620. Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore?

0:00:08 Hey there, it’s Steven Dugner. Before today’s show, two quick things. Number one, on February
0:00:14 13th, we are putting on a live Freakonomics radio show in Los Angeles. Come see us. As
0:00:19 of this recording, there are some tickets left, but not many, so don’t dawdle. Go to
0:00:27 Freakonomics.com/LiveShows, one word, to get tickets. And number two, we need your voice
0:00:32 for an episode that we are in the middle of producing. It’s about sludge, not the physical
0:00:37 sludge that gunks up machinery and things like that. I am talking about the administrative
0:00:43 and bureaucratic sludge that can make it hard to do simple things like cancel the subscription
0:00:49 or pick the best healthcare coverage or sign up for some government service. If you have
0:00:55 a good sludge story, for example, we want to hear it. Use your phone to record a short
0:01:02 voice memo and send it to radio@freakonomics.com. Please include your name, where you live,
0:01:08 what you do, and tell us what’s your sludge story. How did you respond to this sludge?
0:01:14 And do you think it was accidental sludge or intentional? Make sure you record your voice
0:01:22 memo in a quiet place and again, send it to radio@freakonomics.com. Thanks much, Lee.
0:01:30 And now, here is today’s episode.
0:01:35 The National Football League, a phenomenally successful piece of the sports and entertainment
0:01:41 industry, is largely built around the forward pass. That’s when the quarterback, the star
0:01:46 of the show, throws a ball downfield to one of his sprinting receivers who tries to catch
0:01:52 the ball and sprint even further down the field. This can be a very exciting thing to
0:01:58 watch. In recent years, the passing game has gotten even more exciting and more sophisticated
0:02:05 and it has helped drive the league’s massive growth. But if you ask football fans of a
0:02:11 certain age who they idolized when they were kids, it probably wasn’t a wide receiver or
0:02:19 even a quarterback. It was probably a running back.
0:02:25 Tony Dorsett was my favorite player. I had the uniform, the helmet. The running backs
0:02:33 were bigger stars during my childhood than the quarterbacks. My favorite player of all
0:02:43 time was Barry Sanders. The day that he retired, I remember crying. I had a Ricky Waters jersey
0:02:47 when he was with the Eagles actually. I wore it on the first day of school, I think of
0:02:53 first or second grade.
0:02:58 The three men we just heard from, we will meet them later. Two of them are former NFL
0:03:03 running backs themselves and the other has represented many running backs as an agent.
0:03:09 The running back I loved as a kid was Franco Harris of the Pittsburgh Steelers. To be honest,
0:03:14 I was a little obsessed with Franco. We don’t need to get into the details here, but I did
0:03:21 once write a book about him called Confessions of a Hero Worshipper. Like I said, a little
0:03:27 bit obsessed. I liked everything about Franco, the way he carried himself off the field,
0:03:32 especially how he ran. Some running backs, like Jim Brown, were known for their power
0:03:38 for running people over. Others like Gale Sayers were so fast and graceful that it was hard
0:03:44 to get a hand on them. Franco was somewhere in the middle, strong but elusive, a darter
0:03:50 and a dodger. In football, every play is a miniature drama packed into just a few seconds,
0:03:59 22 athletes moving at once, as complicated as a blueprint, as brutal as war, as delicate
0:04:05 as ballet. A passing play is a bit of a magic trick. The quarterback and receiver try to
0:04:11 trick the downfield defenders into being in the wrong place at the right time. A running
0:04:17 play is more predictable, since the running back has to get through a wall of massive defenders.
0:04:24 If he does, and breaks free into open space, that is a special kind of thrill.
0:04:29 Back when Franco Harris was in the league, and for a long time after, many of the game’s
0:04:35 biggest stars were running backs, and they were paid accordingly. If you go back 30 years
0:04:41 and take the average salary of the top players by position, running backs ranked second, just
0:04:48 behind quarterbacks. This year, running backs ranked thirteenth. So what happened? Everyone
0:04:53 knows the NFL has become much more past happy these last few decades, but still, how did
0:04:59 running backs fall so far? As it turns out, I wasn’t the only one with these questions.
0:05:04 I was really interested in why salaries of running backs have declined and why they
0:05:08 seem to be less important parts of the offense than I remembered.
0:05:14 Roland Fryer, an economist at Harvard and a friend of Freakonomics, recently wrote
0:05:18 a Wall Street Journal column called The Economics of Running Backs.
0:05:23 It’s been kind of a slow drip, a slow decline of running backs, and then you think, why?
0:05:24 What is it?
0:05:29 I asked Roland if he would sit for an interview to help answer those questions. He said yes,
0:05:36 but he had another idea that he insisted would be even more fun.
0:05:41 So here’s the thing that really puzzles me. When I called you up and asked if we could
0:05:45 talk about your Wall Street Journal column and make an episode based on this idea, you
0:05:53 said yes, and I would actually like to co-host that episode. Can you explain that? I know
0:05:59 very few Harvard economists or anybody really who’s interested in co-hosting a grubby little
0:06:00 podcast.
0:06:04 I’ve always had a crush on you, Steven, so I just want to get closer.
0:06:11 Well, other than that, I guess the serious question I’m asking is, what kind of questions
0:06:16 do you hope to answer or explore as we move forward? You’ve got some data, you’ve talked
0:06:21 to a bunch of people, but plainly, your appetite is deeper than that. Why? What do you want
0:06:22 to know?
0:06:26 I think it’s such an intriguing question. It’s one of these things where your intuition
0:06:32 and your eyeballs can oftentimes be inconsistent with what the actual data tell us, where does
0:06:38 our intuition fail us? I think it does it a lot in life. I’m just fascinated by human
0:06:44 behavior generally, but how we think about the use of my favorite subject economics when
0:06:52 it comes to issues like valuing positions in a game that’s as complex as football.
0:07:01 So, today on Freakonomics Radio, Roland Fryer and I explore the decline of the running back.
0:07:05 We speak with one of the analytics gurus who sparked the revolution.
0:07:12 Once I built that model, it was very, very clear that passing was far superior to running.
0:07:16 We will hear an agent explain why the position is so difficult.
0:07:23 The running back is the most violent position in the most violent sport on the planet.
0:07:26 And of course, we will get the running back perspective.
0:07:30 The quarterback got all the credit for taking it to the Super Bowl, and he did the bare minimum.
0:07:34 The upcoming Super Bowl, the Philadelphia Eagles against the Kansas City Chiefs, will
0:07:38 feature a running back who had a historically great season.
0:07:42 So, does this mean we’re looking at a running back renaissance?
0:07:44 I don’t think so.
0:08:02 The causes and consequences of the running back decline starting now.
0:08:08 This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything with
0:08:18 your host, Steven Dubner.
0:08:23 So look, I’m of two minds about this, because I have this job at Harvard.
0:08:29 I’d give it away in a second if I could have been an NFL player, right?
0:08:30 Roland Fryer is a Harvard economist.
0:08:35 He has also co-founded a few companies, and he’s won some major awards for his research
0:08:38 on education and policing.
0:08:42 You may remember him from an episode we made a few years ago called “Roland Fryer Refuses
0:08:45 to Lie to Black America.”
0:08:50 But when he was a kid, he did not dream of being an economist.
0:08:54 In the early 1980s, when the running backs Eric Dickerson and Walter Payton were tearing
0:09:01 up the NFL, Roland was doing the same in Pop Warner football.
0:09:03 I started playing football at age five.
0:09:09 The coach asked me to race their fastest player, and I won, and he said, “You’re on the team.”
0:09:13 In Texas, you play flag football five and six years old, and seven years old onwards,
0:09:15 you strap on the pads and go to work.
0:09:19 The coolest thing about playing was that they had a legitimate draft.
0:09:21 You’d run a 40-yard dash.
0:09:22 You’d kick the ball.
0:09:23 You’d throw the ball.
0:09:24 You’d catch some balls.
0:09:27 They had a little shed there at the fields.
0:09:32 They’d put all your measurements up, and then the coaches would select by lottery who went
0:09:33 first.
0:09:37 So we cared about where we were drafted as early as eight or nine years old.
0:09:39 And how did you do in the draft?
0:09:42 Oh, man, I was always in the one drafting.
0:09:44 So what was your view of the running back position then?
0:09:47 Did you just feel like you were king of the hill?
0:09:50 Of course, because it was Texas Pop Warner football.
0:09:55 My coaches early on told me my real talent was what they called running to the light,
0:10:00 that you would just figure out where the gaps were and go, and it was all intuition.
0:10:02 You’d score five, six touchdowns a game.
0:10:03 I loved it.
0:10:12 I absolutely loved playing football, and running backs were revered back then.
0:10:16 It wasn’t just back then in the early ’80s that running backs were revered.
0:10:21 They had been at the center of the game since it began in the mid-1800s.
0:10:27 It wasn’t until 1906 that the forward pass was allowed in professional football.
0:10:33 The NFL was founded in 1920, and for its first few decades, passing was rare.
0:10:38 On the vast majority of plays, the ball was snapped to the quarterback who would then
0:10:44 hand it off to a running back who would follow the blocks of his offensive linemen to try
0:10:46 to get through the defensive linemen.
0:10:49 It was not necessarily exciting.
0:10:53 Football was a slow and grinding affair.
0:10:57 Three yards and a cloud of dust was how people described it.
0:11:01 Perhaps not coincidentally, football was not very popular either.
0:11:05 The big American sports back then were baseball and boxing.
0:11:10 It wasn’t until the 1960s and ’70s with the rise of the passing game that football started
0:11:14 to become the juggernaut it is today.
0:11:19 But for at least a couple more decades, running backs remained the star attraction.
0:11:24 The position has always required a certain amount of physical sacrifice.
0:11:26 Every part of football is physical, right?
0:11:30 But when you’re running the ball, it’s not just the person in front of you that you’re
0:11:31 going into.
0:11:34 People are coming from the side and taking hits at knees.
0:11:35 You can get rolled up on.
0:11:38 There’s a lot of bodies there.
0:11:43 So how long ago did you start thinking about this decline in the value of the running back?
0:11:50 Years because it’s been a slow decline of running backs, and it’s my favorite position.
0:11:55 I thought, why are my boys being paid less when these quarterbacks who aren’t nearly
0:11:57 as tough as running backs are being paid more?
0:12:03 I grew up in the era of Barry Sanders, Walter Payton, Emmett Smith.
0:12:07 I’ve always liked these really, really explosive running backs just because they look like
0:12:09 pure athletes.
0:12:12 So the non-economists in me wanted them to be paid more.
0:12:17 The economists in me understands that marginal value is what matters, and that’s what’s happening.
0:12:20 So Fryer put his research skills to work.
0:12:25 The first thing to do was to walk through and just verify those basic statistics.
0:12:30 Look at the salaries as a share of total spend of running backs relative to quarterbacks.
0:12:33 And of course, that’s what you find out.
0:12:37 You can verify the intuition very quickly that the proportion of spend for running backs
0:12:41 has gone down over time and quarterbacks much higher.
0:12:43 And not just quarterbacks much higher.
0:12:45 Everybody else on the offensive team.
0:12:46 Everybody.
0:12:50 And so the running backs, they’ve had the biggest drop relative to any other position.
0:12:57 This season, the average salary of a starting quarterback in the NFL was just over $30 million.
0:13:02 The average for starting running backs, $6 million.
0:13:06 There are still plenty of running backs who are considered superstars, Saquon Barkley,
0:13:12 Derek Henry, Josh Jacobs, Christian McCaffrey, but they’re not paid like superstars.
0:13:17 None of those four are among the five highest paid players on their team.
0:13:18 Why not?
0:13:22 Roland Fryer wondered whether this was a supply story or a demand story.
0:13:27 In other words, were running backs just not as good as they used to be or did teams no
0:13:30 longer value what running backs had to offer?
0:13:33 So the first thing I did was test a bunch of supply side theories.
0:13:39 We went and collected all the data we could on passing yards, running yards over the years,
0:13:40 by team, et cetera.
0:13:44 But also, we needed to understand the characteristics of the players.
0:13:49 So we looked at combine statistics and all the data we could collect from there in terms
0:13:54 of 40 speed, three cone, drill speeds, which is a measure of explosiveness, bench press,
0:13:55 all those kinds of things.
0:14:00 The NFL Combine is a showcase where teams assess the abilities of the college players
0:14:02 they are looking to draft.
0:14:08 And what we found was that running backs in terms of their abilities in the combine have
0:14:09 not changed.
0:14:15 The supply going in has not changed, and importantly, because it is a team sport, the supply of
0:14:18 the other people around them hasn’t changed much.
0:14:25 But what has changed is the expected value of a passing play relative to a running play.
0:14:30 The NFL and the teams want to maximize wins, maximize revenue.
0:14:32 And the way you do that is that you score a lot of points.
0:14:35 The way you score a lot of points is that you pass the ball more.
0:14:36 Pretty simple.
0:14:38 Is it that simple?
0:14:42 To find out, we wanted to hear from some running backs.
0:14:44 Roland took the first interview.
0:14:45 Are we ready?
0:14:46 Yeah.
0:14:53 One, two, three, four, eggs, turkey bacon, never pork, little pancakes, light syrup, OJ,
0:14:54 you know.
0:14:56 So just give me your name and what you do.
0:14:58 My name is LeShaw McCoy.
0:15:03 I’m an ex NFL all decade running back for the Eagles, the Bills, the Chiefs, and the
0:15:04 Bucks.
0:15:09 And now I’m on Fox with the facility five day week show.
0:15:12 Tell me about your early memories of playing running back.
0:15:15 So I was about five years old.
0:15:17 You post a play at six, but I loved the game so much.
0:15:20 I lied to him until I was six when I was really five.
0:15:21 We all hitting at five.
0:15:22 I mean, we had pads on.
0:15:23 I don’t want to call it hitting.
0:15:24 We had pads on.
0:15:25 Back in the day, man, it was different.
0:15:28 When we’re hanging out in the neighborhoods, we would call this thing free for all.
0:15:32 It would be like seven, eight kids, and we would throw the ball, and one dude had to
0:15:34 make all eight guys miss.
0:15:38 So tell me what I want people to hear from you.
0:15:39 Like what is like playing running back?
0:15:46 I mean, what part of it is mental, physical, how much of it can be taught versus instincts?
0:15:51 It’s one of the most unique positions on the field because you’re the farthest one back.
0:15:54 So you see everything going on.
0:15:57 And as a running back, you have a job to do every single play.
0:16:01 Wire receivers, they can take a playoff, but running backs don’t have that because we’re
0:16:07 either running the ball or we’re blocking or we’re in the passing routes.
0:16:11 One part of it is really the skill, natural gifts from God.
0:16:13 Another part is studying and learning.
0:16:18 And I tell other young backs now is let your natural instincts happen, right?
0:16:23 But being a student of the game, learning like, okay, every defense has a weak point.
0:16:25 Your job is where you might define that.
0:16:29 Tell me in your view, why is the running back market like it is today?
0:16:32 I mean, do you feel like the current situation is unfair?
0:16:34 Do you feel like it’s fine?
0:16:35 I hate it.
0:16:36 It’s unfair.
0:16:41 It’s unfair because you’re telling me that you’d be a great difference maker as a running
0:16:42 back.
0:16:47 And because I don’t play quarterback, I can’t get paid the right value for my position.
0:16:52 You’re telling me that because I don’t play quarterback, I got to play elite level every
0:16:54 year to get elite money.
0:17:01 But the quarterback can play above average for years and one year be pretty good.
0:17:03 And now you’re about to get elite money.
0:17:04 Think about that.
0:17:08 Guys like Josh Jacobs, really good running back, played on bad teams and still played
0:17:09 well.
0:17:12 In his last year with the Raiders, he said, yo, you know, I led the league in rushing
0:17:15 and it didn’t offer me a contract.
0:17:19 Can you imagine the world where the quarterback leads the league in passing yards and he don’t
0:17:21 get offered a contract?
0:17:26 But on the other hand, I don’t see any Super Bowl winners in the last 20 years with a mediocre
0:17:29 quarterback, maybe Brad Johnson of the Tampa Bay Bucks.
0:17:35 I see several with average running backs and really good quarterbacks.
0:17:39 Is that a reason that the quarterback position is valued more?
0:17:43 Well, it’s tricky because the few quarterbacks in the last five, six years, these guys been
0:17:45 like all pro quarterbacks.
0:17:51 Brady, he’s still one in there, Stafford’s still one in there, Mahomes got three in there.
0:17:54 These ain’t this regular guys is winning Super Bowl’s.
0:17:58 In 2019, I was blessed to be with the Kansas City Chiefs and I won a championship with
0:17:59 them guys.
0:18:02 Pastor Mahomes have to come back in the fourth quarter to win that game.
0:18:05 But then I look across the field, we’re playing the Niners.
0:18:11 The whole week, the game preparation was all we got to do was get the third down.
0:18:12 Why is that?
0:18:18 Because we want this quarterback that was paid all this money to throw the ball on third
0:18:19 down.
0:18:20 His name was Jimmy G.
0:18:21 That’s who that was.
0:18:26 The brother threw like 40 some passes, the whole playoffs and the undrafted running backs
0:18:27 carried them.
0:18:31 The quarterback got all the credit for taking to the Super Bowl and he did the bare minimum.
0:18:33 Oh, we go to New York.
0:18:41 A dude like Saquon Barkley can be that good and you rather pay Dan Jones.
0:18:47 How the hell is that fair?
0:18:52 This pullback here just in case you haven’t been following the recent psychodrama with
0:18:55 the New York Giants that McCoy was talking about.
0:18:59 Saquon Barkley is a name that comes up again and again in the argument about the value
0:19:05 of a running back in part because of the monster season he’s had this year with the Eagles.
0:19:06 But it’s more interesting than that.
0:19:11 The Giants took Barkley in the 2018 draft with the second overall pick.
0:19:15 His five seasons in New York range from good to very good.
0:19:20 He was hurt a few times and the Giants offensive line was weak, but he was still considered
0:19:22 a top running back.
0:19:25 The Giants chose to not offer him a new contract.
0:19:28 Instead they use what’s called a franchise tag.
0:19:33 That’s an NFL rule that allows a team to keep a good player for one year at a relatively
0:19:39 high salary rather than letting him become a free agent and pursue a longer term deal.
0:19:44 While the Giants had Barkley on this one year hold, they gave their quarterback Daniel
0:19:49 Jones a four-year contract averaging $40 million a year.
0:19:53 When Barkley became a free agent, he left the Giants and signed a three-year contract
0:19:59 with the Philadelphia Eagles for about $12 million a year, so less than a third of what
0:20:01 Daniel Jones was being paid.
0:20:05 And how did Jones and Barkley do this year?
0:20:10 Barkley had one of the best seasons an NFL running back has ever had and his Eagles are
0:20:11 in the Super Bowl.
0:20:18 Daniel Jones played so badly that the Giants benched him and then released him.
0:20:22 Like LeSean McCoy asked, “How is that fair?”
0:20:24 Well, “fair” may not be the right word.
0:20:32 The real issue is value, the value of a running play versus the value of a passing play.
0:20:38 The run-pass balance, it was this perennial question, do teams run too often or they not
0:20:40 run often enough?
0:20:45 What is Brian Burke, a sports data scientist with ESPN?
0:20:49 And so there was this question and so people came along and they started to analyze the
0:20:52 question and they didn’t really have the right tools.
0:20:57 So Brian, the reason I was really eager to speak with you is that Roland wrote this piece
0:21:02 in the Wall Street Journal about the decline of running back salaries.
0:21:09 And I’ve been told that if we had to point to one person in the universe who is perhaps
0:21:13 most responsible for that decline, it might be you.
0:21:16 Do you want to claim that credit or blame?
0:21:18 I won’t argue against it.
0:21:25 I was part of a larger movement that I may have been at the forefront of it, but I certainly
0:21:26 wasn’t alone.
0:21:29 Describe your role in that larger movement then.
0:21:35 My role in this was my hobby, which was football stats and what eventually became known as
0:21:36 analytics.
0:21:40 Now, football stats were only a hobby at the time because you were a U.S. Navy pilot, correct?
0:21:41 Yeah.
0:21:46 Went to flight school, made it into F-18s, flew single-seed fighters for my career in
0:21:47 the Navy.
0:21:52 They sent me to Monterey to grad school and that’s where I learned my stats.
0:21:56 I thought this is completely useless, like how am I ever going to use this in the Navy?
0:22:00 But once I got out of the Navy, I thought, gosh, the level of analysis in football is
0:22:01 so bad.
0:22:04 What were your early jobs between getting out of the Navy and doing what you do now?
0:22:06 I have to be a little bit careful.
0:22:08 I live in Northern Virginia.
0:22:10 I was recruited.
0:22:11 By something with three letters maybe?
0:22:15 To do some government stuff for a while that didn’t last too long.
0:22:17 Your choice or their choice?
0:22:18 It was complicated.
0:22:22 I became a single dad and raised two kids, so it was just incompatible.
0:22:27 But you ended up working around another three-letter institution, the NFL?
0:22:29 A lot of three letters.
0:22:34 Most of my time between the Navy and doing football for the day job, I was a defense
0:22:43 contractor and I was a tactics and strategy expert and instructor and I would shirk all
0:22:47 my daily responsibilities to crunch football numbers all day long.
0:22:50 So I’ll tell you the origin story.
0:22:54 Kind of a water cooler conversation with my good friend, coworker, John Moser.
0:22:58 The conversation came around to like defense wins championships, right?
0:23:00 The old standby, you know?
0:23:01 And I was like, well, does it?
0:23:02 I don’t know.
0:23:04 I can’t believe that, but does it really?
0:23:05 What do people mean by that?
0:23:10 And I thought, my God, I have this software left over from grad school and, you know,
0:23:12 they put all the stats online now.
0:23:14 So this is like 2006.
0:23:15 I said, hey, you know what?
0:23:20 We can just download the data and by the end of lunch, we can answer this question forever.
0:23:24 And that was the genesis of, you know, football analytics for me.
0:23:27 When I began doing this, I hadn’t read Moneyball.
0:23:29 I didn’t know that existed.
0:23:35 It was an advantage because the baseball people tried to put it on the football for a long
0:23:36 time.
0:23:40 The kind of tools and the kind of analysis just doesn’t work on football.
0:23:44 I came from this military background and I’m like, this is war.
0:23:48 This is zero sum two player game theory.
0:23:51 And that paradigm took hold.
0:23:55 In what ways would you say that your military background contributed to the way that you
0:23:59 frame the questions you’re trying to answer in football?
0:24:02 There’s this optimization element to it.
0:24:07 In the same way in the military, you have a mix of strategies.
0:24:10 It’s not like always do this or always do that.
0:24:17 You have to be unpredictable in a way that keeps your enemy or your opponent on his heels.
0:24:23 There’s a famous thinker in military aviation named John Boyd who invented this thing called
0:24:30 the OODA loop, if you’ve ever heard of that, and keeping the enemy confused and disoriented
0:24:36 and in a state of ambiguity is one of the goals in American fighting theory.
0:24:40 Football works the same way.
0:24:47 So in a war-like setting, when you’re trying to advance into enemy territory, which weapon
0:24:51 is more valuable, the ground game or the passing game?
0:24:55 Brian Burke’s analytic approach allowed him to answer that question.
0:25:00 I was able to build something called expected points and expected points added.
0:25:05 It’s a point expectancy model based on down distance and yard line.
0:25:10 Once I built that model, the very first thing I did was just aggregate by play type.
0:25:16 And it was very, very clear at that moment that passing was far superior to running.
0:25:19 Teams are running far too often.
0:25:25 And the way you know that is because if they’re doing each in the optimum mix, the payoffs
0:25:26 would equalize.
0:25:31 There would be what people commonly refer to in game theory as like Nash equilibrium.
0:25:36 As long as you have an intelligent opponent, you can assume that that equilibrium is going
0:25:38 to be the optimum mix.
0:25:40 And they were far out of whack.
0:25:42 From that moment on, we knew that you need to pass more.
0:25:44 What year was this?
0:25:50 2008 is when I first did this, but it took years to permeate the football world.
0:25:52 It was a slow process.
0:25:53 Let’s back up a bit.
0:25:59 You don’t have to go back to the 1920s or the 1950s, but pick whatever seems like a
0:26:05 sensible starting point in modern NFL history and tell me how the running game evolved and
0:26:08 was eventually superseded by the passing game.
0:26:12 I think Franco Harris is a good starting point for the modern era.
0:26:18 That’s where people of our age grew up learning our football, and same with coaches.
0:26:19 This is the 1970s.
0:26:22 In those days, passing was very, very difficult.
0:26:25 So running was a much better strategy.
0:26:31 And then in 1978, the league massively rewrote the rules that had to do with passing, not
0:26:39 just illegal contact, the way linemen could pass block radically changed, and the league
0:26:43 is still catching up to this day in terms of exploiting those rule changes.
0:26:48 Over time, different systems started to exploit the new rules, then 2004, they changed the
0:26:49 rules again.
0:26:55 So over time, the potency of the running game compared to the passing game has decreased
0:26:56 steadily.
0:27:04 So the story you’re telling me is simply that football people, including coaches and
0:27:10 analytics people like you, have been discovering over the years that passing is more valuable
0:27:11 than running.
0:27:17 Additionally, the league itself decided over many years to make passing more prominent by
0:27:18 rule changes.
0:27:24 And so now we’ve just arrived at this new circumstance where passing is just more valuable
0:27:26 than running.
0:27:29 Where does that leave the running back in the modern football economy?
0:27:32 Well, he’s just not going to be as valuable.
0:27:35 This star running back is not going to carry you to a Super Bowl.
0:27:41 It hasn’t happened in generations.
0:27:45 Could it be that this generation is different?
0:27:48 And is Saekwon Barkley the difference maker?
0:27:55 Over the past 20 Super Bowls, the top rusher on the winning team has averaged only 70 yards.
0:27:58 If you look at the betting markets for this year’s Super Bowl, Barkley is expected to
0:28:01 gain 115 rushing yards.
0:28:06 When the Eagles beat the Washington Commanders last week to get into the Super Bowl, Barkley
0:28:10 ran for 118 yards and three touchdowns.
0:28:15 This led Fox Sports announcer Kevin Burkhart to call the Eagles pickup of Barkley, “one
0:28:18 of the best free agent signings of all time.”
0:28:23 Still, the Eagles’ opponent in the upcoming Super Bowl, the Kansas City Chiefs, are going
0:28:28 for their third Super Bowl in a row, which would be a record, and their fourth win in
0:28:30 six years.
0:28:35 Even a casual football fan can name the Chiefs starting quarterback Patrick Mahomes and their
0:28:40 super-study tight end Travis Kelsey, who is even better known for dating Taylor Swift.
0:28:46 But can you name the running backs who helped the Chiefs win all these Super Bowls?
0:28:47 Probably not.
0:28:50 They’ve been practically interchangeable, most of them earning between one and three
0:28:58 million dollars a year compared to Kelsey’s 17 million and Mahomes’s 45 million.
0:29:02 You may be thinking, “I understand that running backs have become somewhat less valuable,
0:29:06 but are they really that much less valuable?”
0:29:11 The answer to that question has to do with something that happened in 2011.
0:29:17 The average fan doesn’t fully appreciate that the NFL is a huge business.
0:29:22 Just coming up, after the break, I’m Stephen Dubner, and you were listening to Freakonomics
0:29:35 Radio.
0:29:40 Back in September, at the start of the NFL season, the Economist Roland Friar and I decided
0:29:46 to team up to try to learn why running back salaries have fallen so much since their heyday.
0:29:51 These are driven in part by where a player is selected in the NFL draft.
0:29:57 In 1990, 12 running backs were taken in the first two rounds of the draft.
0:30:00 This year, there was one.
0:30:02 So what’s driving this decline?
0:30:08 We’ve already heard about the analytics revolution that showed the value of passing versus running.
0:30:13 We’ve heard about rule changes the NFL adopted to privilege the passing game, but there was
0:30:20 another big change in 2011 that shook things up for NFL rookies generally and running backs
0:30:21 in particular.
0:30:25 The team has control of you for five years.
0:30:27 That is Robert Turbin.
0:30:32 He was an NFL running back for four teams over eight seasons, including a Super Bowl win with
0:30:33 the Seattle Seahawks.
0:30:37 Today, he does football commentary for CBS Sports.
0:30:39 Roland Friar spoke with him.
0:30:42 Why do you think the running back market is so challenging today?
0:30:45 Number one, the CBA.
0:30:50 That’s the meat and potatoes of the conversation when it comes to the running backs.
0:30:56 The CBA is a collective bargaining agreement, the contract between NFL teams and the NFL
0:31:00 Players Association, the union that represents the athletes.
0:31:07 The negotiations over a CBA are long and often contentious as they establish pay standards
0:31:09 and other terms for years to come.
0:31:15 The current CBA was agreed to in 2020 and runs through the 2030 season.
0:31:18 The one before that went into effect in 2011.
0:31:24 Overall, the 2011 CBA was a lucrative affair for the players.
0:31:29 Their share of league revenues rose from 42% to 47%.
0:31:33 But that agreement also came with some restrictions for rookies.
0:31:38 Before 2011, a drafted player could freely negotiate a contract with the team that chose
0:31:39 him.
0:31:44 That led to some bad deals for teams when the player didn’t play well or got hurt.
0:31:51 The 2011 agreement created a rookie wage scale that set contract terms based on draft order.
0:31:56 It also mandated a four-year contract with a cost-controlled fifth-year option that their
0:31:58 team could exercise.
0:32:03 This structure is still in place today, and that’s what Robert Turbin is talking about
0:32:08 when he tells Roland Friar that the team has control of you for five years.
0:32:15 What happens is you come into the league as a 22-year-old rookie, and basically, you are
0:32:23 handcuffed for five years, so realistically, you don’t have an opportunity to re-up or
0:32:28 get a second contract until you’re 27 years old.
0:32:32 For some positions in football, including quarterback, a player is just coming into
0:32:35 his prime at age 27.
0:32:38 That is not the case for running backs.
0:32:44 By the time you’re 27 years old, if you’ve carried the ball 250 times per year, they’re
0:32:49 going to look at those numbers and say, “Well, he may not have it the way he used to.
0:32:52 That may not be true for most running backs.
0:32:54 It is true for some.”
0:33:01 The CBA is really what devalued the position, because let’s say you were able to get out
0:33:07 of that contract or re-up out of that contract after three years.
0:33:14 Now you’re a 25-year-old back still in his prime with an opportunity to maximize on economics
0:33:17 from a contractual standpoint.
0:33:22 It seems like there is some relationship between the CBA and durability, which is if you’ve
0:33:25 got to wait for five years, and as you say, you’ve carried the ball all this number of
0:33:29 times, then executives are going to look at that and say, “How much more does he have
0:33:30 in the tank?”
0:33:33 So durability is part of it through the CBA, right?
0:33:34 100%.
0:33:38 I mean, five years is, that’s obviously not a full career.
0:33:43 That’s not the type of career you would imagine for yourself, but we know that the average
0:33:44 is less than three.
0:33:48 I was fortunate to play eight for a back.
0:33:50 That’s pretty damn good.
0:33:57 I’ll never forget when I was in Indianapolis, this was 2017.
0:34:04 I’m 27 years old, and I’m talking to a scout from another team, and I dislocated my elbow
0:34:08 in week six of that year, so I was coming back.
0:34:09 He asked me, he says, “How old are you?”
0:34:10 I said, “I’m 27.”
0:34:11 He said, “Oh, okay.”
0:34:14 So he got about another year or so left, and I said, “What?”
0:34:17 Like, “What are you talking about?”
0:34:22 But that’s the thought process for a lot of executives until proven wrong.
0:34:32 It’s almost like you’re guilty until proven innocent as a running back.
0:34:38 If you go back 20 years, the average career length for an NFL running back was around
0:34:40 five and a half years.
0:34:45 That number started dropping right around the 2011 collective bargaining agreement, and
0:34:50 today the average length is around two and a half years.
0:34:53 Let’s hear now from another former running back, Robert Smith.
0:34:58 Like Robert Turbin, Smith played for eight years, all of his were with the Minnesota
0:34:59 Vikings.
0:35:01 Smith retired after the 2000 season.
0:35:06 It was always kind of a badge of honor to play the position because it is a very physical
0:35:13 position, and there are times when you have to block players that outweigh you by a large
0:35:14 amount.
0:35:16 It’s not for the faint of heart.
0:35:20 Today Smith calls NFL and college games for Fox Sports.
0:35:24 His reverence for the running back position goes deep.
0:35:28 Only the quarterback has the ball in their hands more, and so you have, I think, one
0:35:33 of the greatest opportunities to impact the outcome of a game on every running play.
0:35:38 11 guys are trying to hit the same person, and that’s the guy who has the ball.
0:35:43 It’s the challenging part, but it’s also the rewarding part that you were able to get
0:35:44 by them.
0:35:49 I hold the NFL record for the longest average per touchdown running, more than 26 yards.
0:35:56 And I got to tell you, it’s a feeling that I wish everybody could experience when you
0:36:02 break into the open and you know you’re going to score a touchdown.
0:36:09 It’s like when you’re leaning back in a chair and you almost tip and fall, and you get this
0:36:12 rush of adrenaline.
0:36:19 It’s like this sudden burst of excitement that I’m about to score a touchdown.
0:36:25 Those occasional bursts of excitement are, of course, offset by thousands of hours of
0:36:28 training and by the physical punishment.
0:36:34 I tore my ACL my rookie season, but in that injury I also broke the bottom of my femur
0:36:39 and did some damage to the articular cartilage, which is the smooth cartilage that’s on the
0:36:42 tip of the bone, and I needed to have a microfracture.
0:36:47 It’s a procedure where they tap on the exposed surface of the bone, and then I needed to
0:36:50 have that again after my last season in the league.
0:36:56 So there I was a couple of months shy of my 29th birthday, but it was the only season
0:37:02 I didn’t miss any games, and I still needed to have knee surgery after the year.
0:37:07 And the thing that I said was, you know, if you would pay any amount of money to get your
0:37:11 health back if you lost it, then what amount of money is worth the very real chance that
0:37:12 you’ll lose it?
0:37:15 It was the calculation that was going on in my head.
0:37:16 That’s why I left the game when I did.
0:37:25 I’m thinking quite literally it’s better to walk away early than to limp away late.
0:37:29 Robert Smith had a lot of reasons to walk away, a lot of things beyond football that
0:37:30 excited him.
0:37:36 He is an amateur astronomer, a prolific reader, and in addition to his broadcasting duties,
0:37:43 he is working on a health and wellness startup, plus which he made good money as a younger
0:37:44 man.
0:37:47 His final contract paid him $25 million over five years.
0:37:54 In his last season, the best of his career, he ranked second in the NFL in rushing yards.
0:37:59 But it was clear by then that running back money was drying up.
0:38:04 Every team has a league imposed salary cap, and they’re constantly trying to figure out
0:38:09 which players they can give less money to in order to give more money to the players
0:38:11 they think they cannot win without.
0:38:15 And running backs had fallen off the cannot win without list.
0:38:21 Over the past few decades, NFL revenues have more than doubled to about $20 billion a year.
0:38:26 Since players get a percentage share of revenues, that means the overall player pool has also
0:38:27 more than doubled.
0:38:31 But running backs have barely shared in that gain.
0:38:37 The pay for running backs and full backs over the past two decades has risen around 11 percent.
0:38:43 For all other offensive positions, salaries have risen at least 90 percent.
0:38:46 If you don’t believe me, just ask an agent.
0:38:51 Jeffrey Whitney, I am one of the founders and president at the Sports and Entertainment
0:38:57 Group, a full-service sports agency in Washington, D.C., been doing it for 20-plus years.
0:39:00 So how many athletes do you represent now, your firm?
0:39:03 We represent about 40 NFL players at any given time.
0:39:06 So we’re one of the larger agencies.
0:39:11 It would appear to me that an agent is busy and important when you’re making a deal,
0:39:15 but I don’t know how much maintenance that deal requires as time goes on.
0:39:21 Can you just talk about in the life cycle of an athlete, how involved are you?
0:39:26 We’re involved in every aspect of our client’s lives on a daily basis.
0:39:31 We spend probably the least amount of time actually negotiating contracts.
0:39:37 I’m a family therapist, a relationship therapist, some type of preacher or pastor would need
0:39:38 me.
0:39:39 Financial advisor?
0:39:42 Financial advisor, just day-to-day counselor.
0:39:43 That’s what I love doing.
0:39:44 No day is the same.
0:39:49 I got up today and I get a call from a player who’s injured.
0:39:50 So I have to deal with that.
0:39:55 I get a call from a player who’s moving and he needs to be guiding in the right direction.
0:39:59 Playing players, they’ll call me and ask me what TV they should purchase.
0:40:04 We’re in many ways with these young people involved with them in a very intimate and
0:40:05 deep fashion.
0:40:11 Among agents that represent NFL players, what would you say that you’re most known for?
0:40:14 In the past, we were actually known as the Running Back Agency.
0:40:19 We’ve represented more running backs over the last 20 years than any other agency.
0:40:20 Name some for me.
0:40:26 Maurice Jones-Drew, Matt Forte, Tevin Coleman, Jordan Howard, James White, Sweet Feet from
0:40:32 New England, Kendall Hunter, Levy-Anne Bell, Michael Carter.
0:40:35 We have Cody Schrader this year who’s now with the Rams.
0:40:38 Do you still represent the same share of running backs?
0:40:40 We have pared down.
0:40:49 The market has spoken and over the last few years, we got into the receiver cornerback,
0:40:50 that kind of market.
0:40:55 We never got out of the business of representing running backs, but we did start shaping our
0:40:56 roster a little bit.
0:40:59 I don’t mean to accuse you of chasing the money yourselves.
0:41:03 You say you’re responding to the market, but in a case like this where you guys were known
0:41:09 as a running back agency and then the market for running backs changes really pretty dramatically.
0:41:11 I mean, who ends up representing the running backs?
0:41:15 Just different agents who are starting out, who don’t have as much luxury to pick their
0:41:16 roster.
0:41:18 The way you guys do, is that the way it works?
0:41:19 That’s exactly what you saw.
0:41:25 There were agents during the last few years who just didn’t represent running backs at
0:41:30 all and they were literally running backs in the market looking for representation.
0:41:31 There’s a supply and demand issue.
0:41:35 There are more running backs than positions.
0:41:40 It is a position where you can find really good players all across the draft and after
0:41:41 the draft.
0:41:44 There also is this, the running quarterback.
0:41:48 You can look at the total number of yards that a team has.
0:41:52 Now, a lot of that yardage is coming, not from the running backs, but it’s coming from
0:41:53 the quarterback.
0:41:58 So now, probably half the league has quarterbacks who can run as well as the running back.
0:42:03 What about rule changes that facilitated an opening up of the passing game?
0:42:10 The average fan sometimes doesn’t fully appreciate that the NFL is a huge business.
0:42:12 It is a business at the highest level.
0:42:17 It’s $20 billion, it’ll go to $25, the ultimate goal I’m hearing it’s going to be a $50 billion
0:42:20 industry in the next 10 years.
0:42:26 I think we’ve seen over the last 10 years kind of a cultural shift, not just in the
0:42:28 NFL, but across sports.
0:42:33 As fans, we simply see the outcome of the game and we don’t really understand that at
0:42:38 the end of the day, these are corporations that are going to be responsive to their shareholders
0:42:39 and consumers.
0:42:41 And the NFL is no different.
0:42:45 People like to see the ball in the air, the acrobatic catches and the leaps.
0:42:47 The fans want to see loan balls.
0:42:49 They want to see passing.
0:42:53 I still can watch a 10 to seven game, a defensive battle.
0:42:58 The best player is the middle linebacker and the running back and I’m happy with that.
0:43:02 But for the younger generation, absolutely boring.
0:43:08 We can talk supply and demand, we can talk the running quarterback and those all do have
0:43:12 some influence in the devaluation for the running back position.
0:43:17 Ultimately, if we really dig down and look at root causes, it’s really the corporation,
0:43:22 the actual NFL, responding to their consumer base and what their consumer base wants to
0:43:23 see.
0:43:28 When you say that the NFL responded to what the market wants, give me some specific examples
0:43:34 of how the league has added leverage to make passing more prominent, either passing and
0:43:37 or quarterback play more prominent.
0:43:41 You’ve seen a ton of rule changes, obviously, to make it a higher scoring game with more
0:43:43 offense.
0:43:48 The defenses have been handicapped, the pass interference rules.
0:43:52 You can’t hit the quarterback, some of the rules are good for the safety of the players.
0:43:57 But certainly the root of the reason it’s to increase the scoring and the way you do
0:43:59 that is through passing.
0:44:02 Let’s talk about injuries and perishability generally.
0:44:07 Just talk about the physical punishment that comes along with running back position where
0:44:09 it ranks with other offensive players.
0:44:10 Make no mistake about it.
0:44:18 The running back is the most violent position in the most violent sport on the planet.
0:44:20 Running backs are getting hit on every play.
0:44:22 In pass protection, they’re getting hit.
0:44:29 You’ve got a running back who’s 5’10”, 215 pounds, and he’s blocking a 325-pound defensive
0:44:30 lineman.
0:44:34 The defensive players are getting bigger and faster every year.
0:44:38 That physicality for the running back is real.
0:44:43 The likelihood of a running back getting through the season unscathed, no injuries, is slim
0:44:44 to none.
0:44:53 For a lot of teams, because of that, they go with running backs by committee.
0:44:57 What Whitney is talking about here when he says running backs by committee is when teams
0:45:03 substitute in multiple players throughout the game or the season to share the workload.
0:45:07 Here again is Brian Burke, the ESPN analyst.
0:45:10 I think that’s one of the core developments that’s affected the running back position
0:45:15 is that teams have realized that you don’t necessarily need a great running back.
0:45:17 What you need is a great running game.
0:45:23 I think when most people watch football, they see the quarterback hand the ball to the running
0:45:29 back who, when a play succeeds, he gets through the line and then keeps running and gains
0:45:32 a bunch of yards and finally gets tackled.
0:45:36 They think, “Oh my God, that running back is so talented.”
0:45:39 Imagine what’s actually happening to make that run a success.
0:45:45 Yeah, there’s going to be eight or nine blocks that are all essential.
0:45:49 You need these kind of consecutive miracles for a run play to really work.
0:45:54 Coaches will draw them up and it looks perfect on the whiteboard, but then in the chaos of
0:46:00 the game, so many things have to go right for it to work, but when it does, it’s beautiful.
0:46:04 And then the people executing those blocks, let’s just talk about the offensive line.
0:46:09 There’s one running back who carries the ball, who succeeds, but then there are five or six
0:46:13 other guys who are probably averaging what, around 290 pounds on the offensive line.
0:46:16 Oh gosh, probably more now, yeah.
0:46:20 Some football fans really do pay attention to offensive linemen, but really it’s mostly
0:46:24 their moms, but there are a lot of them that are necessary for it to work.
0:46:27 So what does that mean about the market?
0:46:33 The way to think about it is the line and the blocking and the scheme are responsible
0:46:37 for the first three or four yards of a game on a run play.
0:46:43 And then from there on, it’s the elusiveness of the running back.
0:46:48 It’s like a threshold system where if I have a good enough line to get a running back out
0:46:54 to three, four, five yards, now he’s into the secondary and it’s up to him to make defenders
0:46:58 miss their tackles and then you get these big explosive games.
0:47:03 So if you want to improve your running game, you don’t go out and just get a great running
0:47:04 back.
0:47:09 I would say start with the offensive line, make sure you’re calling good plays, and
0:47:15 then the cherry on top might be a start running back.
0:47:20 Coming up after the break, do running backs have any chance of returning to their previous
0:47:21 glory?
0:47:23 Everything is cyclical, right?
0:47:26 If you keep those bell bottoms long enough, they’ll come back.
0:47:27 I’m Stephen Dubner.
0:47:43 This is Freakonomics Radio, and we will come back right after this.
0:47:48 Most of us don’t respond well when something is taken away from us.
0:47:53 Psychologists like to talk about loss aversion, the fact that we feel more pain from loss
0:47:57 than we feel pleasure from a gain of the same size.
0:48:03 Well imagine being an athlete who’s been working hard since age five or six, driven
0:48:09 by the very slim hope that you might live out your dream and become an NFL running back
0:48:15 only to succeed and discover that your position has been downgraded.
0:48:20 An elite running back in the NFL can still make millions of dollars, but keep in mind
0:48:27 that, A, running back careers are short, and B, many of your teammates will be making more
0:48:29 millions than you.
0:48:32 So what are your options?
0:48:34 You could stage a holdout.
0:48:40 That’s what both Saquon Barkley and Josh Jacobs did in 2023, sitting out training camp after
0:48:45 being franchise tagged by their respective teams, the New York Giants and the Las Vegas
0:48:47 Raiders.
0:48:51 Both of them left their teams at the end of the season and both have prospered with their
0:48:56 new teams, Barkley with the Eagles and Jacobs with the Green Bay Packers.
0:48:59 But a holdout doesn’t always go as planned.
0:49:03 In 2018, Pittsburgh Steelers running back Levyon Bell, one of the best backs in the league
0:49:09 at the time, held out for the entire season rather than play under a franchise tag.
0:49:13 Here again is Brian Burke, the ESPN data scientist.
0:49:21 By holding out, he cut his career short, maybe not by a full year, but a lot of the perishability
0:49:25 is just age-based, not necessarily wear and tear-based.
0:49:30 The effect can be very slight, but the next guy up who costs a fraction of what Levyon
0:49:36 wants to be paid, like I would much rather pay a million dollars for 95% of what Levyon
0:49:40 Bell is than pay $15 million for 100%.
0:49:44 He got a big money contract with the Jets, but then he wasn’t very good there, then
0:49:46 his career was kind of over.
0:49:51 What would you have advised him when he was doing really well with the Steelers on his
0:49:52 rookie contract?
0:49:55 I would have advised him to just take what he can get.
0:49:57 It’s outside of his control.
0:50:02 I understand what he’s trying to accomplish, but he’s just up against reality.
0:50:04 He’s lucky to find the Jets.
0:50:10 If there’s one foolish team out of 32 that’s going to overpay you, then it only takes one.
0:50:12 And it’s usually the Jets, to be honest.
0:50:14 He found that one for sure.
0:50:18 Bell’s agent at the time was Jeffrey Whitney, who we heard from earlier.
0:50:23 He told us he didn’t want to discuss the Bell situation.
0:50:28 Beyond a holdout, what other options are available to dissatisfied running backs?
0:50:34 A few years ago, there was an attempt at creating a carveout, a running back specific labor
0:50:39 designation proposed by a group called the International Brotherhood of Professional
0:50:41 Running Backs.
0:50:46 They petitioned the NLRB, the National Labor Relations Board, for what labor lawyers call
0:50:48 a unit clarification.
0:50:53 They argued that the unique physical demands of the running back position set them apart
0:50:57 from other football players, and that they should therefore be allowed to break away from
0:51:01 the NFL players’ union and negotiate on their own.
0:51:06 A clever idea, maybe, but the NLRB rejected their request.
0:51:11 I asked Robert Smith, the former Vikings running back, what he thought of this idea.
0:51:19 Well, as you guys have talked about in countless episodes on Freakonomics, you have to be
0:51:25 very careful about trying to change one variable in a system without impacting the system in
0:51:32 a way that you haven’t anticipated, and ultimately, the market is going to decide where they value
0:51:38 players the most and where that money is going to make the most sense for that team.
0:51:44 So if carveouts and holdouts aren’t the answer, how about a good old-fashioned running back
0:51:46 Zoom call?
0:51:52 In 2023, Austin Eckler, now with the Washington Commanders, organized a Zoom with other top
0:51:58 running backs, including Barkley, Jacobs, Christian McCaffrey, and Nick Chubb, to discuss the
0:52:00 state of their position.
0:52:04 “Right now, there’s really nothing we can do,” Chubb said afterward.
0:52:06 “We’re kind of handcuffed with the situation.
0:52:10 We are the only position that our production hurts us.
0:52:14 If we go out there and run 2,000 yards, the next year they’re going to say, ‘You’re probably
0:52:15 worn down.'”
0:52:22 Still, it’s worth wondering, given the exceptional season that Saquon Barkley had with the Eagles,
0:52:29 if he also has a great Superbowl and the Eagles beat the Chiefs, maybe the NFL will fall back
0:52:31 in love with the running back?
0:52:36 The last couple of years, you’re seeing a little bit of resurgence in the running game.
0:52:37 Everything is cyclical, right?
0:52:40 If you keep those bell bottoms long enough, they’ll come back.
0:52:43 That again is the sports agent, Jeffrey Whitney.
0:52:47 You ask a running back, what’s the most important duty that they have?
0:52:50 The vast majority will be like running the football, and it’s not.
0:52:53 It’s past protection and catching the ball, and running is part of it.
0:52:57 I think we’re seeing some young running backs again who can do it all, can catch it, can
0:53:00 run it, good and past protection.
0:53:07 Let’s say you have a relative or a family friend who’s 11, 12 years old, great athlete.
0:53:11 What would you tell that kid if they’re hoping for a long career in the NFL?
0:53:14 Do you say, “Get the heck out of the running back position?”
0:53:18 I tell them to become a long snapper.
0:53:22 I tell them to become a specialist, a long snapper or a kicker.
0:53:23 You play forever.
0:53:25 You don’t get touched.
0:53:27 That’s what I would advise them to do.
0:53:35 If you’re not going to be the quarterback, be the long snapper or be the kicker.
0:53:39 We once made an episode about the economics of the long snapper position.
0:53:44 It’s called, “Why does the most monotonous job in the world pay $1 million?”
0:53:51 Episode 493, if you want to listen, as for running backs, LeSean McCoy, the six-time
0:53:55 pro bowler, was more optimistic about their future.
0:53:57 Here he is again talking with Roland Fryer.
0:53:59 Now, it’s a copycat league.
0:54:03 If the Eagles are going to win the Super Bowl, they want to copycat that.
0:54:07 You look at some of the better teams, they got good running back play.
0:54:10 The Packers, are they even a playoff team without Josh Jacobs?
0:54:11 I look at the Eagles.
0:54:12 I’m going to love the Eagles.
0:54:14 We got a lot of talent on that team.
0:54:18 Are we the same, though, if Saquon Barker is not there?
0:54:20 Look at the Ravens.
0:54:22 Lamar Jackson was at MVP last year.
0:54:23 This year, they look totally different.
0:54:25 What’s the difference?
0:54:26 Derek Henry.
0:54:29 That’s why you see Lamar Jackson throwing the ball, but he’s ever thrown before.
0:54:30 You play action.
0:54:32 Who do I guard?
0:54:36 I feel like the market has to go up because these players are earning these things.
0:54:40 Owners see that because one thing about owners, they want to make their money and they want
0:54:41 to win.
0:54:44 There is some evidence to back up McCoy’s optimism.
0:54:48 In recent years, the running game has recovered a bit.
0:54:54 In 2016, only 40.6% of the plays from Scrimmage were run plays.
0:54:55 That was a 20-year low.
0:54:59 This year, it was 43.4% run plays.
0:55:04 I asked Robert Smith, the former Vikings running back, what he thought of this uptick.
0:55:07 I’d be interested to see the breakdown.
0:55:08 Number one, is it running backs?
0:55:10 Is it quarterbacks?
0:55:15 You have more quarterbacks that can run the football, and they’re extremely difficult
0:55:20 to stop, whether it’s Lamar Jackson, even Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen.
0:55:24 You’re going to have some guys that made distort those numbers.
0:55:29 Some of it’s selection bias because the better teams are constructed in a way where they
0:55:34 can run the football in the red zone the way they want to, and then they have the lead,
0:55:36 and so they’re going to get more runs that way.
0:55:42 Is it possible that there might be somewhat of a return to the retro world of run first?
0:55:44 I don’t think so.
0:55:48 It goes back to the point of what it takes on a running play.
0:55:54 A lot of people would point to Saquon Barkley and Derek Henry, and those guys are outliers.
0:55:58 Look at what Saquon Barkley did with the Giants last year.
0:56:00 Look what Derek Henry did with Tennessee last year.
0:56:04 Look what they’re doing with their new teams this year with Philadelphia and the Ravens.
0:56:07 The offensive lines are just that much better.
0:56:12 It almost proves the point the other way that, yeah, well, of course, you put these guys
0:56:15 behind the great offensive lines.
0:56:21 Saquon Barkley in particular, he set a record for a number of yards before first contact
0:56:22 this year.
0:56:27 When you look at the performance of running backs, there’s no way that it would be significant
0:56:32 enough where everybody would say, “Well, all we got to do is go get a Saquon Barkley.
0:56:34 All we got to do is go get a Derek Henry.”
0:56:39 Oh, and by the way, it didn’t work for those guys behind those other offensive lines.
0:56:45 So you’re still going to have to spend the money to get the offensive line in place that’s
0:56:51 going to allow those guys to have Saquon Barkley-like numbers or Derek Henry-like numbers.
0:56:56 Brian Burke of ESPN agrees with Smith that Henry and Barkley are the exceptions that
0:57:02 prove the rule, but his reasoning is different, and it goes back to his military training.
0:57:04 The concept is intransitivity.
0:57:07 There is no one superior tactic.
0:57:08 It’s circular.
0:57:13 The other 31 teams are all chasing pass blockers and receivers and throwers and everything,
0:57:17 and there’s a whole bunch of run blockers and running backs left on the table.
0:57:18 There’s inefficiencies.
0:57:22 I’m going to go grab them, and I’m going to be the best running team they’ve ever seen,
0:57:25 and they’re going to be unprepared for us, and that’s going to be pretty effective, but
0:57:30 only one or two teams can get away with that.
0:57:37 I went back to my economist friend and co-host, Roland Fryer, and I asked him if a young running
0:57:39 back came to him for advice, what would he say?
0:57:40 Learn how to throw.
0:57:46 I mean, I don’t know what you want me to say.
0:57:51 When market demand changes, particularly in something as intricate as the NFL, then certain
0:57:57 positions will be more or less valued, and going in, people will expect that.
0:58:01 The other option would be to say, when you do get the ball, run further.
0:58:02 Exactly.
0:58:03 Be more productive.
0:58:08 And yet, the end of your Wall Street Journal piece goes like this.
0:58:12 The economist in me likes the results, meaning the results of your analysis, finding that
0:58:17 running backs get paid less because they’re less valuable, relatively.
0:58:21 But you write, the kid in me hopes for a running back renaissance.
0:58:22 That’s right.
0:58:27 So as you know, as cool, calm, and collected, and economist acting as you are right now saying,
0:58:31 “Come on, the market is the market,” there’s part of you emotionally that’s attached to
0:58:32 my argument.
0:58:33 A hundred percent.
0:58:37 This duality has lived in me since I became an economist.
0:58:42 But you didn’t ask Juju, the kid from Daytona, to advise the players.
0:58:49 But as an economist, again, this is all being driven by market forces.
0:58:54 Market forces are real, but are they unstoppable?
0:58:59 And what happens when they meet an immovable object, or even better, an object in motion,
0:59:05 like Saquon Barkley, who also appears to be unstoppable?
0:59:06 We’ll find out soon.
0:59:11 Thanks to Roland Fryer for inspiring and collaborating on this episode.
0:59:12 He was right.
0:59:14 It was a lot of fun.
0:59:19 And big thanks to all our guests, LeSean McCoy, Robert Smith, Robert Turbin, Jeffrey Whitney,
0:59:20 and Brian Burke.
0:59:26 They all did a great job explaining a complicated game that many of us love, but which many
0:59:29 others are often baffled by.
0:59:32 And thanks especially to you for listening.
0:59:35 Coming up next time on the show.
0:59:39 Professional licensing is too onerous for certain professions.
0:59:42 And it just makes the barriers too high.
0:59:48 And then, for the professions that are left, medicine, nursing, law, now we need something
0:59:50 like a licensing board.
0:59:52 Only what we have is terrible.
0:59:57 The legal scholar Rebecca Hall-Allensworth has just published a book called The Licensing
0:59:58 Racket.
1:00:02 How we decide who is allowed to work and why it goes wrong.
1:00:05 That’s next time on the show.
1:00:07 Until then, take care of yourself.
1:00:09 And if you can, someone else do.
1:00:12 Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio.
1:00:18 You can find our entire archive on any podcast app, also at Freakonomics.com, where we publish
1:00:20 transcripts and show notes.
1:00:23 This episode was produced by Teo Jacobs.
1:00:28 The Freakonomics Radio network staff also includes Alina Kullman, Augusta Chapman, Dalvin
1:00:33 Abouaji, Eleanor Osborne, Ellen Frankman, Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Greg Rippin, Jasmine
1:00:40 Klinger, Jeremy Johnston, John Schnarrs, Morgan Levy, Neil Coruth, Sarah Lilly, and Zach Lipinski.
1:00:45 Our theme song is Mr. Fortune by the Hitchhikers, and our composer is Luis Guerra.
1:00:53 Do you want to get married?
1:00:58 I can’t marry anyone who I can’t run faster than backwards.
1:00:59 So that’s a no.
1:01:00 I don’t know.
1:01:01 I’ve had a series of knee injuries.
1:01:02 You might be able to get me now.
1:01:07 Yeah, but I’ve had a series of birthdays.
1:01:17 The Freakonomics Radio network, the hidden side of everything.
1:01:17 Stitcher.
1:01:20 (gentle music)
1:01:22 you