When football fans tell me the sport has gone soft _ and a few do, both men and women, always with a scowl _ I resort to a trusty reply.
Tell that to the running backs.
That's the clap back, when fans bemoan rules that have made football less hazardous for quarterbacks and receivers and tight ends. By less hazardous, I mean less likely to produce brain injuries, which of course still happen.
Listen to Reggie Bush, if you think today's running back has a soft gig.
"I want my sons to play quarterback," Bush told me last month.
The inescapable hard truth for running backs _ even the few as elusive as Bush, who had moments that recalled Gale Sayers and Barry Sanders _ is that defensive players are allowed to tee off on them and almost no one else, and there's a steep price to be paid.
Running backs take the most hits and the hardest hits, which erodes their speed and agility, which in turn exposes them to more collisions. This predictable depreciation isn't lost on NFL actuaries, as the league's signing period is once again telling us.
Bush hung up his cleats four years ago. He did very well to last 10 years in the NFL.
For Todd Gurley and Melvin Gordon to last an NFL decade, they'd have to play five more years.
Pro tip: Don't bet they will.
Gurley is only 25, but has less zip in the wake of knee issues. The Rams released him Thursday, five years after drafting him 10th overall.
Just two years ago, Gurley earned his second All-Pro berth after running for 17 touchdowns and 89.4 rushing yards per game as the Rams reached the Super Bowl.
Gordon went 15th in the same 2015 draft, to San Diego.
Friday, the two reached terms with new teams _ Gurley with the Atlanta Falcons, Gordon with the Denver Broncos. Gurley took a pay cut (one-year deal for $6 million), while Gordon, who will be 27 in three weeks, settled for less money (two years, $16 million) than he sought last summer.
The lesson here for NFL teams is familiar: Unless a running back is stupendously good, don't draft him in the first round _ and especially among the top-10 picks where the guaranteed money forms a top tier. Even if he's stupendously good, the $30-million price tag for top-5 territory is too rich.
Chances are, you'll find someone useful elsewhere. Importantly, because salary dollars saved can be plowed into other positions, that player will cost almost no guaranteed money in comparison.
Take the recent Super Bowl: A pair of undrafted running backs, Damien Williams and Raheem Mostert, the former an alum of Mira Mesa High, the latter a speedster jettisoned by seven NFL teams, added to the mountain of evidence that low-cost running backs can thrive against top competition.
Williams lit up the Super Bowl, both as a rusher and receiver, to help the Chiefs raise their first Super Bowl trophy in 50 years.
Mostert propelled the San Francisco 49ers, who rode his 220 rushing yards and four touchdowns in a lopsided NFC title game.
Deeper in the first round, investing in a running back still can make sense. Does he have to wear a red cape and change clothes in a telephone booth (whatever that is)? Not necessarily, oddly enough, although he'll be an outlier.
For example, I doubt Bill Belichick regrets investing the 31st pick of the 2018 draft in Sony Michel, a good but not great running back from Georgia.
The Patriots profiled as a likely Super Bowl contender that year. Michel blossomed late in his rookie year, enhancing a ground game that factored heavily in New England's winter surge. He averaged 4.7 yards per rush in the playoffs. He scored the only touchdown in the Super Bowl, a Pats victory. If Michel's talents weren't special, the circumstances were.
Bush noted this about quarterbacks: They stick around.
Even a mediocre quarterback can hold an NFL job for a dozen years. He still might make more NFL money in his career than many star running backs.
When Williams started out with the Miami Dolphins, very few of his dollars were guaranteed in a three-year deal that averaged about $500,000. The Chiefs got him for just $1.2 million, nothing like the $7 million the Saints guaranteed to quarterback Teddy Bridgewater last season to back up Drew Brees.
Williams earned a big pay raise nine months into his Chiefs tenure: A two-year extension for $5.1 million.
But this was after he showed the Chiefs he could be as good as All-Pro back Kareem Hunt, whom they cut for bad behavior.
Reggie Bush is right. Teach your kids to throw the ball.
If they want to play running back, have them study Williams, a deft receiver. Someone like Andy Reid will put them to good use. The overdue bonus: Linebackers itching to clobber them won't get that chance if they're chasing them in pass coverage.
