San Francisco 49ers’ Christian McCaffrey takes part in an NFL football practice in Santa Clara, Calif., Tuesday, June 6, 2023.
Jeff Chiu/AP
Here’s how little NFL teams value running backs: 49ers star Christian McCaffrey is the second-highest paid back in the league, scheduled to make $12 million this year. He’s the 143-highest paid player in the NFL, according to Spotrac, tied with luminaries like Josh Sweat and Adoree’ Jackson.
Banding together is a sticky situation for any position group: Salaries in the hard-capped NFL are a zero-sum game. If running back salaries go up, other positions’ wages go down. (One creative suggestion, from ESPN analyst and former NFL player Domonique Foxworth, is to give high-performing RBs money from the little-known “performance pool.”)
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As many have pointed out, the issue isn’t necessarily that modern football strategy doesn’t value running backs — just look at the ransom Kyle Shanahan paid to get McCaffrey last year. It’s that teams get the best production out of running backs on their heavily suppressed rookie contracts.
Facing this daunting reality, a small group of the league’s best running backs — led by the Chargers’ Austin Ekeler — planned a Zoom meeting on Saturday night, Pro Football Talk reported. In addition to Ekeler, McCaffrey, Jacobs and Barkley, Nick Chubb and Derrick Henry were reportedly on the call. Chubb accurately pointed out how running backs need to get paid out of the gate, because teams are not in the business of paying for past production.
“Right now, there’s really nothing we can do,” Chubb told ESPN on Sunday. “We’re kind of handcuffed with the situation. We’re the only position that our production hurts us the most. 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.’ It’s tough. … It hurts us at the end of the day.”
Even someone with McCaffrey’s versatility is stuck making far less than stars at other positions. McCaffrey caught 85 passes last year and averages about 70 receptions a year, in addition to his typical thousand yards rushing when healthy. But the top receivers are making more than double what he makes, in part because running backs understandably have more injury concerns. McCaffrey himself only played three games in 2020 and seven in 2021 as he dealt with a host of injuries.