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Few positions have drawn as much scrutiny in recent years as running back, with NFL teams seemingly refusing to make premium investments in the spot both via free agency and the draft. Then came the 2024 offseason, when big names like Saquon Barkley and Josh Jacobs wasted no time landing splashy deals to start free agency.
What changed? And were this year’s running back deals actually more lucrative than those of prior offseasons?
Right off the bat, we can answer the second part: Yes, this year’s investments were richer. If we exclude the three backs who played 2023 under the franchise tag (worth between $10 million and $11.8 million), it’s plain as day that this year’s market was both deeper and pricier at an otherwise increasingly devalued position:
Note: “AAV” denotes average annual value.
Even if we include last year’s trio of tagged backs — Barkley, Jacobs and Tony Pollard — the 2024 market has blown recent years out of the water, with Jacobs’ nearly $50 million pact with the Green Bay Packers easily becoming the largest free-agent running back deal since Le’Veon Bell got $52.5 million from the New York Jets in 2019. While the $5 million per-year mark is an arbitrary measuring stick here, it’s also notable that more than a half-dozen backs reached that total in 2024, as opposed to just two in 2020-2021.
Clearly this year’s backs got paid more handsomely. So let’s now return to the original follow-up: What changed? For one, there’s the salary cap. It’s not unusual for the NFL cap to rise each year. But this year’s rise was immense. If we exclude the jump from 2021-2022, a 14% increase fueled almost exclusively by the NFL restoring normal operations after the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s increase in league-wide cap space (13.6%) was the largest in almost 20 years, dating back to a seismic 19.3% jump between 2005 and 2006.
In other words, all 32 teams had more money to spend than…
Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/2024-nfl-free-agency-what-changed-in-big-money-running-back-market-comparing-2024-deals-to-recent-years/
Author : Cody Benjamin
Publish date : 2024-03-15 19:10:59
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