This has been the NFL season of the free agent running back. When I filed my quarter-season awards column after Week 4, the top two players competing for Offensive Player of the Year honors were the Ravens’ Derrick Henry and the Eagles’ Saquon Barkley, both of whom were signed away from teams that didn’t really want to keep them in unrestricted free agency. My midseason awards are coming up in a couple of weeks, and I’d be surprised if both weren’t in the top three again.
Henry and Barkley are having an impact on and off the field. Giants fans spent Sunday furious that their franchise let Barkley leave for the Eagles, a sentiment legendary coach Bill Belichick shared the day after Philadelphia beat New York 28-3. Alvin Kamara, who wasn’t able to agree to terms on a new deal with the Saints during the offseason, just signed a two-year extension for $24.5 million. Has a league that spent years treating veteran backs as overrated and foolish investments finally realized it has gone too far?
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Let’s take a closer look at the four most prominent free agent backs from the 2024 offseason — Henry, Barkley, Joe Mixon and Josh Jacobs — and evaluate what they’ve done this season. How have they exceeded expectations? Can they keep it up? And what will it mean for the rest of the NFL’s running backs beyond the season?
Jump to a section:
Big plays are back for Henry, Barkley
How much has blocking helped them?
How valuable has Mixon been for HOU?
Has Jacobs been a good signing for GB?
What all this means for future free agent RBs
How Derrick Henry and Saquon Barkley have thrived
Henry’s deal with the Ravens: Two years, $16 million
Barkley’s deal with the Eagles: Three years, $37.5 million
Let’s start with the two most prominent backs to change teams during free agency, because there are notable similarities between their starts to the season. Henry leads the league with 873 rushing yards, while Barkley ranks third (658) behind the 49ers’ Jordan Mason (667). They rank 1-2 in yards from scrimmage and rush yards over expectation (RYOE), with Henry posting a whopping 363 RYOE through seven games. Barkley, in second place, is at 226. Henry’s 26 additional carries explain some of that gap, but Barkley is closer to eighth than he is to Henry in first.
They also rank 1-2 in explosive runs, which are carries gaining 10 or more yards. And that’s where the 2024 versions of Barkley and Henry stand out. Before we get to that point, though, we have to understand what has been helping to make their lives easier. Let’s hit the commonalities between these two situations and how they’ve helped these two star backs hit lofty heights in their new locales:
1. Each enjoys the gravity of a quarterback who can run.
It’s not necessarily new for Barkley and Henry to play with quarterbacks who can run with the ball in their hands. Barkley spent most of his career in New York with Daniel Jones, who derived a meaningful amount of value from his ability as a runner. Henry’s best years in Tennessee were with Ryan Tannehill, and while Tannehill wasn’t often involved in the quarterback run game, the college wide receiver was a major threat in the boot game off play-action.
I would argue the quarterbacks now playing alongside these star backs are more meaningful rushing threats. While Jones was an impactful scrambler, Jalen Hurts is more intimately involved with the rushing attack as part of the QB run game in Philadelphia. Lamar Jackson‘s ability as a runner requires no explanation. He’s incredible when the Ravens call his number and scary when they don’t. One of the most frustrating plays for the Bucs during their blowout loss on Monday night was when they sniffed out a second-and-15 screen to one side of the field, only for Jackson to abandon the play and scramble out the backside for 17.
Data has suggested running backs play better when they work alongside quarterbacks who are threats to run. That also makes sense from an on-field football perspective. A passer who is a threat to run changes the way defenses play. Defenses lose the numbers advantage in the box, forcing them to bring a safety into the box or try to have their linemen play a gap-and-a-half up front to cover all the potential running lanes. Getting the safety into the box limits the coverages teams can play, which makes life easier for quarterbacks as they get into the passing game.
For running backs, the biggest factor is the gravity of the quarterback and how he influences defenders. Signal-callers are a threat to hold the ball and escape the pocket on play-action boots, but the threat of one who will run the ball does even more to freeze defenders and draw their attention to the wrong place. That alone can be enough to create running lanes for backs such as Barkley and Henry.
Here’s an example from Monday’s game against the Bucs. Safety Antoine Winfield Jr. (31) ran toward the mesh point where Jackson and Henry converged. Immediately after Henry got the ball, Jackson began to feign like he was going to sprint outside, forcing Winfield to honor the threat of Jackson as a runner and freeze his pursuit. With rookie Chris Braswell (43) stunting inside and being blocked out of the play, that brief moment in which Winfield had to freeze and ensure Jackson doesn’t have the ball is enough to create an easy run lane for Henry and a 13-yard gain:
While Jackson is more of a running threat than Hurts, the same thing holds true for Barkley and the Eagles. On Barkley’s 65-yard touchdown run against the Saints in Week 3, he was also facing the potential of battling with a highly regarded safety coming off the edge in Tyrann Mathieu. While this wasn’t an example of a zone-read play in which Hurts reads a defender on the end of the line, Mathieu had to slow his pursuit to account for the threat that Hurts will keep the ball. That gave Barkley just enough time to set up Demario Davis (56) and for Will Harris (5) to lose track of where Barkley was going. He ended up taking the carry to the house untouched.
2. Each produces a staggering number of explosive runs.
At their best, Barkley and Henry have been capable of scoring from anywhere on the field. Henry famously announced himself to the league after 2½ years as a rotational back and even being shopped at the trade deadline with a 99-yard touchdown run against the Jaguars in 2018. Barkley capped off his first NFL game with a 68-yard scamper for a score.
As time had worn on, though, those big plays had dried up. Henry had 16 runs for 20 or more yards in 2020, turning 4.2% of his carries into huge gains. In his final season with the Titans in 2023, that fell to just five 20-plus-yard runs, or 1.8% of his attempts. Barkley had nine 50-plus-yard runs over his first two seasons in New York and has just one over the ensuing four campaigns (2020-23).
Suddenly, the big plays are back. I’ll start with Henry, who already has two 80-plus-yard carries this season. Since joining the Ravens, 10 of his 137 carries have gone for at least 20 yards. That means 7.5% of his rushes have produced 20-plus-yard gains, nearly double that career-best rate from 2020 and four times his rate from last season. The only season in which he topped 10 20-plus-yard gains was 2020. He is already at that mark now with 10 games remaining.
Barkley has arguably been even more consistently explosive. He has six gains of at least 30 yards this season, which is a career high. And after racking up just that lone 50-plus-yard gain over the prior four seasons, he has three of them across 108 attempts this season. He’s also picking up 10-plus yards on a career-high 13% of his carries.
While it can be a chicken-and-egg question, the data generated by NFL Next Gen Stats also suggests we’re seeing these guys running faster. Henry has topped 20 mph on four different plays this season after doing it five times each in the 2022 and 2023 campaigns. Barkley has more 20 mph runs in 2024 (three) than he did in 2023 (two). Is it because they’ve had the opportunity to run free on so many big plays, or are the big plays coming because they’re running so fast?
There have been 14 instances of a running back gaining 50 yards or more on a single carry this season. Six — nearly half — are attempts by either Barkley or Henry. They’re turning about one out of every 40 carries into a 50-plus yard gain. The rest of the league’s running backs are doing that about once every 549 carries this season. They’ve been utterly spectacular.
Can Barkley and Henry keep hitting home runs as often as they have? Probably not. Henry is on pace to amass 24 gains of 20-plus yards this season. ESPN’s data goes back through 2000, and the only back to rack up that many in the same season was Adrian Peterson during his 2012 MVP campaign. Even with the 17th game to add an extra opportunity, no player has managed to go beyond 16 of those gains in a single season in a decade. Then again, the last two backs to come up with that many 20-plus-yard gains in a year? Henry in 2020 and Barkley in 2018.
3. They’re racking up astronomic rates of yards before first contact.
We know Barkley and Henry can run around or through tacklers, but the best way to avoid being tackled is to avoid tacklers altogether. Unless you’re Jones against the Eagles, you’re going to score if nobody touches you.
Guess who ranks 1-2 in the league in yards before first contact? Over the 2022-23 seasons, Henry averaged 1.9 yards before first contact, which ranked 51st out of 53 qualifying backs. He’s up to a whopping average of 4.5 yards before first contact this season, which is No. 1. Barkley, at 4.4 yards before first contact, ranks second.
Having a few long, untouched runs blow up a running back’s average for yards before first contact, and that’s true for both of these guys. But even if we solely focus on positive carries that gained 10 yards or less, their yards before first contact are up from last season. Henry was at a league-worst 1.6 yards before first contact on those carries in 2023. That’s up to 2.0 yards before first contact this season. Barkley has jumped from 2.2 yards before first contact to 2.5. Some of that is blocking, some of that is quarterback gravity and some of it is these backs setting up defenders to miss.
Between the two, Henry is having a better season. I would actually say Barkley has been the more spectacular runner at times in terms of making something out of nothing, but Henry has posted a 46.3% success rate to Barkley’s 43.5%. The NFL Next Gen Stats model suggests the average Henry carry this season should have produced only 3.7 yards, while Barkley’s average carry is expected to gain an even 4.0 yards per pop. Henry has generated eight first downs over expectation to Barkley’s one. While Henry is 7-of-8 at picking up first downs on third- or fourth-and-short, Barkley has gone 1-of-5.
There have also been two sequences with Barkley that cost the Eagles points. One was on that third-and-short drop against the Falcons on “Monday Night Football” in Week 2, a play that would have ended the game if he had caught the pass. Instead, the Eagles kicked a field goal, and the Falcons marched downfield for a game-winning touchdown. Barkley also had a rough two-play sequence against the Browns in Week 6 where he failed to pick up a first down on a second-and-1 catch, then didn’t get enough of a block in pass protection on third down, leading to a sack. The ensuing long field goal was blocked, and Cleveland returned it for a touchdown.
On the other hand, Barkley had a spectacular touchdown catch in the season-opening win over the Packers. He has been a complete player for the Eagles and kept the offense afloat when receivers A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith were battling injuries. While I was worried about the offensive line even before they lost Lane Johnson and Jordan Mailata for stretches, he has still found holes in the run game. While Jason Kelce is now an ESPN employee, we’re beginning to see Cam Jurgens grow more comfortable in his new role at center. Jurgens’ blocks on pulls helped create big Barkley runs against the Bucs and Giants.
Henry’s hot start has reinforced just how misunderstood he is as a back. Because of his size, most of the commentary about him suggests he’s a Jerome Bettis– or John Riggins-type, that he’s scary because of the threat he’ll bowl a defender over or run through them. While Henry has a great stiff-arm, the size isn’t what makes him unique or special. It’s his speed and acceleration at that size (6-foot-2, 247 pounds). He makes even veteran NFL defenders miss when they try to close him down in the open field because he’s so often faster than they think. The size is just a bonus.
While there has always been the idea that Henry wears down defenders with body blows and physicality as the game gets into the fourth quarter, that idea came and went at times during his run with the Titans. It was true for his peak, but even at the same size, he got worse as the game went along in 2022. Last season, he averaged 3.5 yards per carry in the first quarter, 5.1 in the second and third quarters and then dropped to 3.3 in the fourth quarter.
This season, we’ve seen Henry make big plays late in games, even in spots in which he hasn’t had the opportunity to wear out opposing defenses. He had only 11 carries in regulation against the Bengals in Week 4, but he broke loose in overtime on a 51-yard run to set up the game-winning field goal. On Monday night against the Bucs, he had only six carries across the first 40 minutes of the game. His seventh, with 4:58 to go in the third quarter, went for 81 yards.
I’d argue that the Ravens are wearing opponents down as a team, and while some of that is physical, some of it is mental, too. The unique threat Jackson puts on opposing defenses every single snap has to be physically tiring and mentally exhausting. They force defenses to honor so many possibilities and concepts in the run game, chase Jackson down as a runner and scrambler and fly to the perimeter to avoid giving up big plays in their screen game, all while facing an offense that uses a fullback, two tight ends or both more than 72% of the time. And then, when a defense is worn thin from all of that, here comes a 247-pound back who can glide past every defender.
While Henry thrived with outside zone during his time in Tennessee, he has hit big plays on all kinds of concepts in Baltimore. His 87-yard touchdown against the Bills came on Crunch, which takes advantage of aggressive defensive linemen shooting into the backfield. The 81-yarder against the Bucs came on a bread-and-butter zone concept. He has generated big gains on everything from inside zone to Duo to pin-and-pull schemes this season.
Henry’s best runs have often been to the left side of the field, where tackle Ronnie Stanley is having a wildly impressive bounce-back season. After a serious ankle injury cost Stanley most of 2020 and 2021 and prevented him from playing on an every-down basis as recently as last season, I didn’t expect to ever see the Stanley who was a first-team All-Pro in 2019 again. He is the only tackle with more than 50 pass-blocking opportunities who hasn’t allowed a sack this season. He’s having a spectacular year. So is his new running back.
How Joe Mixon has outperformed Houston’s other RBs
Mixon’s deal with the Texans: Three years, $27 million
Mixon, on the other hand, is a mere fourth among all running backs in yards before first contact. He’s averaging 5.2 yards per carry, a pittance as compared to what his free agent colleagues are doing. And while Henry is averaging 124.7 yards per game and Barkley ranks second at 109.7, Mixon is all the way back in third, at 100.3.
I’m kidding, obviously.
Mixon has been extremely valuable for the Texans, and we can see his impact in part by what has happened when he has gone down injured. After racking up 159 yards on 30 carries in the opening-week win over the Colts, he left the Week 2 victory over the Bears with an ankle injury after what he believed to be a hip-drop tackle. He returned in Week 6, and he has had 100-yard games in back-to-back weeks, scoring four touchdowns over that span.
Without Mixon, the other Houston backs have delivered replacement-level work:
The success rate metric is what stood out to me. Keeping the offense on schedule 25% of the time just isn’t acceptable for an offense; the worst rushing attack in the league, that of the Raiders, has a rushing success rate of 31.8%. The non-Mixon backs basically have one big run from Dameon Pierce in garbage time against the Patriots and have otherwise been setting the team backward, which is one of the reasons the Texans were likely comfortable trading Cam Akers back to the Vikings.
Even with Mixon, the Texans’ 33.5% success rate is the league’s second worst. And while he is elevating this offense’s performance, a 39% success rate is still below-average. NFL backs on the whole have produced successful carries on 34.6% of their first-down runs this season. Mixon is down at 28.9%. (To contrast, Barkley is succeeding on 42.3% of his first-down runs, while Henry is at 36.3%.)
I’d be cautious to pin that entirely on Mixon, given that he has had more success on those carries than the other backs on this roster, but it’s a real problem for this Texans offense. The cheat code on offense for Kyle Shanahan and the coaches in his tree has always been ripping teams apart on first down. Last season, the Dolphins (second), 49ers (third) and Texans (sixth) all ranked among the league leaders in expected points added (EPA) per play on first down.
This season, the Texans rank 22nd on first downs by that same metric. They’re not generating steady yardage to begin series. As a result, their average third down has come with 8.2 yards to go. Only the Seahawks and Browns have faced more difficult third downs. Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud is capable of brilliance on third down, but even he can’t be expected to convert third-and-long all day. In Houston’s two losses this season, Stroud and the offense have gone 8-for-27 (29.6%) on third downs. More than 70% of those have been third-and-longs.
While Barkley and Henry have been both consistently moving the chains and racking up huge plays, Mixon is succeeded by generating something in between. He has only two runs topping 20 yards, but 11 of his 77 carries have generated 10-plus yards, good for a 14.3% clip. That’s better than either Barkley or Henry. Mixon probably doesn’t have their acceleration at this point of his career, but he has great agility and timing.
The other issue is the Texans have mostly played Mixon as a two-down back and used Dare Ogunbowale as their third-down option. Mixon has caught 10 passes this season, but he has only been on the field as a pass blocker for seven snaps. Barkley and Henry are on the field blocking more often. Mixon’s deal (essentially a two-year, $17 million pact) wasn’t quite as lucrative as Barkley’s, but it was more than the maximum value of Henry’s two-year, $16 million deal. Mixon hasn’t been the problem with Houston’s offense, but he hasn’t been the sort of force Barkley and Henry have been, either.
Josh Jacobs has been below average in Green Bay
Jacobs’ deal with the Packers: Four years, $48 million
Jacobs hasn’t been quite as productive as Mixon, let alone Barkley or Henry. Jacobs has topped 100 rushing yards in a game just once, with that coming on a 32-carry, 151-yard effort against Indianapolis in backup quarterback Malik Willis‘ first start for Green Bay. While his 4.5-yards per carry average is respectable, it pales in comparison to that of the other backs we’ve discussed. Jacobs also has fumbled twice, while Barkley, Henry and Mixon have combined for just one.
The biggest problem for Jacobs is that he hasn’t been able to keep the offense on time. I mentioned how Mixon’s first-down success rate is below league average. Jacobs’ is even worse; he is keeping the offense ahead of schedule on just 28.2% of his first-down carries and 33.3% of his total carries. Among backs with at least 70 carries, that latter figure ranks 21st out of 24 players. Only Najee Harris, D’Andre Swift and Breece Hall have been less effective at keeping the offense on track for first downs this season.
Jacobs has been better than the other backs in Green Bay’s offense, but not by much. He has generated 79 RYOE on 120 carries or 0.7 RYOE per carry. Emanuel Wilson, the team’s No. 2 back after the injuries suffered by MarShawn Lloyd and AJ Dillon, has put up 18 RYOE on 47 carries or 0.4 RYOE per carry. Wilson also has averaged 4.7 yards per carry and posted a 44.7% success rate. Lloyd and Chris Brooks have been replacement level on their 13 touches, which helps boost Jacobs a bit, but there’s not that chasm between him and the other backs that we saw with Mixon.
It’s OK to post below-average success rates if a back is generating big plays, but Jacobs hasn’t really thrived there, either. Fifteen of his 120 carries have gone for 10-plus yards, which is a respectable 12.5%, but he has only four carries over 20 yards and hasn’t hit anything longer than 34 yards so far. That 3.3% 20-plus-yard carry rate is fine, but it’s not moving the needle as compared to Barkley and Henry. And four of those five runs came during the first two weeks of the season. The one exception was last week against the Texans, and it came on a play in which coach Matt LaFleur himself might have been able to take the field and run for a first down:
In the passing game, Jacobs has averaged just over one yard per route run, which is solid but just below league average. What he has been so far is the guy we saw for most of his tenure with the Raiders (with the exception of his excellent 2022 campaign, which was driven by an out-of-character explosive play rate). He has absorbed a heavy workload and delivered — depending on which metric you’re using — below-average to slightly above-average results in return.
Each of the prior three teams would probably feel pretty good about getting the production they’ve received for what they paid in free agency. Jacobs might not qualify there. While the headlines suggested the Packers gave him a four-year, $48 million deal, he really landed a one-year, $14.1 million contract with three team options. At this rate, I imagine Green Bay would be better off moving on from him next year and trying to find similar production with more affordable options. There’s still plenty of time to go in 2024, though, and Jacobs has caught fire and put together great months of football before.
What this means for the next crop of free agent RBs
Will this be the dawning of a new era for free agent running backs? It’s going to be tough for Barkley and Henry to sustain the big-play rates they’ve exhibited this season, which are historical highs even relative to their own prior peaks. Henry probably isn’t going to run for an 80-yard touchdown once every three weeks. These guys also have to stay healthy over a full season, which hasn’t been easy in recent years.
At the very least, organizations are going to have to reevaluate their stance toward veteran free agent backs. While the success rate for those backs has been abysmal in the past, that was in a league in which the best backs were getting re-signed by their existing teams. There’s a case to be made that two of the NFL’s best running backs — Barkley and Henry — hit the market over the offseason. That’s rarely the case for the best players at any other position.
Those guys also weren’t getting paid all that much, which helps increase the chances of these deals succeeding. A decade ago, the biggest free agent signing at running back was DeMarco Murray‘s five-year, $40 million contract with the Eagles. That deal took place in a year in which the salary cap was $143.3 million — close to half of what it is now ($255.4 million).
Murray’s average annual salary (AAV) of $8 million per year was 5.6% of the 2015 cap. That’s the equivalent of $14.3 million per season today or a five-year, $71.5 million contract. Barkley has a $12.6 million AAV on his deal, while Mixon is at $8.5 million and Henry is at just over $8 million. Jacobs is making a $12 million AAV, but he has only one guaranteed season as part of that deal. Murray had two fully guaranteed seasons and a third partially guaranteed year in place.
At that price, even analytically inclined teams such as the Eagles and Ravens were willing to bite, in part because of how the wide receiver market has grown. Henry is making about half of what Odell Beckham Jr. did for the Ravens in 2023, and Beckham was coming off a season in which he hadn’t played because of a torn ACL. Barkley has a lower AAV than what Gabe Davis and Darnell Mooney signed for in free agency. Mixon’s deal is in line with Curtis Samuel‘s contract. These backs are simply more explosive and productive than their wide receiver counterparts.
The issue now is there likely won’t be the same caliber of backs hitting the market over the next couple of seasons. The top of the 2025 class includes rookie-contract graduates Javonte Williams and Najee Harris and vets James Conner and Nick Chubb, the latter of whom is coming off a serious knee injury. Kyren Williams, Isiah Pacheco, Breece Hall and Kenneth Walker could hit the market in 2026, but if they sign extensions, the best available back might be Travis Etienne Jr.
The big question is whether this pushes the top of the running back market forward. While Christian McCaffrey added two years and $38 million to his existing deal with an extension over the summer, the top rate for a three-plus year deal is still the four-year, $64 million pact he signed with the Panthers in 2020. No player has come close to that mark since, even as the cap has risen dramatically, in part because the franchise tag has kept salaries down. The 2025 tag is a relatively modest $13.6 million, the smallest for any offensive or defensive position. When a team can give a player two franchise tags at the end of the deal and pay him an average of $15 million per season without needing to make an up-front commitment, it’s going to chill the potential of backs making more money.
If another back such as Barkley hits the open market, would that change? If the Jets didn’t sign Hall and he hit free agency, would he be able to get $20 million or more as an annual salary? Will Barkley get there if he hits free agency again? Will teams be willing to pay more to elite backs as they reach the end of their rookie deals to avoid that possibility? The success of Barkley and Henry (and to a lesser extent Mixon) could be what gets the ball rolling and what gets money shifting back toward running backs.