Should an NFL team want to win a Super Bowl in the age of high flying offenses they should never overpay their running backs. Recently, as I was scrolling through Twitter. I spotted a very interesting spreadsheet that correlates to my point that the Running Back is not a very important position to pay.
Super Bowl Winners Do Not Overpay The RB’s
The last 12 Super Bowl winners all have one thing in common. The leading rusher of the Champion team is paid no more than $2.5 million. Overpaying for a running back is not a very smart thing to do.
Defense and QB Play Win Titles.
Let’s take a look at some of these teams here. The lowest paid running back is James Starks of the 2010 Packers. That team was 100%, not a running team Aaron Rodgers was at the peak of his prime and outgunned the Pittsburgh Steelers in that game and practically the whole year.
However, the highest-paid leading rusher was Percy Harvin (Who is a wide receiver) of the 2013 Seahawks. Now that team featured The Legion of Boom and Marshawn Lynch who was in full Beast Mode at this time. Nevertheless, Lynch only made about $7 million that season.
Coincidently all of these teams had many things in common. One of them being their quarterbacks were on absolute fire in all of these playoff runs. 2011 Eli Manning, 2012 Joe Flacco, 2017 Nick Foles, etc., The only outlier would be the 2015 Broncos who had Brock Osweiler and a very old Peyton Manning. However, that team scored by timely passes and a ground pound run game which was by committee. Another commonality between these teams is a good Offensive Line and a great Defense. Take a look at all of these teams’ playoff runs almost all of them were fueled by a suffocating defense and an offensive line that kept their quarterback clean.
Defense still wins championships just look at Super Bowl 55. The Buccaneers were on Patrick Mahomes within 1-2 seconds of the snap. They locked up Tyreek Hill and didn’t allow him to get space. The point being teams that overpay running backs without putting that money into an offensive line will never win you much. Take that money and build a defense and an offensive line.
