On Monday afternoon, the deadline passed for teams to agree to long-term deals with players they had franchise tagged this past offseason. Among the players who could not secure a long-term contract were Josh Jacobs, Saquon Barkley, and Tony Pollard, three of the best players at the running back position in the entire league.
The discourse in the football world quickly shifted towards a passionate debate about what exactly the market should be for running backs and why we have seen the value steadily decreasing for a position that was once the backbone of NFL offenses in the not-so-distant past.