Paying Massive Money to Running Backs Simply Isn't Good Business

When it comes to paying running backs, it's tough to rationalize top dollar to such a volatile position.

When it comes to being pro-player compared to pro-team, I find myself often rooting for the athletes to get their paychecks. Football is a very unforgiving sport where you can be at the top of the world one moment and have your career altered forever on the very next play. 

With so little promised to you, I find it hard to not root for players to secure the bags.

When you eliminate the personal and emotional side of the argument and look at it from a business standpoint, one that we often have to realize is where most teams' mindset resides, it becomes hard to justify paying everybody. Unfortunately, this is the case with running back more than any other position on the gridiron.

It's truly strange to see, as the NFL was once a running back-driven league. Championships and Super Bowls were won on the backs, no pun intended, of these players. Guys like Franco Harris, Emmitt Smith and far more great runners were staples on championship rosters.

In the modern era, seven running backs have been taken with the first overall pick with a seemingly countless number of backs taken with a top-10 pick. Three running backs were selected in the top-five of the 2005 NFL Draft.

But times have changed drastically since then. The landscape of the NFL has changed to pass-happy offenses. The last 15 years alone have produced 14 seasons with 5,000-yard passing quarterbacks. Prior to that, there was only ever one player - Dan Marino in 1984 - to accomplish this. 

It was simply unheard of to throw for that many yards in a season, but the Drew Brees and Patrick Mahomes-talent of the world have shaken what we used to knew about football to its core.

Where once seemingly every team had a 1,000-yard rusher every season, it's now less than half of that. Just 15 running backs ran for 1,000-yards in 2022 and in 2021 there were only seven. It simply is just not the same league that it once was.

And while teams drafting running backs high still happens, it has dropped at an alarming rate. No running back has been selected as the top pick since Ki-Jana Carter in 1995 and since 2013 just 14 running backs taken on Day 1 despite there being well over 300 draft selections in that time frame.

So now we arrive at the question everyone is asking - Should running backs be paid top dollar for their production?

From a talent standpoint, it feels obscure to say no. After all, why wouldn't you pay your best players for their production? We've seen the wide receiver market skyrocket in the last 10 seasons with many on the doorstep of $30 million annually. This was quarterback money not even ten years ago. It simply makes too much sense to not pay your best players.

The problem we run into is positional value. Just because a player is elite doesn't mean you have to pay them like a quarterback. Zach Martin is perhaps the best offensive lineman in the league across all three positions, but you wouldn't pay him $30+ million a year because he's a guard. If he were to play tackle you might have that conversation.

This is where we run into the problem with running backs. The position has become so easily replaceable with many of the best running backs in the league not even being selected in the first round. Players like Nick Chubb, Derrick Henry, and Jonathan Taylor were all taken in the second-round. Austin Ekeler wasn't even drafted and he's one of the league's most underappreciated players.

We have also seen teams who don't have one top option approach their run games with a committee of players. The best example of this would be the 2021 Baltimore Ravens where the team lost their top three running backs in JK Dobbins, Gus Edwards, and Justice Hill before the season even began to various injuries - yet they finished third in the entire league in rushing yards thanks to a committee of Devonta Freeman, Latavius Murray, and Ty'Son Williams.

The reigning Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs' leading rusher, Isiah Pacheco, was selected at the near-end of the seventh-round. 

Simply put, it's very easy to get production for your run game from mid-round players or a host of guys.

So, with all of that in mind, we return to our question - Should running backs be paid? The answer is no, more often than not. 

While you will have some exceptions like a Derrick Henry or a Christian McCaffrey who may be "worth" their contracts, we also have to realize that taking them out of their respective offenses would be beyond detrimental to their teams' success. For 90% of the NFL, they can get by with average play or multiple runners.

It truly isn't fun to be on this side of the debate because I so badly want players to secure their money before their careers are over, but from a team building and business stand point to the debate, it simply doesn't make sense to do so.