With the Colts and Jonathan Taylor at an Impasse, Has the NFL’s Running-Backs-Don’t-Matter Paradigm Shifted Too Far?

The Indianapolis Colts have given Jonathan Taylor permission to seek a trade. Now it’s on the former All-Pro running back, who led the NFL in rushing just two years ago, to find a landing spot. Given the current nature of the NFL’s running back market (it’s cold), there won’t be many teams that make much sense for a disgruntled, fourth-year veteran who is looking for a hefty new contract. But the perfect squad for Taylor would be one with a lot of salary cap space, a young quarterback, and a need for playmaking talent.

With that in mind, I can think of a few teams. The Dolphins have the 13th-most cap space in the league, a still-pretty-young quarterback in Tua Tagovailoa, and a depth chart with a big shrug emoji at running back after rookie De’Von Achane’s recent shoulder injury. The Washington Commanders are 14th in cap space (and will have the third-most space in 2024), are working through an experiment with second-year pro Sam Howell at quarterback, and have a new owner who may be looking to make a splash. And, finally, there’s the Colts, who have the sixth-most cap space, a rookie quarterback in Anthony Richardson, and a desperate need for skill position players who can help ease their unseasoned passer into the pros.

Hmmmmmmmmm … yeah. The NFL is in an odd place when the team that arguably makes the most sense for Taylor is the same team that is also the one currently telling him to pound sand. But that’s where we’re at with the NFL’s running back market.

In the past decade or so, NFL teams have learned a lesson: Don’t pay running backs. Draft them, use the franchise tag on them, then discard them—but definitely don’t pay them. It’s the playbook most teams have adopted for a few seasons now, and it’s reached near-universal adherence this offseason with the Raiders’ Josh Jacobs, Giants’ Saquon Barkley, Cowboys’ Tony Pollard, Chargers’ Austin Ekeler, and now, the Colts’ Taylor unable to secure the lucrative, long-term deals they’ve been seeking.

“Running backs don’t matter” has become the gospel for everyone from NFL nerds to general managers to even, well, this very author. But … maybe the pendulum has now swung too far. This offseason, the running back market has taken such a steep nosedive that it’s worth reevaluating whether this tactic of not paying even the best players at the position is still as smart of a strategy as it once seemed.

First, let’s look at just how far the NFL’s running back market has cratered. A good way to gauge how the league values a position is to look at the franchise tag number for that position, which, for players receiving the tag for the first time, is determined simply by averaging the top five salaries at the position. Predictably, quarterbacks have the highest franchise tag number for 2023—$32.4 million. Linebacker is the next highest—$20.9 million.

Running back? The franchise tag will cost a team just $10.1 million, which is what Jacobs, Pollard, and Barkley are scheduled to make this year. (Jacobs hasn’t actually signed his tag, while Barkley agreed to an amended one-year deal that still pays him $10.1 million in base salary but includes some incentives.)

And that figure is actually falling. The running back tag hit its peak in 2017, at $12.1 million. The drop to $10.1 million is even more dramatic when considering how the cap has risen in the past six years. In 2017, teams had $167 million to spend—so using the franchise tag on a running back would cost them 7.3 percent of the salary cap. This season, the cap has ballooned to $224.8 million—so the RB franchise tag number is just 4.5 percent of the cap. That’s the second-lowest tag figure in the league, ahead of only kickers and punters (which are grouped together for tag purposes).

No other position has experienced anything even remotely similar. The franchise tag number for running backs has declined 16.7 percent in seven years, while the cap itself has gone up 34.6 percent. Even the kicking specialists have seen their franchise tag number grow by 11.4 percent since 2017. Here’s what that looks like visually:

Extend the timeline back to 2013, and you can see exactly when the running back market started to tank:

Let’s pause here and put some names to some numbers. Christian McCaffrey is currently the NFL’s highest-paid running back, thanks to a deal he signed with the Panthers in 2020. He averages $16,015,875 per season, or 7.1 percent of the $224.8 million salary cap. To put that number into perspective, Raiders slot receiver Hunter Renfrow’s deal averages $16.2 million per season. He’s the league’s 19th-highest-paid receiver by average annual value. That’s right: Teams have determined that even the league’s very best running backs are worth less than Hunter Renfrow. No wonder Jacobs, who led the NFL in rushing last year with the Raiders, is upset.

And it’s almost unfair to fit McCaffrey into this discussion of running back value, because he is basically a unicorn—both on the field because of his elite pass-catching ability, and at the bank. The Saints’ Alvin Kamara is the league’s second-highest-paid back, and he makes a flat $15 million per year, or 6.7 percent of the cap. Tennessee’s Derrick Henry is third, at $12.5 million, or 5.6 percent. All three of those players signed their deals in 2020. The largest non-franchise-tag deal this offseason went to Carolina’s Miles Sanders, who for the next four seasons will average $6.35 million—just 2.8 percent of the current salary cap.

We are a long way from 2018, when Todd Gurley signed a four-year, $57.5 million deal with the Rams that paid him 8.1 percent of the league’s cap. The next offseason, Ezekiel Elliott earned a six-year, $90 million deal that paid him 8.0 percent of the 2019 cap. We are even further still from the days when a running back could eclipse 10 percent of the cap, like when Adrian Peterson signed a six-year, $86.3 million deal with the Vikings when the cap was just $120.4 million (that’s 11.9 percent!!!).

Simply put: This is not the same market that it was when the Great Running Back Value Debate took analytically inclined NFL fans (and, ultimately, NFL teams) by storm in the mid-to-late 2010s. Maybe running backs “don’t matter,” but are we sure they “don’t matter” when we think about how much a tight end or a safety or an offensive lineman matters to a team? A franchise-tagged offensive lineman will cost a team 8.1 percent of its cap space—are we sure a single great lineman is worth nearly double what a great running back is worth?

And for the Colts in particular: Is telling a player who has proved he’s a great back that he essentially holds no value, especially as they reportedly try to get a first-round pick in a trade for him, still good business?

To be fair to the Colts, the Taylor standoff is not only about running back value. There are a couple of mitigating factors that we just don’t know too much about yet. The first is exactly what Taylor has asked for in a contract extension. If he wants to be the league’s highest-paid running back, well, as previously enumerated, Indy just needs to throw slot receiver money at him to make that happen. If he wants more than that—a deal that truly resets the market—then all bets are off. There has been little reporting yet about Taylor’s actual demands; we just don’t know.

And second, it’s unclear how healthy Taylor is. He dealt with an ankle injury last season, and had surgery in January. Taylor failed his physical when he reported to training camp last month, and the Colts placed him on the physically unable to perform list, with reports emerging that in addition to issues with his ankle, he also had some kind of back injury—reports that Taylor disputed. Taylor has yet to be cleared to practice, and in late July, the team was reportedly considering placing Taylor on the non-football injury list, which would allow the team not to pay Taylor’s salary if he were to miss games. According to ESPN, he left camp to continue to get rehab on his ankle, and then last week the team excused him so that he could deal with an undisclosed personal matter. It’s enough to wonder just what is going on with Taylor—and it’s been a long time for him to be away from football.

With those injuries in mind, the longevity argument remains a thorn in the side of Taylor—like it is for all running backs. Running backs tend to start slowing down by their late 20s—right when their rookie deals (and their teams’ abilities to use the franchise tag on them) run out. At that point, teams can just draft a replacement on another cheap rookie deal. Rinse and repeat. No matter how low running back contracts sink, this may remain the most economical approach to the position.

The Ringer’s Fantasy Football Rankings

From sleepers to busts, we’ve projected every player in your upcoming draft.

But Taylor is just 24, only three seasons into his pro career. And think about where the Colts stand as a team. They just drafted the most raw passer in the draft—a player who started just 13 games in college. They plan to start Richardson in Week 1, but seemingly everyone believes he’ll need some time to adjust to the NFL. Quarterbacks are the products of both nature and nurture. I have to imagine Indianapolis can provide a more nurturing environment for Richardson by lining him up in the backfield next to Jonathan Taylor than Evan Hull, another rookie.

Plus, the Colts can afford Taylor. They have not only the sixth-most available cap space in the league this season, but also the fifth-most projected space next season and seventh most in 2025. Richardson’s own rookie deal will keep expenses low for at least four seasons—this is the time when teams are supposed to spend a little extra to boost their young passers.

And besides—what’s the downside, really? Remember the disastrous Gurley contract mentioned earlier? That contract is the worst-case scenario for teams: Gurley played like himself for only about half a season on that contract before his body started to break down and the Rams had to sideline him. By the 2020 offseason, Los Angeles cut him—and the team ate $20.2 million in dead cap over the next two years to do so. The first season without him, the Rams paid more in dead money for no running back at all than any other team was paying for an actual player at the position. And of course, the very next year the Rams won the Super Bowl.

If Taylor’s asking price isn’t outlandish and he can get healthy before the season starts, then it doesn’t feel like the Colts’ decision to escalate this fight is a shrewd business decision to maintain the long-term health of the franchise. Instead, it feels like a misguided attempt to wring every last penny out of a player who has been fantastic for the team, and a decision that could negatively impact both their offense this season and the long-term development of their first-round QB.

The Colts and Taylor remain at an impasse, and everyone is worse off for it. Indianapolis is unlikely to get the package of picks it is seeking in a trade, Taylor is unlikely to get the long-term financial security he seeks, and Richardson may have to go into his rookie season without his team’s top playmaker by his side. The strategy to avoid paying running backs once helped teams build better rosters. But as the price for a star running back has sunk and these standoffs have become more common, it’s worth asking: Who is really being helped now?