Solve for Y.
Solve for Y? Why? We spend about ten years of our lives learning to solve for y, and then never give y a second thought after we turn the tassel. Instead of solving for y, we need to be teaching our children, the future of our sovereign nation, how to solve for rb. Because that’s the variable no one has been able to solve for, especially NFL general managers.
In college football the equation could not be any simpler: rb = 1, as in one running back takes up one of a possible eighty five scholarship roster spots. The job of a college coach is to fill those eighty five scholarships with the most talented football players they can get.
But Jake, football is football. All NFL general managers have to do is accumulate the best players possible for their roster. Just because the roster size drops from eighty five to fifty three doesn’t mean you don’t need good running backs.
The biggest difference between roster construction in college and the NFL isn’t the draft, it isn’t recruiting, it’s the salary cap. More so than in any other league, the NFL salary cap is complicated to the point of exhaustion. In a utopian football universe rb = 1/53 roster spots would be the end of the story. In the NFL however, rb = x% of the salary cap. The salary cap makes the life of a general manager in the NFL less like Kirby Smart or Nick Saban and more like the Wolf of Wall Street searching for market inefficiencies to exploit. Instead of gunning for the number one recruiting class, general managers are watching Moneyball on loop.
Now come on now Jake, talk market inefficiencies all you want but running back has always been THE position. Jim Brown, Herschal Walker, Bo Jackson, Barry Sanders, Ladainian Tomlinson; there’s a reason the best athlete on the field has always played running back.
We’re on the same page here, which is part of what makes this shift away from the running back so difficult for so many to comprehend. Not only have running backs always been the best athletes, many of the most memorable football moments, as well as entire seasons have come from running backs. Barry Sander’s 1988 Heisman campaign at Oklahoma State is considered the best season by any college football player ever. Georgia running back Herschel Walker dislocated his shoulder on the undefeated Bulldog’s first offensive play in the 1981 Sugar Bowl, and he STILL put on arguably the best performance in a National Championship game with 150 rushing yards on thirty six (thirty six!) carries to beat Notre Dame and secure Georgia’s only championship in the last forty years.. Perhaps the greatest individual season by any NFL player came from running back Ladainian Tomlinson. In 2006 he accounted for over 2,3000 and 31 touchdowns. To contextualize how impressive 31 touchdowns is for a running back, in pass happy 2018 only eight quarterbacks THREW more touchdowns than LT scored in that 2006 season. Todd Gurley led the NFL in rushing touchdowns last season, and he only scored seventeen. Not only seventeen, but you know what I mean.
Football has always been about running backs, until all of the sudden it simply wasn’t. Kansas City was the number one offense in the NFL last year in terms of both total yards and total points. Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce are the most unique one-two receiving threats in the League, and Patrick Mahomes was the MVP in his first year as a full time starter. The Chiefs leading rusher? That would be Kareem Hunt, who was cut by the team in November, just two months into the season. The Chiefs second leading rusher? That would be Patrick Mahomes, with about 275 rushing yards on the year. In 2019 you don’t need the league’s leading rusher to have the best offense in the league, or anything even close to it really.
Perhaps an even more accurate indicator than the best offense in the league is looking at how Super Bowl winning teams are built. According to sportrac, in the past five years the highest paid running back on the Super Bowl winning team has had an average salary cap hit of 1.04%. The only running back who’s had a cap hit that was even over 1% was James White last season in New England, and that’s understanding that Tom Brady should be making at least $10-15 million more dollars per season.
In 2019 James White is still New England’s highest paid running back, and he’s making about $3 million this season. With Ezekiel Elliot’s new contract he’s making about $8 million dollars. So if we extrapolate that means the Dallas Cowboys think Zeke is worth $5 million dollars more than James White.
To be fair, Ezekiel Elliot was the leading rusher in the NFL last season. He finished with over 1,400 rushing yards, 600 receiving yards, and nine total touchdowns. White only finished with about 1,200 total yards, but scored twelve total touchdowns. If the Cowboys would have signed a running back to a James White type contract, which is still pretty big for a running back, they could have put at least some of that $5 million towards extending cornerback Byron Jones. Out of one hundred and thirty one qualified cornerbacks, Pro Football Focus rated Jones the seventh best in the League. Instead of extending one of the top players at the most important defensive position, Jones contract talks are at best on hold until 2020 and the Cowboys have the League’s leading rusher return to the 24th ranked scoring offense from a season ago.
While we’re on the subject of Pro Football Focus grades, PFF only rated Zeke as the 30th running back in the NFL. Read that sentence again if you need to, in a season where Elliott lead the National Football League in rushing yards there were twenty nine running backs who graded out higher than him.
Zeke? 30th? There’s no way that there are 29 better running backs in the League than Elliott? The dude ran for over 1,400 yards and averaged over 4.5 yards per rush. That’s not even counting the over 500 yards receiving he had. How many players can legitimately account for almost 2,000 scrimmage yards in the NFL?
Once again, reader, you make some valid points, but the thing to remember is that more than any other position, in probably any sport, running back production is the most dependent on the other players around him. There is less correlation between a running back’s talent and his production than any other player on the field. We saw that in 2017 when Zeke missed six games due to suspension and the Cowboys were actually more efficient running the ball with Alfred Morris and Rod Smith. We saw it again last season when the Rams lost Todd Gurley. CJ Anderson, who was cut by two separate teams just in 2018, was just as productive as Gurley was when healthy.
The concept that running back talent ≠ production isn’t even that new. It’s something that former North Carolina State defensive end Mario Williams understood when he was going through the draft process in 2006. The eventual number one overall pick was competing with Heisman Winners Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart out of USC, as well as Vince Young who just won the national championship at Texas to be the first player selected by the Houston Texans.
Houston’s decision came down to Mario Williams and Reggie Bush. In William’s pre draft meetings with the Texans, part of his strategy on selling his value was by virtue of his position, compared to running back Reggie Bush. Williams convinced the Texans that as a defensive end, his production is solely dependent on beating the offensive tackle. As a running back, Bush’s production was dependent on the ten other offensive players on the field. Houston seemed to agree, and drafted William’s first overall.
No one is saying that having a good running back is bad for a team, but at what cost? There are only so many dollars that can get spread around an NFL locker room, and they need to be going to the players adding the most value. In 2019 that’s going to be quarterbacks, defensive backs, pass rushers, and *wide receivers. The position that adds the least value? Running back
Which takes us full circle, back to our rb = x% of the salary cap. Rb = x% of the salary cap will certainly be different for each team with unique variables. While we can’t solve for x in our original equation, we can determine that rb < any position in terms of individual value, and unfortunately for running backs, should be paid accordingly.
*Having four or so talented pass catchers that can create separation is more important than having one absolutely dominant receiver. The Eagles having Alshon Jeffrey, Zach Ertz, Desean Jackson, Nelson Agholor, and J.J. Arcega-Whiteside is more valuable than the Texans having Deandre Hopkins and a bunch of question marks. Even with Alshon Jeffrey’s expensive contract (7.4% of the cap) the top four pass catchers for the Eagles account for about 16% of the salary cap. They can do that because quarterback Carson Wentz and defensive tackle Fletcher Cox account for about 9% of the salary cap. In 2020 that 9% jumps to almost 20%, meaning the Eagles might be forced to rely more heavily on rookie deal receivers.
That’s the route Cleveland and Minnesota are going with. In Cleveland Odell Beckham Jr. and Jarvis Landry account for about 12.5% of the cap. They’re relying on guys on rookie deals like tight end David Njoku and wide receiver Rashard Higgins. Adam Thielen and Stefon Diggs will account for about 13.5% of the cap next season, which is why they’re taking a flyer on like former first round pick Josh Doctson who just got cut by the Redskins to a one year deal.
-By Jake Cowden