Ezekiel Elliott ended his holdout on Wednesday, but his ordeal doesn’t bode well for the next generation of elite running backs.
It’s a maxim as old as the NFL itself: in order to win, you must be able to run the ball.
For most of the league’s history that was mostly true. Teams built Super Bowl champions around elite runners like Franco Harris, Walter Payton and Emmitt Smith. As good as John Elway was, he didn’t win a Super Bowl until he got an All-Pro back in Terrell Davis. Dan Marino, on the other hand, never played with a top running back and didn’t win a championship.
As the NFL prepares to begin its 100th season on Thursday, however, teams are beginning to challenge that age-old belief. In 2018, teams rushed the ball on average 414 times, 25.9 attempts per game. That’s the lowest mark in league history. A decade earlier there was an average of 27 more rushing attempts than there was last season.
Ezekiel Elliott led the league with 304 rushing attempts a year ago. In 2008, there were five running backs with more carries; in 1998 there were 10. As the league has shifted away from the workhorse running back, the elite players at the position are struggling to get paid what they consider themselves to be worth.
Just in the past year, three Pro Bowl running backs—Le’Veon Bell, Elliott and Melvin Gordon—have held out while looking for a new deal. Bell missed the entire 2018 season for the Pittsburgh Steelers before signing with the New York Jets in the offseason. Elliott’s holdout ended on Wednesday when he signed a six-year, $90 million extension with the Dallas Cowboys. Gordon, meanwhile, continues to holdout as the Los Angeles Chargers attempt to trade him.
Gordon’s case is a perfect example of the landscape facing elite backs in today’s NFL. He’s been one of the most productive runners in the league over his four-year career, finishing seventh in rushing yards in 2017. He was fourth with 14 touchdowns last year despite missing four games. Gordon averaged 5.1 yards per carry in 2018. His replacements ran for 3.9 yards per carry in the games he missed. But, despite that big difference, it didn’t seem to matter. The Chargers went 8-4 with Gordon in the lineup but won all four games he missed.
Gordon is just 26 years old and on the last year of his rookie contract that pays him $5.6 million this season. In any other era, the Chargers would rush to meet his contract demands. In today’s game, they feel they will be just as good without him.
Teams have come to realize that it’s not worth paying big money to a running back in order to be successful. A player that comes cheap is just as likely to be an effective back as a high-priced top draft pick. In the last five drafts, eight running backs have been selected in the first round compared to 16 quarterbacks. In four of those years, a quarterback has gone first overall, while at the same time only three running backs — Saquon Barkley, Christian McCaffrey and Elliott — were been taken in the top 10. The Seattle Seahawks drafted Rashaad Penny 27th overall in 2018, but he finished the season third on the team in rushing behind seventh-rounder Chris Carson and fourth-rounder Mike Davis.
While the last three Super Bowl champions have ranked inside the top-seven in the NFL in rushing, none of them had a back finish in the top-five in yards.
The Pittsburgh Steelers were one of the worst rushing teams in the league last season, finishing second-last in yards and 22nd in yards per attempt while Bell held out. That yards per attempt rank, however, was actually an improvement over 2017, when Bell played 15 games and led the league in attempts. They were content to go into 2018 with James Conner, a former third-round pick with 144 career rushing yards, as their primary back. Conner gained 0.5 yards more per carry than did Bell a year earlier, a big reason Bell is now on the Jets.
It’s no secret where teams are instead turning their attention. In less than two years, eight quarterbacks have signed contract extensions worth more than $30 million a season. Jared Goff became the latest when he signed a four-year, $134 million deal with the Los Angeles Rams on Tuesday. None of them had to hold out like Bell, Elliott and Gordon.
Elite backs are still getting paid. Todd Gurley signed an extension last offseason with the Rams that made him the highest-paid back in league history. That mark was broken by Elliott on Wednesday. The difference is Elliott had to wait for it, enduring a lengthy standoff with the Cowboys. Gordon, in turn, will also get a big contract eventually. It just might not be from the Chargers.
As the league moves away from an era of backs leading their team to Super Bowls, the saga that Elliott, Gordon and Bell have gone through will be repeated.