Two summers ago, the NFL’s running back market hit rock bottom. Saquon Barkley, Josh Jacobs, and Tony Pollard, three veteran starters who had been among the most productive players at the position, had each received the franchise tag in the spring of 2023. In July, none of them were able to come to terms on contract extensions with their respective teams in New York, Las Vegas, and Dallas, so NFLPA vice president Austin Ekeler, who was also unhappy with his contract with the Chargers at the time, did what any corporate executive would in times of distress: get everyone together on Zoom to vent. Derrick Henry, Christian McCaffrey, and Nick Chubb were among the running backs who came together to express their concerns about their position becoming the most devalued in the league. Salaries for wide receivers and quarterbacks were skyrocketing, while running back contracts were plummeting. Players left that conference call with shrugs—not of indifference, but of hopelessness.
“We’re kind of handcuffed with [this] situation,” Browns back Chubb said at the time. “If we go out there and run 2,000 yards with so many carries, the next year they’re going to say, ‘You’re probably worn down.’”
As the NFL shifted into a passing-heavy league, the best offenses were those with the most efficient passing games. Combine that with rule changes that aided quarterbacks and receivers, and the premier tailback was becoming obsolete. Teams found they could get as much production out of several young, cheaper running backs as they could from one pricey veteran. And playing running back is particularly difficult on the body; lead backs typically get at least 200 touches per season, ramming their way into crowded boxes and guaranteeing impact on nearly every snap. It was a young man’s position, and paying an older player was deemed to be risky. The analytics, the tactics and schemes, the money, and the public narrative were beating the point home: Running backs still play a crucial part of offensive football, but the players themselves weren’t worth paying premium money.
That trend was reflected most clearly in the franchise tag number—which is calculated by averaging the top salaries at each position—that for running backs dropped to $10.1 million by 2023, $2 million less than its peak in 2017. And when players as accomplished as Barkley, the most dynamic rusher of this generation, and Jacobs, who just the season before had led the league in rushing, couldn’t secure respectable long-term deals, the “do running backs matter” debate reached a breaking point. Barring unlikely amendments to the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement to apply specific guarantees or protections for running backs—or something more dramatic, like running backs successfully forming their own union—it seemed there was little for modern tailbacks to do but hope for market forces to change someday in the future.
That change happened more quickly than any of us could have imagined.
Barkley, Henry, and Jacobs were among the stars of free agency last spring—each securing a longer-term contract and a raise with their new teams, and now, all three have helped power their new offenses into the postseason. Barkley surpassed 2,000 yards rushing for the Eagles, Henry rushed for more than 1,900 yards as part of the Ravens’ nearly unstoppable rushing attack, and Jacobs scored a career-high 15 touchdowns in his first season in Green Bay. Add in the strong rushing performances this year from Detroit’s duo of Jahmyr Gibbs and David Montgomery, and James Cook’s breakout season in Buffalo, and, there’s a good chance a running back will power his team on a Super Bowl run.
No matter who wins the MVP or holds up the Lombardi Trophy in February, this was the Year of the Running Back Revival. You couldn’t help but feel nostalgic watching the games each week. Before we worried about positional value, running back was the glamour position. If you played any sort of football as a kid in the ’90s or early 2000s—from pickup ball on your block to PeeWee leagues all the way up through high school; shoot, even if you were only creating players on a video game—running back was the position you wanted to play, and it wasn’t a debate. This year was a reminder that running the ball at an elite level isn’t just a shortcut to efficient offense, when you do it well, it’s still the coolest fucking thing in the sport.
In 2024, running backs created their own offense, averaging the fourth-fewest yards in the past decade before contact—but the most yards gained after. As defenses this season spent less time loading up the box and invested more time in playing with two-deep safeties, essentially putting lighter defenders on the field, running backs are proving their value by making tacklers miss and finding hidden yardage outside of the structure of a play. Eight of the league’s top 10 rushing offenses by success rate this season made the postseason field, and each of the NFL's top five rushing offenses by total expected points added (EPA) will be hosting a playoff game this month.
As we head into a wild-card weekend that will feature some of the hottest running backs in the league, let’s look back specifically at what Barkley, Henry, and others did in the regular season to redefine the position, and examine the lessons the NFL should take away from this season.
Forces of Nature: Saquon Barkley, Derrick Henry
I don’t know if any free agents, regardless of position, in 2024 found new homes that were a better fit for their skill sets than Henry and Barkley did in Baltimore and Philadelphia, respectively. These two teams have made controlling the line of scrimmage a foundational belief, albeit in wholly different ways—and these backs are the perfect players to represent each team’s preferred style of football. It’s no surprise that you’ll find them both in the top five of yards per rush, total EPA on the ground, and total runs of 10- or 20-plus yards.
The Eagles found great success when they used Barkley to punish the kind of spread defenses that opponents frequently use when the Eagles put lighter personnel on the field. When Philadelphia was in 11 personnel (its three wide receiver sets), Barkley averaged a mind-boggling 6.9 yards per rush on 152 attempts. He generated positive EPA on half of his rush attempts out of 11 personnel. If a defense dares to play man coverage or keep both safeties deep, the Eagles have been able to beat defensive backs with perimeter runs and give Barkley his choice of where and when to cut back—based on how the defense fits their gaps.
The Barkley run below almost acts as a pin-and-pull blocking scheme, as receiver A.J. Brown cuts off the safety and center Cam Jurgens pulls and tosses the corner out of the club, leaving nobody on the boundary to account for Barkley once he gets to top speed. When the Eagles run into light boxes (with six or fewer defenders) with three receivers on the field, they’re top 10 total EPA and runs of 10-plus yards, and 11th in success rate.
Even in instances in which Philadelphia adds tight ends to the formation and defenses load up the box to stop the run, there aren’t many good options for slowing Barkley down. Even though the Eagles don’t have the best blockers at tight end, simply adding another big body to the box opens the door for downhill runs—and allows the Eagles to be more creative in designing those rushing plays. In the next clip, the Commanders try to load up the line of scrimmage and play tight coverage against the Eagles’ 12 personnel set. Because Philly is in a bunched formation and uses motion to tuck one of the two tight ends behind the offensive linemen, Washington middle linebacker Bobby Wagner is at the offense’s mercy as a run defender—he can’t know his run fit until after the snap. The entire defense moves laterally on the snap, and there is nobody left on the backside to even touch Barkley, let alone attempt a tackle.
Henry, on the other hand, fills a more traditional running back archetype in Baltimore’s offense. The Ravens’ run game is unique in the modern era—Baltimore was the only team in 2024 with more than 100 carries out of 22 personnel (two backs, two tight ends, and one receiver), and the only team with more than 50 carries in 21 personnel (two backs, one tight end, two receivers) and positive EPA. This team has little desire to mask its intentions, whether defenses load the box or not: The Ravens are going to put bigger humans on the field than you have and bully your defense; they averaged 5.4 yards per rush in 22 personnel and 6.8 in 21 personnel.
When teams run the ball out of personnel groupings this heavy, and when the defense is stacking the box to try to stop it, there’s a trade-off that happens for the offense. Even if the quarterback is a running threat himself (and Lamar Jackson is the biggest one we’ve ever seen), it’s almost impossible to get a blocker on every defender at the point of attack. A smart offense, though, can determine which player is left unblocked, target that player, and force defenders to make one-on-one tackles. Good luck with that against Henry.
The clip below is a good example of why the Ravens are so effective in these larger personnel packages. To be frank, calling Pat Ricard a fullback is about as big a stretch as his jersey is across his back. He’s much closer in both size and utility to a sixth offensive lineman, weighing nearly as much as guard Patrick Mekari and center Tyler Linderbaum. The Ravens love to put him in motion before the snap, which forces defenses to account for his location at all times. Here, the Ravens are running duo right behind Ricard and tight end Mark Andrews, forcing Cleveland DB Greg Newsome to try to make a solo tackle against a barreling Henry. Everyone else in the box is accounted for, leaving nobody but an overmatched corner to stand between Henry and an explosive run.
Ricard is featured in the next clip as well—but he doesn’t have to be on the field for these play designs to work. The Ravens can use him to create 12 personnel formations, or leave Andrews and tight end Isaiah Likely on the field as their extra blockers. This Henry outside zone run accomplishes the same goal as the duo run you just watched, forcing Pittsburgh defensive back Minkah Fitzpatrick to be the primary run defender. Fitzpatrick makes the wrong decision and tries to shoot through a gap behind the point of attack, gambling on getting to Henry and forcing a tackle for loss before Henry turns upfield. But even if he had played it correctly, he was going to lose this rep no matter what. The Ravens had more blockers at the point of attack than the Steelers had defenders, so there would have been space to run into no matter what.
There’s an irony in the juxtaposition of these two plays, and it speaks to how tortuous it is to defend Henry and Baltimore’s run game. If Cleveland had used Pittsburgh’s defensive call against duo (and vice versa for the Steelers against outside zone), there’s a good chance that both would’ve mitigated the chance of an explosive run. Pittsburgh’s five-down front is great for eliminating double-teams and keeping linemen from working upfield, and Cleveland’s four-down front with wide edges was built to stop outside zone. The problem is that neither of those fronts have good answers against the runs the Ravens threw at them, and Baltimore, now that it has a back as powerful as Henry, is good enough to toggle between inside and outside runs to find the winning answer against any defense.
But both Barkley and Henry have impacted their respective offenses even if they aren’t the ones with the ball. Quarterbacks Jalen Hurts and Jackson have benefitted from the gravity their running backs command when setting up play-action passes. The data bears this out. With Barkley on the field, Hurts has a passing rating of 121.4 on play-action throws, and averaged over 9.6 yards per attempt and gained positive EPA on 59.1 percent of those dropbacks. Jackson’s passer rating is a mind-numbing 136.0 on play-action with Henry on the field, and he averaged 9.8 yards per attempt and gained a positive EPA on 59.8 percent of his dropbacks. On all career dropbacks for Hurts and Jackson without their star teammates, all of those numbers fall—albeit less significantly for Jackson.
Henry has an influence on his quarterback as a runner, too. Jackson averaged 7.7 yards per rush (excluding scrambles) with Henry on the field this year, compared to just 6.5 yards on every attempt he’s had in his career without Henry in the backfield—proof that every eye dedicated to Henry opens the door for an explosive keeper from Jackson.
Henry has already built a Hall of Fame-worthy résumé, and Barkley’s career will be on the same trajectory if he can stay healthy for the duration of his contract with the Eagles. And yet, without such an aggressive deflation of the running back market before the 2023 season, we might never have seen these players land in ideal situations on the back end of their respective primes—and it feels bittersweet to acknowledge that. Giants general manager Joe Schoen will be part of Hard Knocks history for his chesty beliefs that Barkley couldn’t find a long-term contract with an annual value above the franchise tag. ESPN’s Seth Walder (who I respect a great deal) graded Barkley’s move to Philadelphia a “C” and wrote that the difference between Barkley and an average starter was “small.”
They were wrong, and now we’re all talking about this position differently. Even if it’s entirely possible to have a solid run game with an assembly line of running backs behind a great unit in the trenches (Kansas City is the best example), let 2024 be your proof that if you can build a proper infrastructure around a competent coaching staff and talented offensive line, paying market price for a running back can boost your offense at worst—and effectively change the way you play football and unlock a new efficiency in your passing game at best.
A Running Back Renaissance Across the NFL
These two running backs are outliers of the highest order, but teams don’t have to acquire Hall of Fame–level talent to reap the benefits of this running back renaissance—and good backs are once again getting paid.
Jacobs signed a four-year contract with the Packers last March that pays him an average of $12 million per year (a raise from what he made in 2023 in Vegas) and finished the regular season ranked sixth in rushing yards and yards over expectation, per NextGen Stats. He was fourth in rushing touchdowns, just one shy of the league lead. He scored at least once in the Packers’ last eight games. Packers head coach Matt LaFleur drew up some wild shit in the run game to keep defenses honest, borrowing misdirection concepts that trace back to the single-wing offense. In the clip below, Green Bay is only running a split zone concept, something you can find in every offense. With the "spinner" action from the quarterback and all the moving parts in the backfield, though, linebackers are put in a bind on which players to react to—opening up holes for Jacobs to exploit, especially when defenses are in lighter boxes.
Where Jacobs was most valuable, though, was in his ability to create positive gains by breaking tackles and squeezing through tight spaces. In the clip below, Green Bay is running duo against the Lions, and Jacobs is able to turn what should be a short gain into an explosive one because of his patience and vision. While he’s not as singularly talented as our top two running backs, his shiftiness and power forced defenses to have to account for him, and that opened things up for Green Bay’s passing game. When Jacobs was on the field, Green Bay had a 52 percent success rate on play-action passes compared to 42.5 percent when he wasn’t.
Lions running back Jahmyr Gibbs deserves some shine here, too. The 2023 first-round pick rushed for more than 1,400 yards in 2024 despite sharing the workload with David Montgomery. Gibbs finished fifth in rushing yards over expected, which is notable considering how wide open some of his holes were this season. Detroit was the best team in the NFL at running outside zone all season, and in the clip below, you can see how easily the Lions offensive line moved bodies up front. Combine that with Gibbs’s ability to create big runs with his speed and vision, and you’ve got an unstoppable run play.
Less flashy but consistently productive was James Cook in Buffalo, who scored 16 touchdowns and rushed for over 1,000 yards on a steady diet of inside zone runs while being a battering ram between the tackles. Cook ran into eight-man boxes more often than every back we’ve mentioned so far aside from Henry, so don’t hold his lack of explosive plays against him. He always finishes runs by falling forward, and if you open up a crease for him, he has enough speed to break huge gains.
There are several promising young players we can mention here, too—Rico Dowdle in Dallas, Bucky Irving in Tampa, and Tank Bigsby in Jacksonville were all effective rushers this season—but the last name that really deserves to be considered in the elite tier of backs is Atlanta’s Bijan Robinson, the no. 8 pick in the 2023 draft. Robinson had a 49 percent success rate on his runs and gained over 1,400 yards this season, thriving in the Falcons offense in spite of quarterback Kirk Cousins’s struggles to stay consistent in the passing game.
Robinson was an easy player to evaluate coming out of the University of Texas, and he hasn’t had to adjust his game an iota to be successful in the pros. His agility and vision make him a threat in any run concept, but there’s nothing better than Atlanta giving him an outside zone toss and letting him work on the perimeter, running by defensive linemen too slow to keep pace and through defensive backs too weak to bring him down. If there’s any player in the league that could be as devastating as Barkley or Henry in the right situation in the coming years, it’s Robinson.
What’s next for the running back market?
In order to properly calibrate our understanding of where the running back market needs to go, maybe we need to just stop thinking about running back as a skill position, and more part of a team’s overall investment in the offensive line. If we take anything from the success in 2024 of Barkley, Henry, and Jacobs, it’s that, yes, signing an elite rusher can help your team, but only if the offensive infrastructure and line is sound. If players like Barkley, Henry, Jacobs, Jonathan Taylor, Alvin Kamara, and McCaffrey set the top of the market in the range of $12-15 million per year—accounting for about 5 to 6 percent of a team’s salary cap—running back salaries are in line with solid starter salaries along the offensive line.
When you look through this lens, it’s easy to see how smart teams with well-built rosters like Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Green Bay were able to capitalize on a market inefficiency. The teams most likely to pay interior offensive linemen seem most comfortable with meeting/exceeding current market value to bring in a high-quality or transformative back. Green Bay and Philadelphia are paying guards at the top of the position’s market value, and Barkley and Jacobs have propelled their offenses for large swathes of the season. We wouldn’t typically consider the Panthers to be among the NFL’s better-run franchises, but it’s worth paying attention to their recent roster-building strategy—investing about 13 percent of their cap into guards Robert Hunt and Damien Lewis, and signing running back Chuba Hubbard to a four-year, $33 million extension earlier this season. Hubbard finished top 12 in yards, EPA, and yards after contact per rush.
This can apply to the draft, as well. The Lions and Falcons are paying top dollar at multiple positions along their lines and were eager to draft Gibbs and Robinson, respectively, in the first round of the 2023 draft. Both of these second-year players have had huge impacts on their respective offenses, and they’ll still be valuable at the end of their rookie deals (health permitting) and in line for hefty second contracts in the not-too-distant future. Their success could help inspire teams to look at drafting Ashton Jeanty, Boise State’s Heisman Trophy runner-up, early in the first round. If and when that happens, maybe the collective reaction won’t be that it was a mistake.
This might not be a huge year for free-agency signings, though, because unlike last year, the class is light on stars; the group of pending free agents is headlined by Chubb, who is coming off multiple injury-riddled seasons; Dowdle; and Pittsburgh’s Najee Harris. But a potential down year shouldn’t undo the positive gains of 2024. The market finally corrected, and the players who got paid delivered some of their most productive seasons.
I’m not going to say the words, because there’s nothing I want less than seeing old debates resurface. Running backs absolutely do, and always did—all you have to do is watch the film to see the proof.
