Stephen Dubner

This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything with your host, Stephen Dubner.

The hidden side of everything.

This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything with your host, Stephen Dubner.

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Hey there, it's Stephen 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 Njigba.

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've 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.

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.