There are two possible explanations for the running back’s current bad draw in the NFL world.
The first is that the NFL CBA, its approach to rookie contracts, and its structuring of the franchise tag is uniquely bad for running backs, and that it is thusly leading to an inefficient market in which it is impossible for running backs to capture their full economic value.
The second is that running backs aren’t as valuable as they used to be perceived to be.
I don’t know enough about the CBA to know the answer, and I suspect it’s a little bit of both. I suspect that when running backs are complaining about the current franchise tag situation (the one that left Saquon Barkley, Josh Jacobs, and Tony Pollard without extensions yesterday at the franchise tag–extension deadline), they’re really complaining that they aren’t getting as much money as star running backs used to get, and while I think this has a lot to do with football as an industry recognizing how much larger a role offensive lines play in the run game than running backs, I also think running backs are, like cornerbacks, a position group especially disadvantaged by a system that effectively caps individual salaries for the first few years of a player’s career—i.e., the primary years in which running backs and corners are valuable. There are issues with these CBA’s across all sports—we’ve talked a good amount on this site about how baseball’s has accidentally created a world where spending in free agency is not a good way to win—but the NFL’s is unique in how much the impact differs depending on position. Point guards and power forwards may age differently, but it’s nothing compared to how differently running backs and quarterbacks age. Running backs should not get massive extensions, that is probably dumb, but should they get better wages right out of college? Probably, if those wages are supposed to reflect their value, and why shouldn’t they? But players unions are run by veterans, and such.
It’s possible that the running back position will one day come back to prominence away from the world of video game create–a–player and fantasy football priority. It’s more likely we’re entering an age where offensive linemen are getting overdue credit. As they say: The game is won in the trenches.
Do Not Believe Pac-12 Sources
Here’s a journalism complaint: What happened to the days when ESPN required two sources to run a story? From the Worldwide Leader:
The Pac-12 expects to release details of its highly anticipated media rights deal in the “near future,” a league source with knowledge of the conversations told ESPN on Tuesday.
The deal will not be announced at Pac-12 football media day on Friday in Las Vegas, the source told ESPN. It is likely to include a mix of streaming and linear options and is expected to be on-par with the ACC and Big 12, the source said.
“Our 10 schools have been ridiculously patient,” the source said, adding that the league’s patience to make a deal has led to more bidders coming to the table. “That patience is about to pay off.”
Maybe ESPN’s vetted all of this, maybe ESPN’s view is that readers should employ their own judgment and be appropriately skeptical of a single interested party acting as a source, maybe ESPN simply knows that the source in question will find an outlet eventually, whether it’s ESPN or not (as whoever it is did, as we’ll get to in a moment). Whatever the case, it’s grating. What ESPN is doing here is allowing the Pac-12 to release a statement without releasing a statement. They’re letting the Pac-12 say whatever it wants without having to eventually own that they said it. What if the patience of Arizona and Utah and Arizona State does not “pay off?” If that ends up happening, the source in question will have no egg on his or her face, and no one is going to remember this enough or care about it enough to come after ESPN.
It’s crappy journalism, and that’s ok—this is sports, not cancer research, and this is what the consumer demands—but let’s at least call it what it is. This is Pac-12 propaganda masquerading as a report.
Also, this isn’t only ESPN. From Stewart Mandel and Max Olson at the New York Times’s new sports page:
The Pac-12’s long-delayed media rights deal will not be announced at Friday’s football media day, a conference source told The Athletic, in part because of recent developments in the negotiations.
“We’ve seen folks come to the table that were not at the table six months ago,” the person said. “The patience that the presidents and chancellors are showing is paying off, because waiting is going to result in better deals than the league would have gotten three, six, nine months ago.”
The person said there remains no specific timetable for an announcement beyond the “near future.”
Mandel doing this is especially irksome because of how high and mighty he, The Athletic’s college football editor in chief, so often likes to be. You shouldn’t beat your chest about journalism if you aren’t going to take it seriously yourself. Thank goodness he’s a Stew and not a Stu. Would be a bad look for this site to be associated with such a buffoon.
Bloggers should blog. Journalists should do journalism.
A Step Away from Blackouts
Arizonans are free from MLB blackout restrictions.
It’s not necessarily great news. It’s happening because Diamond Sports Group (the Bally organization) is bankrupt. But in the second such instance this season (the first was the Padres two months ago), Major League Baseball is stepping in to broadcast where Diamond Sports would or could not. Cable subscribers in Arizona will mostly just need to find a new channel. MLB TV subscribers will finally be able to watch the D-Backs through the TV app.
We’re a long way from solving this problem across baseball as a whole. Iowans, for example, cannot watch any game on MLB TV which involves the Royals, Twins, Cubs, White Sox, Brewers, or Cardinals, and many of those teams’ broadcast situations are very stable. But, it’s a start towards eliminating a big thorn not necessarily in baseball’s core consumer’s side, but in the side of those of us trying to cover it nationally online. Again: Not the biggest thing in the world. But a major frustration for a lot of devoted baseball fans, and especially for young, streaming-friendly fans (“the coveted 18–34-year-old demographic”), is slowly on its way out.
Learning Not to Trust Jed Hoyer
“The Cubs Are Going to Be Bad,” we wrote on January 25th, and look at this! The Cubs are bad. And yet, I am discouraged.
I’m not disappointed in how the Cubs have played on the field this season. More players have overperformed, in my estimation, than have underperformed. What troubles me is happening below the MLB level, or rather at the MLB level but from players coming up from the depths:
The Cubs’ farm system is weakening.
After the 2021 season, after the prospect buying spree, the Cubs farm system was ranked 7th in baseball on FanGraphs. Ahead of the 2022 trade deadline, it was ranked 8th. After 2022? 5th. Right now? 9th. It’s still a top-ten system, this is good, but at least the Pirates are likely to jump the Cubbies once draftees are added, and whether the Cubs stay in the top ten or not, we’re starting to see a trend emerge in the post-Epstein era: The Cubs’ prospects aren’t getting better.
I don’t know enough about what’s happening with individual prospects to know whether this is an error in scouting or an error in training or an error in development. What I do know is that the Cubs’ system needs to produce. That’s been the point of these last three years. When Jed Hoyer took over the reins from Theo Epstein, he embarked quietly upon his own rebuild, smartly flipping degrading assets (most notably Kris Bryant and Javy Báez as far as degrading goes) for good young talent. Of the five most noteworthy expulsions (those two, the next two, and Willson Contreras), only Yu Darvish and Anthony Rizzo have maintained productivity, and Rizzo is more reliable than elite. Jed Hoyer has been correct to sell, and he’s picked up good assets in his efforts. Those assets just are not turning into wins, and at the moment, they’re turning into worse assets than they previously were. The general philosophy Jed Hoyer is using to try to win with the Cubs is to build a really good farm system. At the MLB level, he’s doing what it takes to do that. But the process as a whole is not working, and that is highly concerning for the future of the Cubs.
I’m not ready to fully turn on Hoyer. The Cubs’ specific farm system has adopted a strength in numbers approach, prioritizing a lot of low-probability assets over a few high-probability ones, and this is the sort of approach that can lead to a boom or bust harvest. It may just be bad luck that the rebuild is going this badly, and good luck might change things over the next few years. But if you can’t win by producing on the farm, you have to win by signing free agents or trading what farm assets you do have for major league talent. If that was going to be the necessary approach, then sure, I’ll retroactively join you all in wishing it were done years ago.
Making this worse, there’s still ample room for concern that the Cubs aren’t getting the most out of their major league players, and if that’s still the case—if the Bryant/Báez/Almora/Russell problem persists and the Cubs are making good players worse—there’s not a lot of room to hope. The Hoyer administration is doing a great job acquiring the materials to win baseball games. It’s doing a bad job of turning those materials into a functional whole. The jury’s out on both MLB development and how well the farm system is working, but neither is earning itself ringing endorsements right now. I’m still personally willing to be patient, willing to wait another offseason and hope for division contention in 2024. But for the first time, I’m worried that the impatient among us are correct.
Hopefully Jameson Taillon deals tonight and pulls us away from this conversation for at least a day.
