There’s no question the running back position has been devalued in recent years. Teams aren’t paying top dollar for even the best backs in football, which resulted in holdouts for Josh Jacobs, Saquon Barkley and Jonathan Taylor this offseason.
It’s created a “running backs don’t matter” narrative that certainly holds some truth, and you don’t have to look any further than the Los Angeles Rams for clear-cut evidence. They showed in 2018 that you don’t need a premier back to have success running the ball, riding C.J. Anderson in the playoffs when Todd Gurley was banged up.
This year, they’ve gotten more production out of Kyren Williams, a fifth-rounder, than they ever did with Cam Akers, a second-round pick in 2020. And now that Williams is out with an ankle injury, the Rams have had to turn to a committee that’s led by two running backs who hadn’t touched the ball on offense in the first six weeks.
In fact, Darrell Henderson Jr. was out of the NFL since last November until the Rams added him to their practice squad last week. In the first six games of the season, Royce Freeman didn’t get a single touch with the Rams.
Yet, both players managed to put up decent numbers in Williams’ absence on Sunday against the Steelers. Freeman led the team in rushing with 66 yards on just 12 attempts, averaging a healthy 5.5 yards per carry. Henderson was less efficient, but he still had 61 yards and a touchdown on 18 carries.
Since the start of the 2022 season, the Rams have only had seven games with more rushing yards than the 135 they had on Sunday against Pittsburgh. How much do running backs really matter if you can get 61 yards out of a guy who’s been available for almost a year, and 66 yards out of someone who had just 456 total yards in the previous three years combined?
It’s not as if the Rams used a premium draft pick to find their leading rusher this season, Williams. He was a fifth-rounder who barely played as a rookie in 2022, yet he has 456 yards rushing, 105 yards receiving and seven touchdowns this season.
No one is arguing that Williams is as productive or impactful as, say, Christian McCaffrey. McCaffrey is obviously the better player. But the Rams spent a fifth-round pick on Williams, while the 49ers traded second-, third-, fourth- and fifth-round picks for McCaffrey and pay him $16 million per year.
In their first six games this season, Williams rushed for 456 yards and six touchdowns, while McCaffrey rushed for 553 and seven touchdowns. McCaffrey has 72 more yards receiving, but is the gap in production really that huge? Williams is averaging 5.1 yards per touch and McCaffrey averages 5.5.
Going back to the original point, the Rams have shown they can get value out of running backs who A) don’t cost much and B) don’t need much experience in their offense. We saw that with Anderson five years ago, we saw it with Williams this season, and we saw it with Henderson and Freeman on Sunday.
It’s why so many have made the case that running backs don’t matter.
