When Saquon Barkley went No. 2 overall in the NFL Draft to the Giants on Thursday, the league did something it hasn’t done since the turn of the millennium.
Running backs are still being drafted less often, but Saquon Barkley just revived one trend.
As running backs trend downward on the whole, teams are investing top-five picks in them. Barkley’s the latest.
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The last time teams picked a running back in the top five picks of the NFL Draft for three consecutive years was 1999-2001: Edgerrin James to the Colts, Jamal Lewis to the Ravens, and LaDainian Tomlinson to the Chargers. There were five top-five running back selections between 2005 and 2008, including three in ‘05 alone. But then there was just one in the seven drafts from 2009 to 2015: Trent Richardson, who turned out to be an epic bust.
Barkley’s now gone in the top five, too. He follows Ezekiel Elliott in 2016 and Leonard Fournette in 2017, making the first three-year streak for top-five backs in 17 years.
The recent hit rate for top-five running back picks is solid.
Great? No. But not the disaster it’s sometimes made out to be. The 10 picked in the top five this millennium:
- 2000: Lewis, who had more than 10,000 yards rushing in a decade-long career
- 2001: Tomlinson, a Hall of Famer
- 2005: Ronnie Brown, who made one Pro Bowl amid a couple of decent seasons with the Dolphins but never saw his career take off
- 2005: Cadillac Williams, Brown’s Auburn teammate who had his career ruined by injury
- 2005: Cedric Benson, a bust with the Bears who turned out to be OK in a second act with the Bengals years later
- 2006: Reggie Bush, who wasn’t the same all-world player he was in college, but still turned out to be a useful NFL running back
- 2008: Darren McFadden, mostly a bust for the Raiders, though he wasn’t bad
- 2012: Richardson
- 2016: Elliott
- 2017: Fournette
That’s one Hall of Famer (Tomlinson), one really good player (Lewis), three or four decent guys, two or three busts, and two young players who look like they’ll have strong careers. The hit rate among the 22 top-five quarterbacks taken from 2000-17 isn’t a lot different: some great, some bad, some OK.
On the whole, though, the league is still backing away from RBs in the draft.
They’re both getting drafted less often ...
... and, when they are picked, way later in the draft:
The first year of the draft’s current seven-round format was 1994. That year, teams drafted 28 running backs with an average selection of 111th overall — mid-fourth round, basically. Now, 150th overall is now about the average projection.
While the decline in overall picks has been slight and might not even be significant, the drop in their average draft position has been steep.
When a running back goes early, it means he’s extra special.
Rams general manager Les Snead picked Georgia’s Todd Gurley at No. 10, in what turned out to be a brilliant move. Gurley is one of 23 running backs to go in the top 10 since 1994.
“I like to always say, ‘The Hall of Fame’s made up of human beings,’” Snead told SB Nation. “So I think what’s occurred is, hey, there’s some special human beings playing the running back position. And hey, they touch the ball a lot. They score touchdowns. I think what’s occurred is because there’s been a few special ones come out and had success, yeah, other teams are like, ‘OK, we should do that.’ But I think it all depends on who’s wearing that helmet.”
When running backs do get picked early, it doesn’t indicate a league-wide uptick in interest in the position. The 2005 draft that had an incredible three backs in the top five was otherwise completely ordinary: It had 25 backs drafted in total (tied for ninth-most since 1994) at an average draft position of 129.3 (12th-latest since 1994).
The selections of Elliott and Fournette the last two years haven’t been bellwethers for the rest of the field, either, with those drafts boasting two of the three lowest average draft spots for backs since ‘94. (The ‘17 draft had 21 backs taken between rounds 4 and 7.) Running backs further down the board have kept sliding in unison.
So, why have running backs slipped? There’s no one clear answer.
NFL teams run less than they used to. The last four seasons have featured the fewest rushing attempts per game of any seasons in modern history, reaching a low of 26 per team in 2016. Running backs spend more time running routes than they used to, but they don’t feature as heavily in the average offense as before. The proliferation of the spread offense has led to fewer dedicated run calls and more run/pass options.
Still, running backs take a beating unrivaled among skill-position players. In 2017, the league’s 44 highest touches totals were all by running backs. It’s not a coincidence that the league leader by a full 60 touches, Le’Veon Bell, played the year on a franchise tag salary and will again in 2018. Just like in the draft, teams invest in running backs if they’re special, but they’re generally hesitant to put long-term resources into them.
They have relatively short careers and even shorter peaks. Their job is relatively simple on a lot of plays: Take the ball, go where there’s grass, and don’t fumble. The difference between an elite running back and a replacement-level guy isn’t the same as between Julio Jones and some receiver off the waiver wire.
It’s not that the position isn’t critical anymore.
But even a former running back who coached the position for more than a decade paints it as a place to find quantity first, in the hopes that quality will emerge from somewhere.
“I just know that if you wanna compete for a world championship, you better have one. Or two,” Chargers coach Anthony Lynn said. “If you can’t run the football, it’s gonna be hard. You can devalue runners all you want, but in my opinion, you can’t have enough of them.”
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