Why RBs Don't get Paid Anymore (Freakonomics)

Our running game improved... I don't know what else to tell you. We didn't run the ball more for a myriad of reasons (OC choice, AR switching out of runs in RPO's, not enough possessions, defense unable to get the ball back, etc.), but it wasn't because we couldn't run the ball. We were T-16 in YPC, and gained a quarter yard per carry more than the year before. We just seldomly ran it. The literal only reason we were low is because of low attempts, not low production.

The stats weren't provided without context. I gave you all of the context in my post. The point was that our backs and rushing attack performed quite well, and were simply additional attempts away from being far more productive, because they produced well at a per touch level. If you want to see stats that are provided without context, look at the gem below....

If you look at the stats without context, you would think that we were a good rushing team in 2024 and a bad rushing team in 2025, but this couldn't be further from the truth. We were the 11th ranked rushing offense, but the 4th most attempts and T-20th in YPC. If it wasn't for a good rushing average by Fields, our offense would have rushed for less than 4 YPC for the season. We were a poor rushing offense (really poor if only gauging rushing by backs) that ran the ball a ton, propping up our stats. Going into 2025, we raised our YPC by 0.2 YPC (and did so without the aid of a rushing QB). Our backs significantly out performed the 2024 output on a per carry basis. We ran it a ton less. Such is life. But if you look at these stats without context, it would be easy to be duped into thinking we were a quality rushing team in 2024 and a poor one in 2025. The reality is that if you look a little deeper... the truth is that we were a poor rushing team in 2024 and a significantly better rushing team in 2025. That's not "weird advanced stats" pushing it either... it's just a fact.

We started out a bit slow running it, but after about 4 weeks or so we really became quite a quality rushing team. Idk who you want to blame for not running it more, but it was there for most of the year. We just... didn't.

 

Need more? Come on. You just watched two backs post a 4.5 YPC and a 4.7 YPC season and are advocating we should have gone with the guy that has a career sub 4.0 YPC? That just doesn't compute to a rational mind. We simply just needed to give the ball a few more times to the guys who could do something with it. Not over feed the ball to someone who could run into the back of the OL and fall forward. Both Warren and Gainwell are vastly superior rushers to Harris.

I get that your criteria for better back = bigger back... but that just isn't how it works in the NFL anymore.

 

We may or may not get to see it. Harris won't be particularly sought after being a big, slow, non-explosive back coming off an achilles tear at the age of 28. He's expected to make less than $3m next year and quite frankly, I doubt any teams are going to be willing to give him more than a 1 year deal. He won't be handed a tandem #2 role, as most teams are going to find more value drafting someone than betting on Harris' achilles. He will be signed by someone as an insurance policy, but I think he could end up being a RB3 somewhere and really only get carries if he completely shows out.

If he loses a step with his injury, I'd find it hard to believe he'd be able to stick in the NFL. It wouldn't entirely shock me to see 2026 be Najee's last NFL season. I hope that isn't the case for Najee the human being, because he seems like a good guy, but as a player it is entirely feasible.

You are correct he is no longer under contract with the Chargers. If I am him, I would probably try to stay with them. Offensively, they make some sense stylistically.

 

Someone told me to wait and see after Najee left. Warren will get increased carries and his YPC will decrease. Funny thing, it didn't happen.

Also;

• Warren's rate of 100 yd rushing games is 2X Harris'.
• Harris had at least 20 carries in 7 out of 9 of his 100 yd games. Warren? Never got more than 16 carries in his 100 yd games.

I think Najee will stick but he will be like a lesser Nick Chubb.

 

My guess is that he'll get something around vet minimum. Maybe with a bunch of incentives he won't achieve (like the contract the Chargers gave him last year).

 

my criteria is more yards and me team success.

running for a higher ypc with less attempts and less yards isn’t a flex for better production.

also, .2 ypc improvement isn’t anything to puff your chest out.

What it tells me is we didn’t have as many short yardage attempts as the prior year, our TOP was also worse.

and having a QB whole could get first downs with his legs was indeed a positive and something we lacked year. Look at Drake Maye. A QB who can scoot extends drives. AR struggled and threw up prayers on a lot of 3rd downs.

An improved ground game that got less yards isn’t impressive to me. I could see if we just won a playoff game and the ground game was a big reason but our defense forced THREE turnovers and we scored 6 points off of it. SIX!!

Did we win more games? No..
Did we improve our TOP? No..
Did we impose our will in the playoffs? No

But since we were .2 yards better per carry that is considered an improvement?

No, not to me.

 

Welp, fact checking;

Rush attempts with ≤3 yds to go:

• 2025 = 97
• 2024 = 85

[*depends on your definition of "short yardage"]

Steelers ground game was emerging until the Washington injury. That completely changed how the OL had to play without his blocking. Add in Metcalf missing the last two (he is a decent run blocker) and it's not hard to see why things changed at the end.

Also, did you forget about the 29 yds rushing against BAL in the 2024 playoff game? Steelers doubled that against HOU who arguably had a far better defense.

 

I could see it.. Even then, between the injury and the fact that he's not a very good back, he could be done. LAC signing him then immediately drafting a back in the 1st rd was not a great look for him. Like I question if he's even JAG at this point...

 

My guess is that having the pedigree gets him at least one more chance (on a cheap contract).

I'd imagine someone will look at him and think "he's a good short yardage back who doesn't fumble". And I think at least the 2nd part of that is true.

You never know though. I'm sure more and more teams use analytics. Which isn't going to be good for him (either in terms of analyzing his performance AND looking at how RBs with his number of touches age).

 

Yes it is? Better per carry production is exactly what that means. When we ran the ball in 2025, we on average, gained more yards than when we ran the ball in 2024. Simple as that.

No, its not massive, but its still an improvement. It's more of an improvement when you realize our 2024 numbers were aided by the fact that we had a QB who had success running it. Our YPC would have been below 4.0 YPC as a team otherwise. The only real difference was replacing a poor starting RB in Harris with a solid starting back in Warren and getting nice production from the #2 in Gainwell (Warren had been producing as the #2 until he finally got his chance to start).

They don't have specific statistics for short yardage rushes, so there is no way to prove this beyond "just a feeling".

It doesn't matter if you're impressed or not, or what YOUR specific criteria are for a "good" rushing attack. The 2025 unit was a superior rushing team to the 2024 unit on a per carry basis whether you think it is or not. This is backed with statistical fact.

 

I think this is because you totally disregard succ%. Which (when combined with YPC) mostly disproves many arguments for Najee IMO.

Also, when you say total yards, do you mean total team yards or total yards by an individual RB? I don't think either is great by itself, but since you value "team success", I assume this also means "total team yardage"?

I think this was brought up when we were discussing compensation for RBs. Where basically all of the top 6 RBs by AAV (all but Henry IIRC) played on teams with average to below yardage by team.

As you pointed out (maybe without meaning to), the SB MVP was in one of these low cost tandems. And unlike when we had Bell (who was awesome when healthy in the playoffs), the Seahawks were able to still have a good running game when they lost one of their top 2 RBs (because they had a good tandem).

This seems to clearly support the idea that it's much better to have two cheaper RBs (more total yards and more resilient against "point failures" like we had when Bell was on the team) instead of paying a single RB at the top of the RB pay scale.

I imagine that you'll object to this idea because it doesn't support high pay for individual RBs. But it was certainly true in the 2025 season (the only season I checked). Maybe it's not as clear in other seasons.

My guess is that it was somewhat less true last year because we had 2x ~ 2k rushers last year. But both of those guys got big extensions after the season IIRC. And while Henry only had a modest reduction in production...Barkley produced about half as many yards as he did the year before (which I assume you'd care a lot about since "more yards" is your criteria).

RB rankings by AAV in the 2024 season (I wasn't going to do team rankings as well..but then I got curious):
AAV: https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/ranking...ition/rb/sort/contract_average_league_cap_pct

Team Rushing in 2024 (hopefully I didn't **** up the sorting this time!): https://www.nfl.com/stats/team-stats/offense/rushing/2024/reg/all

1. McCaffrey (he was on my fantasy team in 2024...so I know he didn't play much that year)
2. Taylor (had a really good season)
3. Barkley (elite in 2024)
4. Kamara (OK, but not great)
5. Jacobs (similar to Taylor)
6. Former Steeler James Conner (just under 1100 yards)

So on this list only McCaffrey was a dud in 2024.

• 9ers 12th (even though CMac had like 50 carries for 200 yards)
• Colts 8th
• Eagles 2nd (and they won the SB!)
• Saints 14th
• GB 5th
• Cardinals 7th

So the return on paying RBs at the top end of the pay scale was better in 2024 than in 2025. But still probably less than expected based on pay (probably not super surprising since guys on rookie contracts are such a massive advantage in the NFL).

Not sure which year is more representative.

Edited to add:
You are correct that our offensive 3rd down percentage in 2025 (38.4% = 20th) was less than in 2024 (39.8% = 12th). While the ranking difference here is big, the actual performance difference is not because both values are close to the median offensive performance (where most teams are clustered). This is a good illustration about how just looking at rankings alone can be misleading.
https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/third-down-conversion-pct

But the year-over-year difference here was way smaller than the defensive difference: 2025 (43.03% = 26th) 2024 (37.44% = 11th).

Google said that a typical team will run 200 - 250 3rd downs a season. Let's take 225. If that's the case, we'd have converted ~ 3 more 3rd downs last season and allowed 13 more on defense. So the difference on defense was about 4x more than the difference on offense.

And honestly, the spread was probably more than that because we likely faced more 3rd downs on defense than we earned on offense in both years.

The reason we had far fewer snaps this year vs last year was way more about the defense not being able to get off the field then the offense being able to stay on it.
https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/opponent-third-down-conversion-pct

So the argument of "the reason we got so many fewer offensive plays in 2025 is because our running game was much better in 2024" doesn't seem to hold water. It was the that the defense sucked (a really sad way for Tomlin to end his career IMO).

 

IMO, it means that the chance of a big run (relative to getting stuffed) increased. This is not surprising because (1) Najee never got the really big runs that drive YPC and (2) he also got stuffed more than his fair share of times (see: low succ% AND YPC despite having a pretty good rate of 15+ yard runs...this suggests that he also had a larger than normal number of short runs...which I think is how many would remember his time with the Steelers).

Warren is also not that great at getting the really big runs (so the YPC increase wasn't huge). But since his probability of doing this is > 0%, his YPC is higher. As importantly (for consistency), his succ% is appreciably higher than Najee's was last year.

But some people really, really like Najee. So their argument turns on "but he had 1k yards!". Because that (and not fumbling...and not getting massive injuries until 15 carries after he left the Steelers) are the things that look good for Najee. And that he's not bad at any one role (except home run hitter). So you can put him in any situation and he won't really be out of place. He can be an every down back because he was durable (with us) and had elite ball security. He could also be a 3rd down back because he was above average at blitz pickup (he only lost snaps to Warren here because Warren is very good at this...not becuase Najee is bad). Najee can also catch out of the backfield (as a consistent dump off guy like he was in his 1st year...plus that fantastic grab against the Rats with Kenny). So on top of being durable (until he wasn't), he's also versatile.

And he seems to be a good human...unlike our last really good back (Bell) who seems to be a pretty terrible human being (based on the accusations that he and his brother repeatedly SA'd their cousin from the time she was 7 until she "reached the age of consent"...there are massive financial judgements here, so I assume that they lost a civil court case and not a criminal one?).



Maybe that Bell stuff is old news to others. But I'd never heard it before about a week ago. Before that, most bad character arguments about Bell were about him not signing the tag. I think it was a bad business decision to not sign the longer term contract we offered him, but I never thought that made him a bad person....this **** is much different. The video posted here is from 11 months ago. So I assume it's at least relatively recent news.

 

Comparing the number of rushes that resulted in ≤3 yards gained, as a team there wasn't much difference between this year and last. If you look at only the top two RBs there is a difference between Warren and Najee but it's clearly volume based. Gainwell2025 vs Warren2024 had only 2 rushes difference in short gains.

RUSH ATTEMPTS RESULTING IN ≤ 3 YARDS GAINED:



[* % of Total Team Rushes]

As a team the short yard rushes as a % of total rushes wasn't different enough to argue over. Anyone suggesting 2024 was a better rushing season is simply judging by look not by facts.

 

Also, why is your criteria only total rush yards and not yards from scrimmage?

And can you let us know why the total difference in YPC is only 0.2, when the difference in the YPC for the top 2 RBs is 0.55 YPC? This doesn't seem to fit with the argument that the running game got worse because we went from Najee/Warren (YPC = 4.06 in 2024) to Warren/Gainwell (YPC = 4.60 in 2024).

When we look at the top 2 backs from 2024 and 2025, the TPC in 2024 was 4.06 and in 2025 it was 4.60 (data from PFR below). As we saw in-season, a big part of that was the two big runs against the Lions...which was hilarious because I think that same day (or maybe the day before) you were talking **** about how Warren was just as bad at big runs as Najee was. Admittedly, Warren isn't great at big runs which is why I think he should be the RB2 on a really good running team. But the RB1 has to be good (unlike in 2024)

And if you want to look at the weighted average of the success rate (how consistent the running game was), in 2024 it was 45.7% and 54.8% in 2025. This is a huge difference in consistency. This is mostly because Najee's success rate was really bad in 2024 and he got a lot of carries. Warren's was OK (right at 50%), but even better in 2025 at 54.5%. Gainwell was a little better at 55.3%.

2024

• Najee: 263 carries, 1043 yards, 43.7% succ%
• Warren: 120 carries, 511 yards, 50.0% success%

2025

• Warren: 211 carries, 958 yards, 54.5%
• Gainwell: 114 carries, 537 yards, 55.3% succ%

 

I would agree that YPC is generally a stat that shows how often someone breaks larger runs. Warren's YPC being has a lot to do with him ripping off a couple really nice big runs (had a good one vs. Cincy, two vs. the Lions, etc.), but like you said, his succ% is much better, simply meaning better things happened with the ball in his hands than Najee did.

I think the main reason for people liking Najee is his style more than anything. Pittsburgh LOVES its' big running backs. I would argue that he was less versatile than you'd think (though, I do understand where you're coming from). He was a good blocker, and his hands weren't awful... but he was terrifyingly bad in space, so he was replaced by Warren in that role because Warren could actually make a defense pay in the open field. He wasn't bad in the third down role because he can't block or catch... its because he can't get upfield quick enough and he can't make NFL defenders miss in open space. He was taken out of that role due to necessity. It was just an unfortunate thing because Najee NEEDED the volume to help him be effective. However, he struggled with vision and explosion, so he didn't do much with the ball when he had it. It just felt awful all the way around. He had to carry it 15 times for 45 yards to rip off a couple nice 15-20 yarders in the 4th quarter. The juice wasn't worth the squeeze, as we could've just given the ball to someone who wasn't a bad runner and performed better offensively.

Yes, Najee was a good human. He wasn't hard to root for as a person, he was just hard to watch as a back. He's just unfortunate to have been born in the wrong era of football. Had he run the ball in the late 90' and early 00's... He's likely considered a top 10 back. Those were the prime years for volume plodders. Line up and run it 20-25 times and hopefully eventually wear the opposition down. Today's game has backs being key weapons in the offense. They have to be homerun hitters, receivers out of the backfield, and excel in space. The things that Najee can't do have heightened value, while the things he is good at are devalued. Its how you can have 4 consecutive 1000 yard seasons rushing and be considered a starting RB by exactly zero NFL teams.

 

Yes, its volume based for sure... but Warren had gained 3 or less on 57% of runs vs 61% of runs for Najee (basically taking their # of short runs/# of total rushes). So he would have 1 less rush per 20 that was bad. Coupled with the ability to actually rip off long runs, and it isn't hard to see why his YPC was significantly better. He got stopped less, had a higher succ %, and did more when he broke one.

Our rushing attack was encouraging last year. It would have been nice to see us run more (I remember yelling at the TV different times "RUN THE BALL"). We actually had efficiency in the backfield. It would have been nice to see us attempt to establish the run more.

 

our total YPC was bolstered by the QB run in 2024. Fields had good success running the ball, which upped our average a good bit. If you look purely at the RB's it is hard to argue that our rushing attack wasn't significantly better in 2025 than in 2024. Pretty good stats to bring here. I can't really argue with any of it. Good stuff.

I think Warren is a great back for what we're trying to do. He's a top 15 all around back in the league IMO. Barely, but still a quite good player. He does everything well and fits the mold of a quality modern NFL runner. We probably have a good 3 years left of him being a high end player. I would love to see us pair him with Gainwell again and use that tandem moving forward. However, there are tons of good RB's on the open market. I wouldn't hate taking a shot on a different back as RB and see what happens too. Just depends on what McCarthy wants to do with the offense.

 

i believe stevensons YAC includes yards gained from the guys that pick up his fumbles.

 

I see were the Cowboys inked their RB Williams to
a new contract. Now we can get to work on Gainwell.

 

Gainwell- team MVP hitting FA


Walker III- SB MVP hitting FA


RB value just isn't there.

 

Good point.
My first thought was that Tom Brady turned NFL defenses into pass defenses. So no need for the thumper MLBacker, bench a DL for a nickel back....so the conditions were right for someone like the Phila Eagles to bulk up and take a running first offense to the super bowl. The Steelers fell for this also, remember. Had to get harmon to stop the run...Dallas had to trade Parsons to get DL....etc.
So I blame the Patriots largely.
...Predictably, the trend is switching somewhat back to a more balanced position these days.