringo could give them that. Or they could wash out quickly. Neither conclusion would be surprising to see, which should make camp pretty interesting at the position for the defending NFC champions.

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• I’ve gotten a lot of questions on radio and TV the past couple of weeks on whether the NFL would force the Jets into the Hard Knocks spot and, after the league did, what it means.

Well, first, as the saying goes, you’d always much rather have volunteers than hostages.

So the league has a hostage and that isn’t ideal. But every year, there are people within whatever team has drawn the assignment that are less than enthused by it. In my experience, a good percentage of those people wind up being won over by the NFL Films people, who have always been discreet and professional in their handling of the series.

That said, my feeling going there in the spring was the reason the Jets didn’t want to do this was because they felt like they already had a lot on their plate media-wise—from in-house stuff, to heightened attention both locally and nationally, to the new crossover appeal that reaches outside of sports thanks to the arrival of Aaron Rodgers. So I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a whole bunch of people over there who resent having to do this.

Either way, HBO and Films will be scrambling to build up their library and background info to make the show sing—normally, with an early announcement, a lot of that would be done in the spring—to be ready for the Aug. 8 debut. And as for whether any friction could impact the show, we’ll get to see for ourselves in three weeks.

• While we’re on the Jets, the $24 million per Qunnen Williams is getting on a four-year deal is, even at that number, a win for the team, and shows that Aaron Donald’s groundbreaking post-Super Bowl LVI deal will remain an outlier. Williams’s deal comes in a tick above ($500,000 more per year in base pay) what Tennessee gave Jeffrey Simmons, who topped what Washington’s Daron Payne and the Giants’ Dexter Lawrence got earlier in the offseason.

The Jets now have Williams signed through 2027, and paid a premium price for a premium player. But chances are, after you see what Nick Bosa’s going to get in San Francisco, this deal’s going to look pretty good, and that’s while it creates cost certainty as the Jets work to extend some of their other young stars over the next few years.

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• I’ll be at a camp a week from today. And we’re going to have some creative ways to take us with you. But one way to start would be following along with me on Instagram (@albert_breer) and Twitter (@albertbreer) where I’ll do my best to show you all the football, and a little bit of America, too. Can’t wait for it.