You get paid for what you’re expected to do moving forward not for what you have already done. GMs are playing the numbers which overwhelmingly support that human beings that play the RB position more often than not peak at age 27 or younger before their play starts to decline and as such don’t deserve mega multi year contracts that go significantly beyond that point which is unfortunate for guys that play RB since they’re usually coming up for their 2nd contract around age 26-27 or can be tagged up to that point if they were later round picks or UDFA that outperformed. I’m not sure how you fix it without breaking something else. I think eliminating the tag, for instance, would be to the detriment of smaller market teams and of the competitive balance of the league.

Teams do still value having a strong run game. I think that might be the underlying point flgatorsandjags is really making. GMs have just realized en masse that there are more cap efficient ways to build and maintain one rather than throw good money at a likely declining player.

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