Last night’s Zoom meeting among various veteran running backs, coordinated by Chargers running back Austin Ekeler, ultimately went nowhere. Largely because there’s nowhere to go.
The Collective Bargaining Agreement is what it is. The rules are the rules. And the current rules make it harder for the best running backs to get paid more than they currently receive.
One major problem flows from the fact that the NFL Players Association can’t easily change the rules as to running backs. Any effort to get the NFL to make it easier for running backs to get paid will likely make it harder for others to get paid.
Per multiple sources, the issue of holding in via the embellishment/exaggeration/fabrications of injuries (suggested earlier this week in an interview by NFLPA president JC Tretter) was raised during Saturday night’s call. As one source put it, the consensus was that this can’t work for running backs, since it feeds into the narrative that they’re prone to injury. (It also gives players lower on the depth chart a chance to prove that, dollar for dollar, they represent a better value than the “injured” players they are replacing.)
Much of the focus eventually went to agents, even though agents were excluded from the call. There was concern raised, we’re told, about some agents creating false expectations for other running backs by dumping phony salaries into the back end of contracts. (For example, Alvin Kamara has a final-year compensation package of $25 million, which pushed the average artificially to $15 million. There’s no way he’ll get $25 million in the last year of his current deal.)
The next step, we’re told, will be for the agents of this coalition of concerned running backs to get on a call of their own, in the hopes of coming up with better lines of communication and strategy for running backs who are or will be seeking new contracts. The goal is to get the agents, who are inherently in competition, to collaborate.
There’s significant potential value to this approach. Teams cannot collude regarding negotiating strategies; players and agents can.
Still, there are few potential global solutions. Ideas under consideration include a league-wide fund that pays running backs for performance, shortening the running back runway for a second contract from three years to two, and/or reconfiguring the franchise-tag formula, so that the number for running backs will be higher. Each of these would require the NFLPA to negotiate with the league, however, and to make concessions that likely will impact players at other positions.
One potential swap, for example, would be to alter the franchise-tag calculation for running backs and, in return, split the offensive line franchise tag into three categories — tackle, guard, center. That would benefit teams that shy away from tagging interior offensive linemen, since tackle money determines the tag. It also would make it much harder for interior offensive linemen to get to the open market, since with lower tags teams would be more likely to restrict them.
That continues to be the fundamental problem with this entire situation. Every potential way to help running backs hurts players at another position, making it harder for the NFLPA to balance everyone’s interests.
It’s why, above all else, these running backs should carefully explore breaking away from the union and setting up their own bargaining unit. Along the way, there’s one very important gesture in which they could engage — they can make it clear right now that none of them will participate in the voluntary portion of the 2024 offseason program. In turn, they can commit themselves to ensuring over the next eight months that all other running backs (including those in college this year) will respect the unofficial picket line, leaving the 32 teams with not a single running back for OTAs.
Now that’s how you create leverage for a big-picture solution. Not by individually pretending to be hurt, but by collectively banding together in a very real effort to deprive all 32 teams of having running backs available for a single offseason practice, other than the three-day mandatory minicamp.