With the elapsing of the franchise tag deadline and a multitude of RB in their prime not offered long-term deals it all but confirmed that the league sees RB as an expendable, replaceable commodity among the 53.

RB across the league have voiced their frustration with the state of the league, but I've yet to hear any suggestions from the vox populi to improve things.

So, that brings us to the question - How do you fix the RB devaluation across the league? Or, can it even be fixed?

---

For me, I think it has to be a league initiative to fix, and the best way to revalue the position is to reform rules to make the run game more appealing or effective. I don't exactly know what they could do, except to either undo some rule changes that opened up the pass game, make concessions to incentivize the run game (ie first down marker @10yds for run plays, 15 yds for pass plays?), or allow RB to have forward motion inside the tackle box pre-snap? I still don't know though if teams wouldn't just take advantage of the new rules while still churning through RBs and not really keeping them around for a second term.

I've seen or considered a number of other changes to improve the situation, but they all have their pitfalls:

- incentivized pay - recently heard that the league has some pooled money for players whose performance exceeds contract value. I can see this becoming akin to wait staff pay, where the owners would keep paying the pittance, and count on the league to make up the difference when their players do well.

- shorten college careers for RB - Wish I copied the source, but one of the arguments was that college wears a lot of these RB down (Oh hai Mike Hart), and they are spent by the time they reach the league and play out a 4 year rookie deal. The proposal was to reduce the post-HS duration for a collegiate RB to be darft eligible. I saw this becoming a classification issue - any athletic player in college would want to be classified as an RB to get out of school and get that contract faster. NIL may slow that pace, but too early to really tell yet.

- Group WR, TE, and RB equally for tag purposes - WR would take a hit, an this would require NFLPA buy-in. Would owners use the tag on TE and RB, or just take advantage of the lower cost to tag/sign a more valued WR?

- Exclude 1 RB salary per team from cap consideration - Would the Giants pay Barkley $15 per season if it didn't hurt their cap? Is he worth $15 per season to them, or to another team? You would have to require a set number of carries per season to qualify as an RB to avoid abuse, but there is still the uncertainty that teams would want to shell out big money for the Austin Ekelers when they can have a rookie on a fourth round contract play instead. Some owners are cheap bastards.

Do you all have suggestions?

---