If you want to get a fiery discussion going in a room full of football analytics people, just drop this question-bomb:
“Do running backs matter?”
Then step back, and watch the fur fly. Actually, don’t watch the fur fly, as there seems to be a nearly universal agreement among the aforementioned intelligentsia that running backs are far more fungible than in previous eras, and that without much exception, you’re able to get similar production out of an undrafted back at league-minimum prices as you are out of that first-round pick you just rewarded with an enormous contract extension.
Of course, there are caveats to this, as true as it may be in a general sense. A recent Pro Football Focus study indicated how off-base the Rams and Cardinals were, respectively, in giving extensions to Todd Gurley and David Johnson, respectively. Johnson was eventually picked from Arizona’s roster when the Cardinals took advantage of the Texans’ inexplicable need to rid themselves of DeAndre Hopkins, and the Rams released Gurley in March with a post-June 1 designation to try and ease the cap hit born from the four-year, $57.5 million extension Gurley was given in 2018. Both Johnson and Gurley found themselves severely limited due to injuries in recent times, running backs in general have short shelf lives, and the Johnson and Gurley deals are indeed excellent examples of how you don’t want to throw good money after bad.
As far as the ability of any Joe Shlabotnik to come in and replicate the production of an Ezekiel Elliott or Derrick Henry, it’s important to remember that while running backs may not matter as much as they used to, running games are still vital parts of most successful offenses. The 49ers proved this in 2019 as they took Raheem Mostert, a guy who had been cut by six different teams before San Francisco picked him up, all the way to the Super Bowl. The 49ers were one of two teams in 2019 to run the ball more than they passed it — the Ravens were the other — and it’s no coincidence that San Francisco and Baltimore have two of the NFL’s most complex and dynamic run games in the league. If you think Raheem Mostert was going to get that kind of traction with the Jaguars, think again.
So, as it is with any other position in the league, running back success is predicated on the positive combination of player and scheme. Here are the 11 best “meaningless” backs in the NFL today.
11. Chris Carson, Seattle Seahawks
The Seahawks lost Carson in late December to a hip injury, which scuttled a lot of what Pete Carroll wants from his run game, though that injury did also allow the improbable return of Marshawn Lynch, which was delightful on its own terms. But make no mistake, the idea is for Carson to be the main guy in Seattle’s rushing attack. And he was able to do that when healthy. Only Derrick Henry, Josh Jacobs, and Nick Chubb broke more rushing tackles last season than Carson’s 62, and Carson’s 14 runs of 15 or more yards tied for fourth-best in the NFL last season.
Now, onto the problem: Carson fumbled far too often last season. This is not a good thing for a ball-control offense — or any other offense, for that matter. From the 2020 edition of the Football Outsiders Almanac, which I highly recommend:
The defining play of Carson’s season came in the third quarter of Week 9 against Tampa Bay. He took a handoff up the gut and slipped through the grasp of two defensive linemen near the line of scrimmage, then powered past a pair of safeties, one of whom had a perfect angle from the deep middle of the field. Many NFL running backs might have scored after breaking four tackles, but Carson was chased down from behind by linebacker Devin White, who swatted the ball out of Carson’s hands and out of bounds. And that’s everything you need to know about Carson in 2019: he led the NFL in broken tackles, but he also fumbled seven times, more than any non-quarterback.
And here’s what that looked like:
2020 is the last year of Carson’s rookie contract; if he’s to be a part of the Seahawks’ plans beyond the upcoming season, he’ll have to address that weighty issue.
10. Mark Ingram, Baltimore Ravens
The former Saints star signed a three-year, $15 million free-agent deal with the Ravens before the 2019 season, just in time to become a major part of the best rushing attack in the league. Baltimore ranked first in rushing DVOA, rushing attempts (596), rushing yards (3,296), yards per attempt (5.5), rushing first downs (188), and only the 49ers scored more rushing touchdowns than the Ravens’ 21. Lamar Jackson was the pointman as he set the single-season record for quarterback rushing yards, but Ingram was also a major piece of that puzzle with 1,018 yards and 10 touchdowns on 202 carries. Ingram also caught 26 passes for 247 yards and five touchdowns, and he ranked third overall in Football Outsiders’ cumulative efficiency metrics for running backs, and second in per-play efficiency behind Raheem Mostert of the 49ers.
Like Mostert, Ingram was a product of the running game he was in to a degree, but he was more than an innocent bystander. He had already put up thousand-yard seasons with the Saints in 2016 and 2017, and as log as he can stay healthy, he’ll continue to be a key cog in a run game few defenses are able to stop. Injuries limited Ingram to just 22 yards on six carries in Baltimore’s upset loss to the Titans in the divisional round, and the loss of Ingram at his best put too much pressure on Jackson both as a runner and as a passer. Ingram’s presence is important to the balance of the Ravens’ offensive recipe.
9. Joe Mixon, Cincinnati Bengals
The Bengals’ 2019 offense was a hot mess, one of many reasons the team went 2-14 and positioned itself to select Joe Burrow with the first overall pick. But Mixon, the team’s second-round pick in 2017 out of Oklahoma, had no problem transcending everything around him. Mixon posted his second straight thousand-yard season in 2019, broke 52 tackles on 278 rushing attempts, and had 14 runs of 15 yards or more. Given the state of Cincinnati’s offensive line last season, Mixon had to create explosive plays on his own perhaps more than any other back in the league.
One thing that helped was when the Bengals scrapped the zone-blocking schemes that didn’t work for their talent, and went with more of a series of gap schemes. In his last four games, Mixon ran 95 times for 494 yards, a 5.2 yards per carry average, and three touchdowns. Perhaps 2020 will be a breakout season for perhaps the most underrated runner on this list.
8. Dalvin Cook, Minnesota Vikings
In April, Cook promoted himself as the best running back in the NFL as he and the Vikings started talking about a contract extension. 2020 is the last year of Cook’s rookie deal, and the Florida State alum wants to be paid in the same range as the best in the business.
“The things I do coming out of the backfield, the things I do in between the tackles, I block, I pretty much do it all,” Cook said via Chris Tomasson of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. “I don’t have to come off the field. I think some guys just don’t do as much as I do, and I think that’s why I’m today’s [top] back.”
Cook has never played a full 16-game season, and he had to work through shoulder issues in 2019. He also wore down as the season went along, averaging 5.3 yards per carry in the first eight games of the regular season, and 3.3 in the final eight. Cook’s postseason was an encapsulation thereof — he looked great in Minnesota’s wild-card win over the Saints, and was completely flummoxed by the 49ers’ excellent defense in the divisional round.
“It’s all a risk when you give any guy a contract in the league,” Cook concluded in April. “He could get hurt the next day in practice. So, it’s all a risk. But what if the guy doesn’t get hurt and he goes out there and helps contribute to the Super Bowl and he goes out there and balls out? … It’s all about what the person believes in, what the owners believe in, the GM believes in, and I firmly think the Vikings believe in me.”
Cook is right in that he possesses every attribute one would prefer in a franchise-level running back, but when asking for the kind of money he wants, the durability issue has to weigh on the minds of the Vikings’ decision-makers.
7. Saquon Barkley, New York Giants
Barkley’s 2019 season was mostly a disappointment after he led the NFL with 2,028 yards from scrimmage in his rookie campaign. A high ankle sprain diminished his effectiveness for much of his second season, and the nadir of that was his 13-carry, one-yard performance against the Jets in Week 10 where he couldn’t bounce outside, he was missing three starters on the offensive line, and his own pass protection was uncharacteristically awful.
Barkley started to put it back together near the end of the season, averaging 108.4 yards per game in December after a November in which he tallied just 29.3 yards per contest. The hope in 2020 is that a healthy Barkley will align with fourth-overall pick Andrew Thomas on an improved front five, new offensive coordinator Jason Garrett will add continuity to the run game (no sure thing there), and Barkley will return to form. At his peak, he’s one of the quickest and most elusive backs in the game, and his receiving ability forces defenses to do… well, more than whatever the Washington Football Team was doing on this 33-yard touchdown pass from Daniel Jones.
Barkley isn’t as quite as transcendent as one might have assumed in his rookie season, but he’s better than what he showed in the middle of the 2019 season when it seemed that everything possible was aligned against him. His third season will say a lot about his future potential.
6. Josh Jacobs, Las Vegas Raiders
Running back truthers regarded the Raiders’ selection of Jacobs with the 24th overall pick in the first round of the 2019 draft with the standard degree of skepticism — not just because he’s a running back, but because he was never able to manage more than 120 carries in a season in Alabama’s always-loaded backfield. Turned out, all Jacobs needed was more reps to prove his value. In his regular-season debut against the Broncos, Jacobs ran 23 times f for 85 yards and two touchdowns, adding a 28-yard catch for good measure. His worst game of the season was a 10-carry, 34-yard go against the Jets, but there really wasn’t another game in which he was bottled up like that, and he averaged less than four yards per carry in just three of his games. More common were games like his two against the Chiefs — Jacobs beat up the eventual Super Bowl champs for 203 yards on 31 carries. Jacobs proved right away that he could be a high-volume sustainer with six games in which he carried the ball at least 20 times, and no other back broke more rushing tackles in the regular season than Jacobs with 69.
Only 17 running backs have been taken in the first round since 2010, but Jacobs could prove to be the best of the lot down the road.
5. Aaron Jones, Green Bay Packers
Jones’ potential production seemed clear in the 2018 season, his second in the NFL as the Packers’ 2017 fifth-round pick out of Texas-El Paso. Then, he led the league with a 5.5 yards per carry rate and scored eight rushing touchdowns on just 133 carries. Still, then-head coach Mike McCarthy was relatively unimpressed, and said so when asked why he didn’t make Jones his primary back.
“There’s more to the offense than just running the football,” McCarthy said.
This would imply that Jones’ pass protection was a problem, or that perhaps he wasn’t a good receiver, but the tape didn’t show that. Jones would have to wait for Matt LaFleur to become the Packers’ new head coach and offensive play-designer to really break out, which Jones did in 2019. Only Ezekiel Elliott, Christian McCaffrey, and Mark Ingram ranked higher in Football Outsiders’ season-cumulative efficiency metrics for running backs, and only New Orleans’ Latavius Murray ranked higher in FO’s Success Rate metric.
There were other ways in which Jones stood out in 2019.
Sometimes, all you need is the right coach.
4. Ezekiel Elliott, Dallas Cowboys
Elliott led the league in carries and rushing yards in 2018, but he was even more productive in certain ways last season, and this was reflected in his Football Outsiders metrics — he jumped from ninth to first in DYAR (FO’s cumulative efficiency metric) and from 20th to fourth in DVOA (FO’s per-play efficiency metric). Elliott scored 14 total touchdowns to nine the year before, he broke 48 rushing tackles to 41 in 2018, and his only real downgrade was in explosive plays — he had 28 carries of 15 or more yards in 2018, and only 12 in 2019.
That said, the explosive plays were still evident, and quite often, a product of the fact that if you don’t wrap-tackle Elliott, things are not going to go well for you.
Elliott’s only potential issue in 2020 and beyond is that new head coach Mike McCarthy has exhibited some interesting decision-making when determining the value of his running backs — as we just detailed when writing about Aaron Jones. And with first-round pick CeeDee Lamb joining Amari Cooper and Michael Gallup to form perhaps the NFL’s best receiver trio, Elliott may not get the carries he has in previous years. But we’ll go ahead and assume that even Mike McCarthy will be able to figure out who Dallas’ offense goes around.
3. Christian McCaffrey, Carolina Panthers
Leading the league in yards from scrimmage (2,392) and total touchdowns (19) as McCaffrey did in the 2019 season was impressive enough. To do so with a quarterback situation in which Cam Newton played just two games and then was replaced due to injury by Kyle Allen and Will Grier? Well, that’s next-level stuff. McCaffrey came out of Stanford as the eighth overall pick known as a back who could make things happen in the passing game, and his route understanding has only increased in his three NFL seasons. McCaffrey leads the NFL in receptions (303) and receiving yards (2,503) among running backs since he came into the league, and he’s tied with New England’s James White with 15 receiving touchdowns over that time.
What makes McCaffrey more than just a situational satellite back is his ability to run with surprising power for his 5-foot-11, 205-pound frame. In 2019, he broke 49 tackles on 287 carries, and added 26 more broken tackles on his 116 receptions. Today’s NFL requires offensive skill position players who can be effective in multiple ways, and few in the league possess more effective versatility than Carolina’s franchise back.
2. Nick Chubb, Cleveland Browns
Cleveland’s offense under former head coach Freddie Kitchens was a disorganized mess in 2019, but Chubb was the stalwart among all the mess. In his second NFL season, the Georgia alum ranked second behind Tennessee’s Derrick Henry with 1.494 yards, adding 278 receiving yards on 36 catches, and there’s a reason the Browns led the league in running back screens. Nobody in the 2019 regular season had more runs of 15-plus yards than Chubb’s 20, and only Josh Jacobs of the Raiders had more broken rushing tackles than Chubb’s 66. With two notable exceptions, Chubb was everything the Browns hoped he would be in 2019. Given his near-perfect attributes for the position, you can expect more of the same over the next few seasons.
The only things that prevented Chubb from ranking first on this list were his relative ineffectiveness against stacked boxes (per Football Outsiders, the Browns had just 2.4 yards per carry and -37.2% DVOA when facing a heavy box of eight or more defenders, compared to a 5.6-yard average and 8.8% DVOA on other running back carries), and certain red zone issues (he ran 51 times for just 89 yards in the red zone, and only seven of those carries were touchdowns or first downs). We can attribute some of that to Cleveland’s overall offensive malaise, and the idea is that new head coach Kevin Stefanski will bring enough of the things he learned from Gary Kubiak in Minnesota to turn Chubb into a force multiplier in the very few ways he isn’t already.
1. Derrick Henry, Tennessee Titans
In 2019, Henry faced a series of defenses out to get him at all times, at all costs, and he responded in historic fashion. Including the postseason, 1,605 of Henry’s 1.918 rushing yards came after contact. Not only did that mark the most yards after contact in a season since at least 2006, per Pro Football Focus’ database, it’s the only time in that span (which is as far as PFF’s public database goes at this point) that the NFL’s rushing leader had more yards after contact than any other back had total rushing yards — Cleveland’s Nick Chubb finished second in total rushing yards with 1,494. And Henry did all of this while facing boxes of eight or more defenders on a league-leading 45.2% of his snaps, per Sports Info Solutions.
Not only did Henry produce at a level that most other backs would find impossible to replicate over a full season, he was the epicenter of a Titans offense that saw the professional rebirth of quarterback Ryan Tannehill, and though rushing success and play-action success are not always as aligned as you may think, you can bet defenders were slow to draw away from Henry on any Tannehill play-fake. Whether it was Tannehill or Marcus Mariota, Tennessee’s quarterbacks threw 14 touchdowns to just two interceptions when using play-action, and that wouldn’t have happened to the extent it did without Henry’s presence.
Henry turned 26 in January, and the Titans signed him to a four-year, $50 million contract extension in mid-July. Contact-based runners tend to have short lifespans, but as long as he can stay healthy, Henry should be one of the league’s predominant forces at his — or any — position. Regardless of his future, Henry performed at an all-time level in 2019, and that’s why he tops our list of running backs.
