Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore? (Update)
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Why are running backs no longer the stars of the NFL?
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.
Big opening for Tony Dorsett. Look out, he's got great speed. Tony Dorsett was my favorite player. I had the uniform, the helmet. The running backs were bigger stars during my childhood than the quarterbacks.
My favorite player of all time was Barry Sanders. The day that he retired, I remember crying.
I had a Ricky Waters jersey when he was with the Eagles, actually. I wore it on the first day of school, I think of first or second grade.
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. The running back I loved as a kid was Franco Harris of the Pittsburgh Steelers. To be honest, I was a little obsessed with Franco. We don't need to get into the details here, but I did once write a book about him called Confessions of a Hero Worshipper. Like I said, a little bit obsessed. I liked everything about Franco, the way he carried himself off the field, but especially how he ran. Some running backs, like Jim Brown, were known for their power, for running people over. Others, like Gale Sayers, were so fast and graceful that it was hard to get a hand on them.
Franco was somewhere in the middle, strong but elusive, a darter and a dodger. In football, every play is a miniature drama packed into just a few seconds. 22 athletes moving at once, as complicated as a blueprint, as brutal as war, as delicate as ballet. A passing play is a bit of a magic trick. The quarterback and receiver try to trick the downfield defenders into being in the wrong place at the right time. A running play is more predictable, since the running back has to get through a wall of massive defenders. But if he does and breaks free into open space, that is a special kind of thrill. Back when Franco Harris was in the league and for a long time after, many of the game's biggest stars were running backs, and they were paid accordingly.
If you go back 30 years and take the average salary of the top players by position, running backs ranked second, just behind quarterbacks. This year, running backs ranked 15th. So what happened? Everyone knows the NFL has become much more pass-happy these last few decades. But still, how did running backs fall so far? As it turns out, I wasn't the only one with these questions.
I was really interested in why salaries of running backs have declined and why they seem to be less important parts of the offense than I remembered.
Roland Fryer, an economist at Harvard and a friend of Freakonomics, wrote a Wall Street Journal column last football season called The Economics of Running Backs.
It's been kind of a slow drip, a slow decline of running backs. And then you think, why?
What is it? I asked Roland if he would sit for an interview to help answer those questions. He said yes, but he had another idea that he insisted would be even more fun.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why are running backs no longer the stars of the NFL?
0:03–5:21
2
What factors contributed to the decline in running back salaries?
5:21–10:07
3
How have rule changes affected the value of running backs?
10:07–14:18
4
What role does analytics play in the perception of running backs?
14:18–18:02
5
How do former running backs view their position's current value?
18:02–22:05
6
What insights do agents provide about the running back market?
22:05–26:59
7
What are the physical demands and risks associated with being a running back?
26:59–31:50
8
Is there hope for a resurgence of the running back in the NFL?
31:50–58:15
Speakers
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