Stephen Dubner

Some football fans really do pay attention to offensive linemen, but really it's mostly their moms.

Yeah.

But there are a lot of them that are necessary for it to work.

So what does that mean about the market?

Coming up after the break, do running backs have any chance of returning to their previous glory?

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 Saquon Barkley and Josh Jacobs did in 2023, sitting out training camp after being franchise tagged by their respective teams, the 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 Le'Veon 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.

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?