ON A SATURDAY in late July 2023, the NFL’s high working backs joined a Zoom name. The decision, organized by Austin Ekeler, included Saquon Barkley, Nick Chubb, Derrick Henry, Josh Jacobs and Christian McCaffrey. In a gallery of their friends, they aired grievances a few depressed marketplace for gamers at their place and brainstormed methods to extend their worth and compensation.
Barkley and Jacobs had been franchise-tagged for $10.1 million — lowest amongst all offensive and defensive positions — till their organizations utilized a brief monetary band-aid to keep away from a holdout with short-term offers barely larger than the franchise tag valuation. Nonetheless, the prospect of adjusting league attitudes about compensating veteran working backs — a place at which many groups view gamers as interchangeable due to their success in utilizing late-round draft picks or free brokers making veteran minimums — felt bleak.
By the subsequent offseason, although, with the New York Giants unwilling to interrupt organizational precedent and signal their working again to a blockbuster extension, Barkley hit free company and garnered main curiosity. He finally signed a three-year, $37.75 million contract that included $26 million assured with the Philadelphia Eagles.
Eleven months after inking the deal, Barkley hoisted the Lombardi Trophy at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans. The Tremendous Bowl victory capped a season by which, together with the playoffs, he broke the single-season speeding file and earned Offensive Participant of the 12 months. On Tuesday, the Eagles rewarded him with a blockbuster two-year, $41.2 million contract that made him the highest-paid working again in league historical past.
However even with Barkley’s accomplishments in his first 12 months as an Eagle and subsequent payday, a free company working again renaissance is not essentially imminent.
Conversations with almost a dozen league officers revealed that whereas the free agent working again market seems stronger than the one which prompted the July 2023 name, the 2025 free brokers aren’t projected to proceed the trajectory of the record-setting 2024 class. As a substitute, final 12 months’s monetary and on-field success had been the product of a “confluence of occasions,” in response to one league supply.
Whereas league executives do not anticipate Barkley & Co.’s success to considerably affect contracts of 2025 free agent working backs, offensive and defensive traits may enhance demand on the place. However, NFL decision-makers cautioned, the market could be much less strong due to a deep working again draft class.
“On the finish of the day, your group has to suit no matter participant it’s, working again, receiver, no matter, inside your construction and the confines,” Buffalo Payments normal supervisor Brandon Beane mentioned. “And also you do have to concentrate to the present market.”
BARKLEY BECOMING THE highest-paid working again — and first to be paid not less than $20 million per 12 months — underscored a consensus opinion amongst league executives, coaches and brokers: He’s an distinctive expertise, and distinctive abilities create exceptions to the rule.
Whereas Barkley’s affect may not enhance the worth of the place as a complete, league sources mentioned his success may result in higher compensation for top-tier free agent working backs and in-house extension candidates.
“It may give pause to people who possibly have not invested in working backs to rethink that,” one AFC expertise evaluator informed ESPN. “However I am unsure it should transfer the needle a lot that you simply see an actual sea change throughout your entire place.”
One other league supply aware of participant negotiations mentioned he does not foresee a large bounce out there.
“Good gamers are going to receives a commission effectively,” he mentioned. “However I do not assume the development is hastily to pay working backs due to Saquon.”
In a category anchored by Barkley, Henry and Jacobs, the highest seven 2024 free agent working backs averaged $12 million in assured cash, up from $7.1 million in 2023, $4.8 million in 2022 and $4.5 million in 2021.
The highest 2025 free agent working backs embody Aaron Jones, Najee Harris and J.Ok. Dobbins, who fall in need of an unprecedented 2024 group that boasted 4 mixed All-Professional nods and three speeding titles.
As Barkley rushed and hurdled his means into MVP competition, the remainder of the category additionally outperformed latest free agent courses. In his first 12 months with the Ravens, Henry ran for 1,921 yards and 16 touchdowns, averaging 5.9 yards per carry, whereas Jacobs racked up 1,329 yards and 15 touchdowns on 4.4 yards per carry, per ESPN Analysis.
Stacked with important star energy, the highest seven free agent working backs of the 2024 class far outpaced the highest seven of the earlier three courses, combining for 8,868 speeding yards, 64 speeding touchdowns and 4.8 yards per carry. 5 of the seven, which additionally included D’Andre Swift, Tony Pollard, Devin Singletary and Jones, completed among the many high 12 in rush yards.
By comparability, the highest seven working backs within the 2023 free agent class mixed for 3,093 rush yards. Solely David Montgomery (ninth) completed among the many league’s high 30 rushers. The highest seven within the 2022 class rushed for two,433 yards. Cordarrelle Patterson (thirty ninth) ranked the very best amongst these seven in speeding yards. And in 2021, the identical pattern measurement mixed for two,475 speeding yards.
The 2024 class is undoubtedly an outlier, however some within the NFL consider their success as a bunch helps strengthen a market that lagged behind different talent positions simply a few years in the past as provide outpaced demand.
“I used to be simply speaking to an agent who had a pair working backs developing, and I mentioned for those who’d requested me a number of years in the past, I would not have been as optimistic,” Chiefs normal supervisor Brett Veach mentioned. “However with the years among the guys that signed final 12 months had … [and] particularly when you may have these distinctive guys which have a full talent set the place they will run, catch and block, I feel you will begin to see these guys coming again as much as the place they need to be out there.”
WHILE BARKLEY AND the 2024 free agent working backs may not considerably issue into the general positional worth for the 2025 class, leaguewide schematic traits may enhance working again compensation.
Although groups will all the time covet cannon-armed quarterbacks and game-breaking huge receivers, some organizations are shifting their focus to constructing stronger floor video games. Workforce speeding averages have steadily elevated up to now 10 years, together with a 7 yards per sport bounce from 112.7 in 2023 to 119.8 in 2024.
“The whole lot type of comes full circle,” Veach mentioned. “It goes in flows the place it is a run league, then it is a go league, then it will get slightly bit extra balanced.”
And in recent times, there’s been a correlation between sturdy run video games and profitable seasons. Groups that completed with the perfect data in 2023 and 2024 had a mean league speeding yards per sport rating of ninth, and 6 of these groups completed within the high 10. From 2021 and 2022, nonetheless, the perfect groups had a mean league rating of fifteenth, and 5 groups completed within the high 10, per ESPN Analysis.
“These defenses at present usually are not geared in the direction of stopping the run the best way they had been a number of years in the past,” the AFC expertise evaluator mentioned. “So there may be worth there to working backs.”
Essentially the most worthwhile of these working backs, different league executives mentioned, are versatile abilities resembling Barkley, McCaffrey and Bijan Robinson. As offenses shift to capitalize on the systematic weak point of defenses designed to cease passing assaults, the notion of working backs is shifting, too.
“Individuals weren’t [running backs] as weapons,” Beane mentioned. “I type of search for ’em as anybody you add to your offense, what do they convey? What’s their talent set? Is it a mismatched participant? Saquon, McCaffrey, any of these guys, they will line up and play huge receiver. They will line up within the backfield.”
Receiving yards by working backs, although, have decreased all through the previous decade.
They accounted for 14.05% of all receiving yards in 2024, marking the bottom share in additional than twenty years. That share has steadily decreased for the reason that statistic was first recorded at 19.8% in 2000.
However groups nonetheless put a premium on working backs able to contributing in a number of areas, whether or not as a go catcher or in go safety, along with their main run sport duties. And that versatility is a big think about positional valuation.
“The working again place has modified as a lot or greater than the market,” Beane mentioned. “Not is it 3 yards and a cloud of mud. [Some of] these guys are weapons on all three downs.”
WHILE THE DEMAND for versatile working backs is undoubtedly growing, so, too, is the availability. As a substitute of a flush free agent market, the majority of the rise this season figures to return from a loaded working again draft class. The inflow may effectively lower the demand for veteran free agent working backs, particularly ones who’ve important mileage.
“It is a strong group in free company, nevertheless it’s a uncommon 12 months with working backs within the draft,” Seahawks normal supervisor John Schneider mentioned. “I can not bear in mind this variety of legit prospects on the working again place within the draft, and I normally do not speak about depth within the draft, nevertheless it’s protruding this 12 months.”
ESPN draft analyst Jordan Reid projected 5 working backs to go within the first two rounds in his post-combine mock draft, headlined by Boise State standout Ashton Jeanty at No. 6.
“It isn’t a very nice free agent class, and it is a deep working again [draft] class,” Reid mentioned. “I feel that is going to have a adverse impact on the free agent class.”
Reid has 32 draftable grades at working again this 12 months. The final time not less than 30 working backs had been chosen in the identical draft was 2017. Earlier than that, it had final occurred in 1998.
“It is similar to what we noticed in 2017,” Reid mentioned, evaluating the 2025 class to a bunch that included Leonard Fournette, McCaffrey and Joe Mixon. “… I feel we may recover from 30 drafted this 12 months. That simply goes to point out you ways deep this working again class is. It isn’t as star-studded on the high as that 2017 group, however 4 to 5 years from now, I positively assume it might be talked about in the identical breath.”
One group’s preliminary place group analysis, a league supply aware of their scouting course of mentioned, additionally recognized almost 30 working backs who might be drafted.
Twenty working backs had been drafted in 2024, 18 in 2023 and 23 in 2022. Though two working backs went within the first spherical of the 2023 draft, none got here off the board till the second spherical in 2024 and 2022.
An evaluation by ESPN Analysis revealed the highest seven rookie working backs of the previous 4 courses have been largely extra impactful than the highest seven free brokers — with the exception being the 2024 free agent class, which outgained the rookies by greater than 5,000 yards. In 2023, the highest seven rookie working backs outgained the veteran free brokers by 1,349 yards, scored 12 extra speeding touchdowns and averaged 1.5 extra yards per carry.
One other issue working in opposition to free agent working backs is the success of rookies chosen late within the draft. Isiah Pacheco, a 2022 seventh-round choose, anchored the Chiefs’ backfield in two Tremendous Bowl-winning seasons, however when Pacheco missed important time with an harm, the Chiefs turned to a pair of free brokers in Kareem Hunt and Samaje Perine to assist get them to a 3rd straight Tremendous Bowl.
Nonetheless, the excessive hit charge on inexpensive, late-rounds working backs components into the weak free agent market.
“Corners, tackles, defensive linemen — when their tape’s good, they go excessive, and when their tape’s common, they’re nonetheless going to go within the center rounds,” Veach mentioned, citing the overall scouting and team-building philosophy of many within the league. “Whereas the working backs, you possibly can have a working again that rushes 4,000 yards for 3 years and nonetheless go into the sixth, seventh spherical.”
However simply because this 12 months’s free agent working again market is not more likely to attain the heights of the 2024 group doesn’t suggest it is a development. Many within the league agreed, the market worth of any given free agent working again is as individualized as that participant’s talent set.
“It is about the individual that is up within the dialogue,” Vikings normal supervisor Kwesi Adofo-Mensah mentioned, including {that a} surplus of working backs created a short-term market inefficiency the place the place’s compensation was lower than its on-field worth.
“Long run, they’re going to sometimes get to their proper water [level], however that is a place that, clearly, when you have the entrance to have the ability to block for them, they will change video games.”
Although Barkley’s success may not flip into a direct boon for the batch of free brokers set to hit the market in lower than per week, attitudes are slowly beginning to shift round what was as soon as thought of some of the disposable positions. And for individuals who met on that frustration-filled Zoom name almost two years in the past, that is progress.
