Piece by: Adam Cichoski
As we approach the draft and I hear more and more hype about running backs going in the first round, especially Najee Harris, I feel the need to push back against this idea. You should never be cheering for your team to draft a running back with their first-round pick and here’s why.
Positional Value
There are a few reasons but let’s just cut to the biggest one, positional value. Now I’m not saying running backs aren’t valuable, to the contrary, a good running game is an essential part of a good football team. But the NFL doesn’t value them monetarily.
The highest paid back in the league is Christain McCaffery who’s bringing home $16 million a year. Zeke Elliott and Alvin Kamara are tied for second at $15 million and Dalvin Cook, Derrick Henry, Aaron Jones and Joe Mixon are all in the $12-$12.6 million range. Then there’s a significant drop off to Melvin Gordon at $8 million then Saquon Barkley at $7.7 million.
Those numbers prove two things:
Running backs are cheap compared to other positions
Drafting a running back highly will result in a huge contract
Let’s focus on the second point first. Under the current CBA, players are paid according to where they’re drafted, not their position. So whether you take a running back or a quarterback you’re going to pay them around the same range. When Barkley entered the league he immediately became one of the highest paid in his position despite never playing a snap because of this.
The other point that quarterbacks are cheap is basically how NFL teams are trying to win now. Currently, the highest-paid quarterback on his rookie deal is Joe Burrow who’s making roughly $9 million a year. That figure makes him the 22nd-highest paid quarterback in the league. Quarterbacks that are making more than him include Andy Dalton, Teddy Bridgewater, Taysom Hill, Jimmy G, and Ryan Fitzpatrick. Nine quarterbacks are making over $30 million a year.
What that means is if you draft a Justin Herbert, or a Josh Allen or a Lamar Jackson, then you have five years of plus quarterback play on the cheap. Lamar Jackson is currently making roughly $2.37 million per year, that figure puts him behind guys like Jacoby Brissett, C.J. Bethard, Taylor Heinicke and A.J McCarron. On that salary, Jackson has posted a 30-7 regular season record, set a single season record for rushing yards by a quarterback and was voted unanimously for MVP.
I could probably end the article here, but I’ll make a few more points.
Day 2 is the Sweet Spot
There are some positions that the NFL is pretty good at evaluating and by the end of the first or second round all the talent is dried up. Majority of elite quarterbacks and edge rushers are scooped up early, but running backs you can famously find in every round. The second and third rounds in particular, however, seem to yield the best results.
Only one first-round running back rushed for over 1,000 yards last season if you don’t count Lamar Jackson. That was Josh Jacobs, who finished ninth in the league in rushing yards with 1,065. The eight players above him were taken from the second round to being undrafted. Although, the majority of those players (Derrick Henry, Dalvin Cook, Jonathan Taylor, David Montgomery, Nick Chubb) were taken on Day 2 of the draft.
Other notable Day 2 running backs in recent history include; Le’Veon Bell, Frank Gore, Alvin Kamara, J.K Dobbins, Antonio Gibson, James Conner, Ronald Jones, Kenyon Drake and Kareem Hunt. The hit rate goes down significantly after Day 2, but players like Aaron Jones, James Robinson, Gus Edwards and Chris Carson were found in later rounds or went undrafted and have all found a place in the league.
Longevity
There’s kind of an expectation when a player is selected in the first round that the player will be on the team for a long time. It’s seen as largely a failure when a team has to move on from a first-round player after one contract, even if that player finds success somewhere else. Players like quarterbacks, defensive ends, offensive tackles, and cornerbacks are players that can play for a long time and be successful in the same scheme for years.
Running backs, because of the nature of the position, tend to fall off a proverbial cliff long before other positions do. Unless the guy you’re drafting turns into Adrian Peterson or Frank Gore, odds are he’s only going to be elite for a handful of seasons. Todd Gurley lit the world on fire then disappeared into obscurity overnight. Zeke Elliott signed a lucrative contract then seemingly immediately took a nosedive.
Some players on second contracts work, Cook, Henry and Kamara are all proving they were worth a second contract so far, but most don’t. Melvin Gordon was replaced with a cheaper Autin Ekeler without much drop off, Le’Veon Bell was replaced by James Conner who, in the first year of Bell’s absence, kept the ball rolling just fine.
The duo of Cam Akers and Darrell Henderson could put their salaries together and double it and it wouldn’t reach Gurley’s contract, yet the two of them combined for nearly double the amount of yards Gurley had last year. The point is, most running backs are replaceable and are replaced all the time.
Conclusion
I’m not saying running backs are bad or aren’t important. However, drafting a running back in the first round in today’s NFL is just bad process. No matter how much you like a guy, don’t pull that trigger. Because no matter how much you like Leonard Fournette in the first round, there could be a Dalvin Cook in the second round, or an Alvin Kamara in the third. And you could use that first round pick on a more valuable position.
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