Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore? (Update)

Hey there, it's Steven Dubner. In a matchup that absolutely no one would have predicted,

the Seattle Seahawks will play the New England Patriots in this year's Super Bowl. The

most prominent players on those teams are New England quarterback Drake May and Seattle

wide receiver Jackson Smith and Jigba. You'll notice I did not name a running back. Why

not? That's what this episode is about. We first ran it last season and now we have updated

facts and figures as necessary. As always, thanks for listening.

The National Football League, a phenomenally successful piece of the sports and entertainment

industry, is largely built around the forward pass. That's when the quarterback, the star of the

show, throws the ball downfield to one of his sprinting receivers who tries to catch the ball

and sprint even further down the field. This can be a very exciting thing to watch.

In recent years, the passing game has gotten even more exciting and more sophisticated and it

has helped drive the league's massive growth. But if you ask football fans of a certain age who

they idolized when they were kids, it probably wasn't a wide receiver or even a quarterback.

It was probably a running back.

Tony Dorset was my favorite player. I had the uniform, the helmet.

The running backs were bigger stars during my childhood than the quarterbacks.

My favorite player of all time was Barry Sanders. The day that he retired, I remember crying.

I had a Ricky Waters jersey when he was with the Eagles actually. I wore it on the first day of

school. I think of first or second grade. The three men we just heard from, we will meet them

later. Two of them are former NFL running backs themselves and the other has represented many

running backs as an agent. The running back I loved as a kid was Franco Harris of the Pittsburgh

Steelers. To be honest, I was a little obsessed with Franco. We don't need to get into the details

here, but I did once write a book about him called Confessions of a Hero Worshiper. Like I said,

a little bit obsessed. I liked everything about Franco, the way he carried himself off the field,

but especially how he ran. Some running backs like Jim Brown were known for their power for

running people over. Others like Gail Sayers were so fast and graceful that it was hard to get a

hand on them. Franco was somewhere in the middle, strong but elusive, a duder and a dodger.

In football, every play is a miniature drama packed into just a few seconds. 22 athletes moving

at once as complicated as a blueprint, as brutal as war, as delicate as ballet. A passing play

is a bit of a magic trick. The quarterback and receiver try to trick the downfield defenders

into being in the wrong place at the right time. A running play is more predictable since the

running back has to get through a wall of massive defenders. But if he does, it breaks free into open

space, that is a special kind of thrill. Back when Franco Harris was in the league, and for a long

time after, many of the game's biggest stars were running backs, and they were paid accordingly.

If you go back 30 years and take the average salary of the top players by position,

running backs ranked second, just behind quarterbacks. This year, running backs ranked 15th.

So what happened? Everyone knows the NFL has become much more pass-happy these last few decades,

but still, how did running backs fall so far? As it turns out, I wasn't the only one with these

questions. I was really interested in why salaries of running backs have declined and why they seem

to be less important parts of the offense than I remembered. Roland Freyer, an economist at Harvard

and a friend of economics, wrote a Wall Street Journal column last football season called the

economics of running backs. It's been kind of a slow drip, a slow decline of running backs,

and then you think, why? What is it? I asked Roland if he would sit for an interview to help

answer those questions. He said yes, but he had another idea that he insisted would be even more fun.

So here's the thing that really puzzles me. When I called you up and asked if we could talk

about your Wall Street Journal column and make an episode based on this idea, you said yes,

and I would actually like to co-host that episode. Can you explain that? I know very few

Harvard economists or anybody really who's interested in co-hosting a grubby little podcast.

I've always had a crush on you. So I just want to get closer.

Well, other than that, I guess the serious question I'm asking is, what kind of questions do you

hope to answer or explore as we move forward? You've got some data, you've talked to a bunch of

people, but plainly your appetite is deeper than that. Why? What do you want to know?

I think it's such an intriguing question. It's one of these things where your intuition and your

eyeballs can oftentimes be inconsistent with what the actual data tell us. Where does our intuition

fail us? I think it does it a lot in life. I'm just fascinated by human behavior generally,

but how we think about the use of my favorite subject economics when it comes to issues

like valuing positions in a game that's as complex as football.

So today on Frekenomics Radio, Roland Fryer and I explore the decline of the running back.

We speak with one of the analytics gurus who sparked the revolution. Once I built that model,

it was very, very clear that passing was far superior to running. We will hear an agent explain

why the position is so difficult. The running back is the most violent position in the most

violent sport on the planet. And of course, we will get the running back perspective. The quarter

back got all the credit for taking to the Super Bowl, and he did the bare minimum. Last year's

Super Bowl was won by the Philadelphia Eagles, whose running back Saquan Barkley had a historically

great season. Was that the sign of a running back Renaissance? I don't think so. The causes and

consequences of the running back decline starting now.

This is Frekenomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything,

with your host, Stephen Dubner.

So look, I'm of two minds about this because I have this job at Harvard. I'd give it a

way in a second if I could have been an NFL player, right?

Roland Fryer is a Harvard economist. He has also co-founded a few companies and he's won some major

awards for his research on education and policing. You may remember him from an episode we made

a few years ago called Roland Fryer Refuses to Lie to Black America. But when he was a kid,

he did not dream of being an economist. In the early 1980s, when the running backs Eric Dickerson

and Walter Payton were tearing up the NFL, Roland was doing the same in Pop Warner Football.

I started playing football at age five. The coach asked me to race their fastest player

and I won and he said, you're on the team. In Texas, you play flag football five and six years old.

In seven years old onwards, you strap on the pads and go to work. The coolest thing about playing

was that they had a legitimate draft. You'd run a 40-yard dash, you'd kick the ball, you'd throw

the ball, you'd catch some balls. They had a little shed there at the fields. They'd put all your

measurements up and then the coaches would select by lottery who went first. So we cared about where

we were drafted as early as like eight or nine years old. And how did you do in the draft? Oh man,

I was always in the one drafting. So what was your view of the running back position then? Did you just

feel like you were king of the hill? Of course, because it was Texas Pop Warner Football.

My coaches early on told me my real talent was what they called running to the light,

that you would just figure out where the gaps were and go and it was all intuition. You'd score five,

six touchdowns of the game. I loved it. I absolutely loved playing football and running backs were

revered back then. It wasn't just back then in the early 80s that running backs were revered. They

had been at the center of the game since it began in the mid 1800s. It wasn't until 1906 that the

forward pass was allowed in professional football. The NFL was founded in 1920 and for its first few

decades, passing was rare. On the vast majority of plays, the ball was snapped to the quarterback

who would then hand it off to a running back who would follow the blocks of his offensive linemen

to try to get through the defensive linemen. It was not necessarily exciting. Football was a slow

grinding affair, three yards and a cloud of dust with how people described it. Perhaps not coincidentally,

football was not very popular either. The big American sports back then were baseball and boxing.

It wasn't until the 1960s and 70s with the rise of the passing game that football started to

become the juggernaut it is today. But for at least a couple more decades, running backs remained

the star attraction. The position has always required a certain amount of physical sacrifice.

Every part of football is physical, right? But when you're running the ball, it's not just the

person in front of you that you're going into. People are coming from the side and taking hits at

knees. You can get rolled up on. There's a lot of bodies there. So how long ago did you start

thinking about this decline in the value of the running back? Years because it's been a slow

decline of running backs. And it's my favorite position. I thought, why are my boys being paid

less when these quarterbacks who aren't nearly as tough as running backs or being paid more?

I grew up in the era of Barry Sanders, Walter Payton, Emmett Smith. I've always liked these really,

really explosive running backs just because they look like pure athletes. So the non-economists in

me wanted them to be paid more. The economists in me understand that marginal value is what matters

and that's what's happening. So Friar put his research skills to work. The first thing to do was to

walk through and just verify those basic statistics, right? Look at the salaries as a share of total

spin of running backs relative to quarterbacks. And of course, that's what you find out. You can

verify the intuition very quickly that the proportion of spin for running backs is going down over time

and quarterbacks much higher. And not just quarterbacks much higher. Everybody else on the offensive

team. Everybody, right? And so the running backs, they've had the biggest drop relative to any

other position. This season, the average salary of a starting quarterback in the NFL was just over

$30 million. The average for starting running backs, $7 million. There are still plenty of running

backs who are considered superstars, say, Juan Barkley, Derek Henry, Josh Jacobs, Christian McAfry.

But they're not paid like superstars. None of those four are among the five highest paid players

on their team. Why not? Roll and Friar wondered whether this was a supply story or a demand story.

In other words, were running backs just not as good as they used to be? Or did teams no longer value

what running backs had to offer? So the first thing I did was test a bunch of supply side theories.

We went and collected all the data we could on passing yards, running yards over the years by

team, et cetera. But also we needed to understand the characteristics of the players. So we looked at

combine statistics and all the data we could collect from there in terms of 40 speed, three cone

drill speeds, which is the measure of explosiveness, bench press, all those kinds of things.

The NFL combine is a showcase where teams assess the abilities of the college players they are

looking to draft. And what we found was that running backs in terms of their abilities and the

combine have not changed. So the supply going in has not changed. And importantly, because it is a

team sport, the supply of the other people around them hasn't changed much. But what has changed

is the expected value of a passing play relative to a running play. The NFL and the teams want to

maximize wins, maximize revenue. And the way you do that is that you score a lot of points,

the way you score a lot of points is that you pass the ball more. Pretty simple. Is it that simple?

To find out, we wanted to hear from some running backs. Roland took the first interview.

Are we ready? Yeah. One, two, three, four eggs, turkey baking, never port, little pancakes,

light syrup, OJ, you know. So just give me your name and what you do. My name is LaShama Koi. I'm an

X NFL all decade running back for the Eagles, the bills, the chiefs, and the books. Tell me about

your earlier memories of playing running back. So I was about five years old. You post a play

as six, but I love the game so much. I lied to him until I was six when I was really five. We all

hitting it five. I mean, we had pads on. I don't call it hitting. We had pads on. Back in the day,

it was different. When we hang out in the neighborhoods, we would call this thing free for all.

It would be like seven, eight kids and we would throw the ball and one dude had to make all eight

guys miss. I want people to hear from you like what it's like playing running back. I mean,

what part of it is mental, physical, how much of it can be taught versus instincts.

It's one of the most unique positions on the field because you're the farthest one back.

So you see everything going on. And as a running back, you have a job to do every single play.

Why are receivers like to take a playoff or running back. You don't have that because we're either

running the ball or we're blocking or we're in the passing routes. One part of it is it's really

the skill. Natural gifts from God. Another part is studying and learning. And I'll tell other

young backs now is let your natural instincts happen, right? But being a student of the game,

learning like, okay, every defense has a weak point. Your job is really like to find that.

Tell me in your view, why is the running back market like it is today? I mean, do you feel like

the current situation is unfair? Do you feel like it's fine? I hate it. It's unfair. It's unfair

because you're telling me that you'd be a great difference maker as a running back. And because

I don't play quarterback, I can't get paid the right value for my position. You're telling me that

because I don't play quarterback, I got to play elite level every year to get elite money. But the

quarterback can play above average for years. And one year be pretty good. And now you're about to get

elite money. Think about that. Guys like Josh Jacobs, really good running back, play on bad teams

that still play well. And his last share with the Raiders, he said, yo, you know, I led the league

in rushing and it didn't offer me a contract. Can you imagine the world with a quarterback,

leads the league in passing yards and he don't get offered a contract? But on the other hand,

I don't see any Super Bowl winners in the last 20 years with a mediocre quarterback, maybe Brad

Johnson of the Tampa Bay Bucks. I see several with average running backs and really good quarterbacks.

Is that a reason that the quarterback position is valued more? Well, it's tricky because the few

quarterbacks in the last five, six years, these guys been like all pro quarterbacks. Brady, he

stole one in there, staffer stole one in there. My home's got three in there. These ain't this regular

guys is winning Super Bowl. In 2019, I was blessed to be with the Kansas chiefs and I want to

championship with them guys, passionate homes have to come back in fourth quarter to win that game.

But then I lead across the field. We play the Niners. The whole week the game preparation was all

we got to do was get the third down. Why is that? Because we want this quarterback that was paid

all this money to throw the ball on third down. His name was Jimmy G. That's what that was.

The brother threw like 40 some passes the whole playoffs and the undrafted running backs carried

them the quarterback got all the credit for taking to the Super Bowl and he did the bare minimum.

Oh, we got to New York. I do like say quam barkley can be that good and you rather pay dang Jones.

How the hell is that fair?

Let's pull back here just in case you didn't follow the psychodrama with New York giants that

McCoy was talking about. Sequan Barkley is a name that comes up again and again in the argument

about the value of a running back in part because of the monster season he had last year

with the Eagles. But it's even more interesting than that. The giants took Barkley in the 2018

draft with a second overall pick. His five seasons in New York ranged from good to very good.

He was hurt a few times and the giants offensive line was weak but he was still considered

a top running back. The giants chose to not offer him a new contract. Instead they use what's

called a franchise tag. That's an NFL rule that allows a team to keep a good player for one year

at a relatively high salary rather than letting him become a free agent and pursue a longer term

deal. While the giants had Barkley on this one year hold they gave their quarterback Daniel Jones

a four year contract averaging 40 million dollars a year. When Barkley became a free agent

he left the giants and signed three year contract with the Philadelphia Eagles for about 12 million

dollars a year. So less than a third of what Daniel Jones was being paid and how did Jones and

Barkley do the following year? Barkley had one of the best seasons an NFL running back has ever had

and his Eagles won the Super Bowl. Daniel Jones played so badly that the giants benched him

and then released him. Lake Lashon McCoy asked how is that fair? Well fair may not be the right word.

The real issue is value. The value of a running play versus the value of a passing play.

The run pass balance. It was this perennial question to teams run too often or they

not run often enough. That is Brian Burke sports data scientist with ESPN. And so there was this

question and so people came along and they started to analyze the question and they didn't really

have the right tools. So Brian the reason I was really eager to speak with you is that Roland wrote

this piece in the Wall Street Journal about the decline of running back salaries and I've been told

that if we had to point to one person in the universe who is perhaps most responsible for that

decline it might be you. Do you want to claim that credit or blame? I won't argue against it. I was

part of a larger movement that I may have been at the forefront of it but I certainly wasn't alone.

Describe your role in that larger movement then. My role in this was my hobby which was football

stats and what eventually became known as analytics. Now football stats were only a hobby at the time

because you were a US Navy pilot correct. Yeah. Went to flight school, made it into F-18s flew single

seed fighters for my career in the Navy. They sent me to Monterey to grad school and that's where I

learned my stats. I thought this is completely useless like how am I ever going to use this in the

Navy. But once I got out of the Navy I thought cush the level of analysis and football is so bad.

What were your early jobs between getting out of the Navy and doing what you do now? I have to be

a little bit careful. I live in northern Virginia. I was recruited by something with three letters maybe

to do some government stuff for a while that didn't last too long. Your choice or their choice?

It was complicated. I became a single dad and raised two kids so it was just incompatible.

But you ended up working around another three letter institution the NFL. A lot of three letters.

Most of my time between the Navy and doing football for the day job I was a defense contractor

and I was a tactics and strategy expert and instructor and I would shirk all my daily

responsibilities to crunch football numbers all day long. So I'll tell you the origin story.

Kind of a water cooler conversation with my good friend co-worker John Moser. The conversation

came around to like defense wins championships right the old standby. I was like well does it?

I don't know like they say that but does it really what do people mean by that? And I thought my

god I have this software left over from grad school and you know they put all the stats online now.

So this is like 2006. I said hey you know what we can just download the data and by the end of lunch

we can answer this question forever. And that was the genesis of football analytics for me.

When I began doing this I hadn't read money ball I didn't know that existed. It was an advantage

because the baseball people tried to put it on the football for a long time. The kind of tools

and the kind of analysis just doesn't work on football. I came from this military background

and I'm like this is war. This is zero sum two-player game theory and that paradigm took hold.

In what ways would you say that your military background contributed to the way that you frame

the questions you're trying to answer in football? There's this optimization element to it.

In the same way in the military you have a mix of strategies. It's not like always do this or

always do that. You have to be unpredictable in a way that keeps your enemy or your opponent

on his heels. There's a famous thinker in military aviation named John Boyd who then did

this thing called the Udo loop if you've ever heard of that and keeping the enemy confused

and disoriented and in a state of ambiguity is one of the goals in American fighting theory

football works the same way. So in a war like setting when you're trying to advance

into enemy territory which weapon is more valuable? The ground game or the passing game?

Brian Burke's analytic approach allowed him to answer that question. I was able to build something

called expected points and expected points added. It's a point expectancy model based on

down distance in your line. Once I built that model the very first thing I did was just aggregate

by play type and it was very very clear at that moment that passing was far superior to running.

Teams are running far too often and the way you know that is because if they're doing each in the

optimum mix the payoffs would equalize. There would be what people commonly refer to in game theory

as like Nash equilibrium. As long as you have an intelligent opponent you can assume that that

equilibrium is going to be the optimum mix and they were far out of whack. From that moment on we

knew that you need to pass more. What year was this? 2008 is when I first did this but it took years

to permeate the football world. It was a slow process. Let's back up a bit. You don't have to go back

to the 1920s or the 1950s but pick whatever seems like a sensible starting point in modern NFL

history and tell me how the running game evolved and was eventually superseded by the passing game.

I think Franco Harris is a good starting point for the modern era. That's where people of our age

grew up learning our football and same with coaches. This is the 1970s and those days passing was

very very difficult. Running was a much better strategy and then in 1978 the league massively

rewrote the rules that had to do with passing. Not just illegal contact, the way lineman could

pass block radically changed and the league is still catching up to this day in terms of exploiting

those rule changes. Over time different systems started to exploit the new rules. Then 2004 they

changed the rules again. Over time the potency of the running game compared to the passing game

has decreased steadily. So the story you're telling me is simply that football people including

coaches and analytics people like you have been discovering over the years that passing is more

valuable than running. Additionally the league itself decided over many years to make passing more

prominent by rule changes. And so now we've just arrived at this new circumstance where passing

is just more valuable than running. Where does that leave the running back in the modern football

economy? Well he's just not going to be as valuable. The star running back is not going to carry

you to a super bowl. It hasn't happened in generations. Now you may be thinking I understand that

running backs have become somewhat less valuable but are they really that much less valuable?

The answer to that question has to do with something that happened in 2011.

The average fan doesn't fully appreciate that the NFL is a huge business.

That's coming up after the break. I'm Stephen Dubner and you were listening to Frekenomics Radio.

Last year the economist Roland Freyer and I teamed up to try to learn why running back salaries have

fallen so much since their heyday. Salaries are driven in part by where a player is selected

in the NFL draft. In 1990 12 running backs were taken in the first two rounds of the draft.

Last year there were two. So what's driving this decline? We've already heard about the analytics

revolution that showed the value of passing versus running. We've heard about rule changes.

The NFL adopted to privilege passing game. But there was another big change in 2011 that shook

things up for NFL rookies generally and running backs in particular. The team has control of you for

five years. That is Robert Turban. He was an NFL running back for four teams over eight seasons

including a Super Bowl win with the Seattle Seahawks. Today he does football commentary for CBS

sports. Roland Freyer spoke with him. Why do you think the running back market is so challenging

today? Number one, the CBA. That's the meat and potatoes of the conversation when it comes to

the running backs. The CBA is a collective bargaining agreement. The contract between NFL teams

and the NFL players association, the union that represents the athletes. The negotiations over

a CBA are long and often contentious as they establish pay standards and other terms for years

to come. The current CBA was agreed to in 2020 and runs through the 2030 season. The one before

that went into effect in 2011. Overall the 2011 CBA was a lucrative affair for the players. Their

share of league revenues rose from 42% to 47%. But that agreement also came with some restrictions

for rookies. Before 2011 a drafted player could freely negotiate a contract with the team that

chose him. This led to some bad deals for teams when the player didn't play well or got hurt.

The 2011 agreement created a rookie wage scale that set contract terms based on draft order.

It also mandated a four-year contract with a cost-controlled fifth-year option that their

team could exercise. This structure is still in place today and that's what Robert Turbin is

talking about when he tells Roland Fryer that the team has control of you for five years.

What happens is you come into the league as a 22-year-old rookie and basically you are handcuffed

for five years. So realistically you don't have an opportunity to re-up or get a second contract

until you're 27 years old. For some positions in football including quarterback,

a player is just coming into his prime at age 27. That is not the case for running backs.

By the time you're 27 years old, if you've carried the ball 250 times per year they're going to

look at those numbers and say well he may not have it the way he used to. That may not be true

for most running backs. It is true for some. The CBA is really what devalued the position

because let's say you're able to get out of that contract or re-up out of that contract

after three years. Now you're 25-year-old back still in this prime with an opportunity to maximize

on economics from a contractual standpoint. It seems like there is some relationship between

the CBA and durability which is if you've got to wait for five years and as you say you've carried

the ball this number of times then executives are going to look at that and say how much more

does he have in the tank. So durability is part of it through the CBA, right? 100%. I mean five years

is that's obviously not a full career. That's not the type of career you would imagine for yourself.

But we know that the average is less than three. I was fortunate to play eight for a back. That's

pretty damn good. I'll never forget when I was in Indianapolis this was 2017. I'm 27 years old

and I'm talking to a scout from another team and I dislocated my elbow in week six of that year.

So I was coming back. He asked me, says, how old are you? I'm 27. He's okay. So he got about

another year or so left. And I said, what? Like what are you talking about? But that's the thought

process for a lot of executives until proven wrong. It's almost like you're guilty until proven innocent

as I run it back. If you go back 20 years, the average career length for an NFL running back was

around five and a half years. That number started dropping right around the 2011 collective bargaining

agreement. And today the average length is around two and a half years. Let's hear now from another

former running back, Robert Smith. Like Robert Turbin, Smith played for eight years. All of his were

with the Minnesota Vikings. Smith retired after the 2000 season. It was always kind of a badge of

honor to play the position because it is a very physical position. And there are times when you have

to block players that outweigh you by a large amount. It's not for the faint of heart. Today,

Smith calls NFL and college games for Fox Sports. His reverence for the running back position goes

deep. Only the quarterback has the ball in their hands more. And so you have I think one of the

greatest opportunities to impact the outcome of a game on every running play 11 guys are trying

to hit the same person. And that's the guy who has the ball. It's the challenging part, but it's

also the rewarding part that you were able to get by them. I hold the NFL record for the longest

average per touchdown run at more than 26 yards. And I got to tell you, it's a feeling that I wish

everybody could experience when you break into the open and you know, you're going to score a

touchdown. It's like when you're leaning back in a chair and you almost tip and fall and you get

this rush of adrenaline. It's like this sudden burst of excitement that I'm about to score a

touchdown. Those occasional bursts of excitement are, of course, offset by thousands of hours of

training and by the physical punishment. I tore my ACL, my rookie season, but in that injury,

I also broke the bottom of my femur and did some damage to the articular cartilage, which is

the smooth cartilage that's on the tip of the bone. And I needed to have a micro fracture. It's

a procedure where they tap on the exposed surface of the bone. And then I needed to have that again

after my last season in the league. So there I was a couple of months shy of my 29th birthday.

There was the only season I didn't miss any games. And I still needed to have knee surgery after

the year. And the thing that I said was, you know, if you would pay any amount of money

to get your health back, if you lost it, then what amount of money is worth the very real chance

that you'll lose it. It was the calculation that was going on in my head. That's why I left the game

when I did. I'm thinking quite literally, it's better to walk away early than the limpaway laid.

Robert Smith had a lot of reasons to walk away. A lot of things beyond football that excited him.

He is an amateur astronomer, a prolific reader. And in addition to his broadcasting duties,

he is working on a health and wellness startup. Plus, which he made good money as a younger man.

His final contract paid him $25 million over five years. In his last season, the best of his

career, he ranked second in the NFL in rushing yards. But it was clear by then that running back

money was drying up. Every team has a league-imposed salary cap. And they're constantly trying to

figure out which players they can give less money to in order to give more money to the players

they think they cannot win without. And running backs had fallen off the cannot win without list.

Over the past few decades, NFL revenues have more than doubled to about $20 billion a year.

Since players get a percentage share of revenues, that means the overall player pool has also

more than doubled. But running backs have barely shared in that gain. The pay for running backs

and fullbacks over the past two decades has risen around 11 percent. For all other offensive

positions, salaries have risen at least 90 percent. If you don't believe me, just ask an agent.

So how many athletes do you represent now, your firm? We represent about 40 NFL players

at any given time. So we're one of the larger agencies. It would appear to me that an agent is

busy and important when you're making a deal. But I don't know how much maintenance that deal

requires as time goes on. Can you just talk about in the life cycle of an athlete, how involved are

you? We're involved in every aspect of our client's lives on a daily basis. We spend probably

the least amount of time actually negotiating contracts. I'm a family therapist, a relationship

therapist, some type of preacher or pastor who need financial advisor, financial advisor,

just day-to-day counselor. That's what I love doing. No day is the same. I got up today and I get

a call from a player who's injured and so I have to deal with that. I get a call from a player

who's moving and he needs to be guiding in the right direction. Young players, they'll call me

and ask me what TV they should purchase. We're in many ways with these young people involved with

them in a very intimate and deep fashion. Among agents that represent NFL players, what would you

say that you're most known for? In the past, we were actually known as the running back agency. We've

represented more running backs over the last 20 years than any other agency. Names done for me.

Maurice Jones, Drew, Matt Fortay, Tevin Coleman, Jordan Howard, James White, sweet feet from New

England, Kendall Hunter, Lavy Ambell, Michael Carter. We have Cody Schrader this year who's now

with the Rance. Do you still represent the same share of running backs? We have paired down the

market has spoken. Over the last few years, we got into the receiver cornerback, that kind of

market. We never got out of the business of representing running backs, but we did start shaping

our roster a little bit. I don't mean to accuse you of chasing the money yourselves. You say,

you're responding to the market, but in a case like this where you guys were known as a running

back agency and then the market for running backs changes really pretty dramatically. I mean,

who ends up representing the running backs? Just different agents who are starting out who don't

have as much luxury to pick their roster the way you guys do. Is that the way it works? That's exactly

what you saw. There were agents during the last few years who just didn't represent running backs

at all and they're literally running backs in the market looking for representation. There's a

supply and demand issue. There are more running backs than physicians. It is a position where you

can find really good players all across the draft and after the draft. There also is this the running

quarterback. You can look at the total number of yards that a team has. Now a lot of that yardage

is coming not from the running backs, but it's coming from the quarterback. So now probably half

the league has quarterbacks who can run as well as the running back. What about rule changes that

facilitated an opening up of the passing game? The average fan sometimes doesn't fully

appreciate that the NFL is a huge business. It is a business at the highest level. It's $20

billion. It'll go to $25 the ultimate goal. I'm hearing it's going to be a $50 billion

industry in the next 10 years. I think we've seen over the last 10 years kind of a cultural shift.

Not just in the NFL, but across sports. As fans, we simply see the outcome of the game and we

don't really understand that at the end of the day, these are corporations that are going to be

responsive to their shareholders and consumers. In the NFL, it's no different. People like to see the

ball in the air, the acrobatic catches and the leaps. The fans want to see lone balls. They want

to see passing. I still can watch a 10 to 7 game, a defensive battle. The best player is the middle

linebacker and the running back. I'm happy with that. But for the younger generation, absolutely

boring. We can talk supply demand. We can talk the running quarterback and those all do have some

influence in the devaluation for the running back position. Ultimately, if we really dig down and

look at root causes, it's really the corporation, the actual NFL responding to their consumer base

and what their consumer base wants to see. When you say that the NFL responded to what the

market wants, give me some specific examples of how the league has added leverage to make passing

more prominent, either passing and or quarterback play more prominent. You've seen a ton of rule

changes, obviously, to make it a higher scoring game with more offense. The defenses have been

handicapped, the pass interference rules. You can't hit the quarterback. Some of the rules are good

for the safety of the players, but certainly the root of the reason it's to increase the scoring

and the way you do that is through passing. Let's talk about injuries and perishability generally.

Just talk about the physical punishment that comes along with running back position where it ranks

with other offensive players. Make no mistake about it. The running back is the most violent

position in the most violent sport on the planet. Running backs are getting hit on every plate.

In past protection, they're getting hit. You've got a running back who's 510 to 115 pounds and he's

blocking a 325 pound defensive lineman. The defensive players are getting bigger and faster every year.

That physicality for the running back is real. The likelihood of a running back getting through the

season, unscathed, no injuries is slim to none. A lot of teams because of that, they go with running

backs by committee. What Whitney is talking about here when he says running backs by committee

is when teams substitute in multiple players throughout the game or the season to share the workload.

Here again is Brian Burke, the ESPN analyst. I think that's one of the core developments that's

affected the running back position is that teams have realized that you don't necessarily need a

great running back, which you need is a great running game. I think when most people watch football,

they see the quarterback hand the ball to the running back who when a play succeeds,

he gets through the line and then keeps running and gains a bunch of yards and finally gets

tackled and they think, oh my god, that running back is so talented. Explain what's actually

happening to make that run a success. Yeah, there's going to be eight or nine blocks that

are all essential. You need these kind of consecutive miracles for run play to really work.

Coaches will draw them up and it looks perfect on the whiteboard. But then in the chaos of the game,

so many things have to go right for it to work. But when it does, it's beautiful. And then the people

executing those blocks, let's just talk about the offensive line. There's one running back who

carries the ball, who succeeds. But then there are five or six other guys who are probably averaging

what are on 290 pounds on the offensive line. Oh gosh, probably more now. Yeah. Some football

fans really do pay attention to offensive lineman, but really it's mostly their moms. But there are

a lot of them that are necessary for it to work. So what does that mean about the market?

The way to think about it is the line and the blocking and the scheme are responsible for the first

three or four yards of a gain on a run play. And then from there on, it's the elusiveness

of the running back. It's like a threshold system where if I have a good enough line to get a

running back out to three, four, five yards, now he's into the secondary and it's up to him to

make defenders miss their tackles. And then you get these big explosive gains. So if you want to

improve your running game, you don't go out and just get a great running back. I would say

start with the offensive line. Make sure you're calling good plays. And then the cherry on top

might be a start running back. Coming up after the break, do running backs have any chance

of returning to their previous glory? Everything is cyclical, right? If you keep those bail

bottoms long enough, they'll come back. I'm Steven Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio and we will

come back right after this. Most of us don't respond well when something is taken away from us.

Psychologists like to talk about loss aversion, the fact that we feel more pain from loss

than we feel pleasure from a gain of the same size. Well, imagine being an athlete who's been working

hard since age five or six driven by the very slim hope that you might live out your dream and become

an NFL running back only to succeed and discover that your position has been downgraded.

An elite running back in the NFL can still make millions of dollars, but keep in mind that A,

running back careers are short and B, many of your teammates will be making more millions than you.

So what are your options? You could stage a holdout. That's what both Sequan Barkley and Josh

Jacobs did in 2023, sitting out training camp after being franchise tagged by their respective

teams in New York Giants and the Las Vegas Raiders. Both of them left their teams at the end of the

season and both have prospered with their new teams, Barkley with the Eagles and Jacobs with

the Green Bay Packers. But a holdout doesn't always go as planned. In 2018, Pittsburgh Steelers running

back LaVion Bell, one of the best backs in the league at the time, held out for the entire season

rather than play under a franchise tag. Here again is Brian Burke, the ESPN data scientist.

By holding out, he cut his career short, maybe not by a full year, but a lot of the perishability

is just age-based, not necessarily wear and tear-based. The effect can be very slight,

but the next guy up who costs a fraction of what LaVion wants to be paid, like I would much rather

pay a million dollars for 95% of what LaVion Bell is then pay $15 million for 100%.

He got a big money contract with the Jets, but then he wasn't very good there, then his career

was kind of over. What would you have advised him when he was doing really well with the Steelers

on his rookie contract? I would have advised him to just take what he can get. Like, it's

outside of his control. I understand what he's trying to accomplish, but he's just up against

reality. He's lucky to find the Jets. If there's one foolish team out of 32 that's going to overpay

you, then it only takes one. And it's usually the Jets, to be honest. He found that one, for sure.

Bell's agent at the time was Jeffrey Whitney, who we heard from earlier. He told us he didn't want

to discuss the Bell situation. Beyond a holdout, what other options are available to dissatisfied

running backs? A few years ago, there was an attempt at creating a carve-out, a running-back-specific

labor designation proposed by a group called the International Brotherhood of Professional

Running Backs. They petitioned the NLRB, the National Labor Relations Board, for what labor

lawyers call a unit clarification. They argued that the unique physical demands of the running-back

position set them apart from other football players and that they should therefore be allowed to

break away from the NFL Players Union and negotiate on their own. A clever idea, maybe, but the NLRB

rejected their request. I asked Robert Smith, the former Vikings running back, what he thought

of this idea? Well, as you guys have talked about in countless episodes on Frekenomics,

you have to be very careful about trying to change one variable in a system without impacting

the system in a way that you haven't anticipated. And ultimately, the market is going to decide

where they value players the most and where that money is going to make the most sense for

that team. So if carve-outs and hold-outs aren't the answer, how about a good old-fashioned running-back

Zoom call? In 2023, Austin Echler, now with the Washington Commanders, organized a Zoom with other

top running backs, including Barkley, Jacobs, Christian McCaffrey, and Nick Chubb to discuss the state

of their position. Right now, there's really nothing we can do, Chubb said afterward,

we're kind of handcuffed with the situation. We are the only position that our production

hurts us. If we go out there and run 2,000 yards, and next year they're going to say,

you're probably worn down. But last year, the Eagles made it to the Super Bowl and won the Super Bowl,

thanks to the huge contributions of running-back Saquon Barkley. So will that lead the NFL to fall

back in love with the running-back? The last couple of years, you're seeing a little bit of

resurgence in the running game. Everything is cyclical, right? If you keep those bell bottoms long

enough, they'll come back. That again is the sports agent, Jeffrey Whitney. You ask a running-back,

what's the most important duty that they have? The vast majority will be like running the football,

and it's not. It's past protection and catching the ball and running is part of it. I think we're

seeing some young running backs again who can do it all, can catch it, can run it, good and

past protection. Let's say you have a relative or a family friend who's 11, 12 years old, great

athlete. What would you tell that kid if they're hoping for a long career in the NFL? Do you say

get the heck out of the running-back position? I tell them to become a long snapper.

I tell them to become a specialist. A long snapper or a kicker, you play forever, you don't get

touched. That's what I would advise them to do. If you're not going to be the quarterback,

be the long snapper or be the kicker.

We once made an episode about the economics of the long snapper position. It's called,

why does the most monotonous job in the world pay $1 million? Episode 493, if you want to listen,

as for running backs, the Sean McCoy, the six-time pro-bola, was more optimistic about their future.

Here he is again, talking with Rowan Friar. Now, it's a copycat league. If the Eagles

are going to win the Super Bowl, they want to copycat that. You look at some of the better teams,

right? They got good running-back play. Like the Packers are they even a playoff team without

Josh Jacobs? I look at the Eagles. I love the Eagles. A lot of talent on that team. Are we the same

though? It's safe. One ball is not there. Look at the Ravens. Lamar Jackson was the MVP last year.

This year, they look totally different. What's the difference? Derek Henry. That's why you see Lamar

Jackson throwing the ball, but he's ever thrown before. You play action? Like, who do I guard?

I feel like the market has to go up because these players are earning these things. Well,

owners see that because one thing about owners, they want to make their money and they want to win.

There is some evidence to back up McCoy's optimism. In recent years, the running game has

recovered a bit. In 2016, only 40.6 percent of the plays from Scrimmage were run plays. That was

a 20-year low. Last year, it was 43.4 percent run plays, and this year was up to 43.7 percent.

When I spoke last year with former Vikings running back Robert Smith, I asked what he thought of the

uptick. I'd be interested to see the breakdown. Number one, is it running backs? Is it quarterbacks?

You have more quarterbacks that can run the football and they're extremely difficult to stop.

Whether it's Lamar Jackson, even a Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, you're going to have some

guys that may distort those numbers. I mean, some of its selection bias because the better teams are

constructed in a way where they can run the football in the red zone the way they want to.

And then they have the lead. And so they're going to get more runs that way. Is it possible that

there might be somewhat of a return to the retro world of run first? I don't think so. It goes back to

the point of what it takes on a running play. A lot of people would point to Sequan Barkley and

Derek Henry. Those guys are outliers. Look at what Sequan Barkley did with the Giants last year.

Look what Derek Henry did with Tennessee last year. Look what they're doing with their new teams

this year with Phil Duffy and the Ravens. The offensive lines are just that much better. So

it almost proves the point the other way that, yeah, well, of course, you put these guys behind

the great offensive lines. Sequan Barkley in particular, he's set a record for a number of yards

before first contact this year. So when you look at the performance of running backs,

there's no way that it would be significant enough where everybody would say, well, all we got to

do is go get a Sequan Barkley. All we got to do is go get a Derek Henry. Oh, and by the way,

it didn't work for those guys behind those other offensive lines. So you're still going to have to

spend the money to get the offensive line in place that's going to allow those guys to have

Sequan Barkley, like numbers or Derek Henry, like numbers. Brian Burke of ESPN agrees with Smith

that Henry and Barkley are the exceptions that prove the rule. But his reasoning is different. And

it goes back to his military training. The concept is intransitivity. There is no like one

superior tactic. It's circular. The other 31 teams are all chasing past blockers and receivers

and throwers and everything. And there's a whole bunch of run blockers and running backs left

on the table. There's inefficiencies like I'm going to go grab them and I'm going to be the best

running team they've ever seen. And they're going to be unprepared for us. And that's going to be

pretty effective. But only one or two teams can get away with that.

I went back to my economist friend and co-host Roland Fryer. And I asked him,

if a young running back came to him for advice, what would he say?

Learn how to throw. I mean, I don't know what you want me to say.

When market demand changes, particularly in something as intricate as the NFL,

then certain positions will be more or less valued. And going in, people will expect that.

The other option would be to say, when you do get the ball, run further. Exactly. Be more productive.

And yet, the end of your Wall Street Journal piece goes like this. The economist in me likes the

results, meaning the results of your analysis, finding that running backs get paid less because

they're less valuable, relatively. But you write, the kid in me hopes for a running back renaissance.

That's right. So as cool, common collected and economist acting as you are right now saying,

come on, the market is the market. There's part of you, emotionally, that's attached to my argument.

100%. This duality has lived in me since I became an economist. But you didn't ask

juju the kid from Daytona to advise the players. But as an economist, again, this is all being driven

by market forces. Market forces are real, but they're not always predictable. So who knows what

we'll be talking about in the lead up to next year's Super Bowl. Thanks to Rowan Fryer for inspiring

and collaborating on this episode. He was right. It was a lot of fun. And big thanks to all our guests,

Lucian McCoy, Robert Smith, Robert Turbin, Jeffrey Whitney, and Brian Burke. I think they all did

a great job explaining a complicated game that many of us love, but which many others are often

baffled by. And thanks especially to you for listening. We will be back very soon with a new

episode. Until then, take care of yourself. And if you can, someone else too. Freakinomics Radio is

produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. You can get the entire archive of Freakinomics Radio on

any podcast app. If you'd like to read a transcript with a show notes, that's at Freakinomics.com.

This episode was produced and updated by Theo Jacobs. It was mixed by Eleanor Osborne.

The Freakinomics Radio Network staff also includes Augusta Chapin, Dalvin Abouaje, Ellen Frankman,

Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Alaria Montenacort, Jasmine Klinger, Jeremy Johnson, and Zach

Lipinski. Our theme song is Mr. Fortune by the hitchhikers and our composer is Luis Guerra.

As always, thank you for listening.

You want to get married?

I can't marry anyone who I can't run faster than backwards. So that's a no.

I don't know. I've had a series of me injury. You might be able to get me now.

Yeah, but I've had a series of birthdays.

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