On Tuesday morning, the Los Angeles Rams handed running back Kyren Williams a three-year, $33 million contract extension that contains $23 million in guarantees. The deal makes Williams the eighth-highest paid running back in terms of total dollar value. He’s the seventh-highest paid back on an average annual basis and he got the fifth-largest total guarantee, according to Over the Cap.
Williams also notably became the first running back in the 2022 draft class to get a contract extension. And that’s notable because it’s a pretty good class of backs, with five other No. 1 backs and another major contributor coming out of that draft class alone.
Now that Williams has gotten himself paid, it’s worth comparing and contrasting him with some of those other backs, and also taking a look at which of them could be next to get paid and which of them may have to wait for next offseason to get a new contract.
Next man up
- Career: 533 rushes, 2.638 yards, 20 TD; 97 receptions, 883 yards, 7 TD
- 2024: 207 rushes, 1,009 yards, 16 TD; 32 receptions, 258 yards, 2 TD
Cook’s training-camp hold-in has been making waves over the last few days. We know he wants to get paid. We know how much he wants ($15 million per year). We know he’s willing to sit out at least certain elements of the offseason program to press the issue. (He didn’t attend OTAs this offseason but showed up at mandatory minicamp to avoid being fined.) What we don’t know is whether the Bills will meet his asking price, or whether he’ll drop that price to meet the Bills where they are.
Cook is coming off back-to-back Pro Bowls and scored 16 touchdowns last season, and he wants to become one of the highest-paid backs in the league. An annual salary of $15 million would make him the fourth-highest paid back in the league, but if the deal runs longer than two years, he’d be the single-highest paid back among that group of players. And it’s pretty tough to argue that he’s worth that price.
He did score 16 touchdowns last season, but that was four times as many as he scored in his first two NFL seasons combined. Among the 52 backs with 250-plus carries since Cook entered the league, he ranks fourth in yards per rush. But a lot of that is due to good blocking. He’s second in yards before contact per attempt and just 26th in yards after contact, and he’s 36th in avoided tackle rate, per Tru Media. The best thing he’s done is avoid negative runs (13.5% of his carries have been tackled behind the line of scrimmage), but again that is in large part a credit to the Bills’ offensive line. He averaged 0.8 yards per rush over expected last year, per NFL Pro, which ranked ninth among qualified runners.
Cook has been a solid if unspectacular receiving back. He’s shown pretty good per-target efficiency for a running back but hasn’t carried a huge target share, as Allen’s legs often operate as his checkdown option instead of dumping the ball off to a back. Cook has also had some issues with drops, particularly near the goal line — he has 11 drops on 124 career targets, via Pro-Football-Reference. Especially on short passes, that is a sky-high drop rate for a running back.
In other words, Cook is a good back, but probably not one who should be paid at the top of the market — especially when you consider that he has a limited role. He played only 48% of the Bills’ snaps last season, with Buffalo rotating Ray Davis and Ty Johnson into the mix pretty heavily. He’s also not the best rushing threat on the team, because Josh Allen exists. Maybe Buffalo meets his price, but it probably should wait until that price comes down quite a bit.
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Cody Benjamin
Might get a deal
- Career: 600 rushes, 2,528 yards, 24 TD; 102 receptions, 723 yards, 2 TD
- 2024: 153 rushes, 573 yards, 7 TD; 46 receptions, 299 yards, 1 TD
Unlike Cook, Walker is coming off a slow season marred by injuries and ineffectiveness. He averaged a career-worst 3.7 yards per carry last year while playing in only 11 games. At the moment, he doesn’t sound concerned about a potential new deal.
“Yeah, with that part, honestly, I just want to be positive, and keep my mind on football and not contract and all that,” Walker said last week, via The News Tribune. “I really just want to make a positive impact on my team and go out there and play to the best of my ability. And that’s what I’ve been wanting to do since my rookie year to now. So I’m gonna just keep that same mindset and not worry about everything, like contract and everything.”
The Seahawks talk up Walker at just about every opportunity, and when he’s on the field, they get him the ball. According to Tru Media, he gets a rush attempt or target on 49.6% of his snaps, a rate that checks in ninth among the aforementioned group of 52 runners with 250 carries or more since 2022.
Walker, in contrast with Cook again, has been held back by awful offensive line play. He ranks just 40th in yards before contact per rush since entering the league, and last year averaged a disgusting 0.67 yards before contact per attempt. It was only by the miracle of his league-best avoided-tackle rate that he got to those 3.7 yards per carry.
Walker finally got some receiving volume last year after totaling 72 targets through his first two seasons, but he didn’t do much with it, averaging a mere 5.6 yards per target. His backfield mate, Zach Charbonnet, averaged nearly a full yard more than that. His strong Year 2 receiving numbers (7.0 yards per target) were inflated by one 64-yard catch. He otherwise averaged 5.4 per target, right in line with where he was last year.
With Walker coming off an injury-riddled season and there being questions about his down-to-down consistency vs. explosiveness (he’s just 44th in rushing success rate over the last three years), along with the presence of Charbonnet behind him, it seems like he might be a long shot to get paid before next offseason.
Doesn’t expect a deal
- Career: 512 rushes, 2,333 yards, 14 TD; 152 receptions, 1,292 yards, 8 TD
- 2024: 209 rushes, 876 yards, 5 TD; 57 receptions, 483 yards, 3 TD
Hall said earlier this offseason that he’s not really expecting a contract extension from the Jets‘ new regime.
“I’m not really expecting it before the season,” he said. “We got a new head coach, new GM, and obviously I wasn’t drafted by them. I’m not their guy. So for me, I gotta prove it every day. I think I got a chip on my shoulder. I feel like right now, it’s my last chance. It’s always been, ‘He’s got potential,’ but now I want to be the product. It’s all just about putting my head down and working. I don’t really want to discuss all the other stuff. I just try to worry about ball right now.”
Early in his rookie season, he looked exactly like the kind of guy who would be getting paid right about now. He was in the midst of a monster breakout right before tearing his ACL. In the previous three games, he’d totaled 279 yards and three scores on 55 carries, adding 117 yards on his six receptions. And he started the next game with four carries for 72 yards.
But he hasn’t been the same guy since returning from the injury. His yards per carry average dipped to 4.5 and then 4.2, and last year he ranked 32nd out of 46 qualified runners in success rate, 37th in negative run rate, 23rd in the share of runs that gained five-plus yards and 33rd in avoided-tackle rate. Even his explosive-run rate “only” checked in 14th, and was a far cry from where he was as a rookie (9.1% vs. 15.0%).
New York drafted both Braelon Allen and Isaiah Davis last year and appears to like both of those backs as well, so it would be pretty surprising if Hall got paid now. Instead, he’s a strong bounceback season away from perhaps being the most sought-after back on the market next winter.
Probably not getting paid (at least right now)
Isiah Pacheco and Brian Robinson Jr. have been two-down grinder types during their careers to date, while White is essentially now just the passing-down back in Tampa in the wake of Bucky Irving’s emergence as the clear best runner in the backfield.
Pacheco has been a high success rate runner behind Kansas City’s offensive line, but he’s 48th out of the aforementioned group of 52 backs in explosive-rush rate since he entered the league. We saw the Chiefs replace his production (in terms of success rate if not yards per carry overall) with the likes of Kareem Hunt last year, and Pacheco himself was ineffective upon his return from injury. Given the Chiefs’ issues creating explosive plays over the last couple of seasons, it wouldn’t be surprising if they tried to pair seventh-round pick Brashard Smith with another bigger but still speedy back in the draft next year.
With Jayden Daniels as a rushing threat, the Commanders can probably plug any number of rushers into the backfield and get efficient work on the ground over the next few years. Even Robinson himself hasn’t been particularly efficient: his 4.3 yards per carry last year were the best of his career, and he took a significant step back in the receiving game after the addition of Austin Ekeler. Robinson can get what’s blocked, but he won’t get much more. He’ll probably get another deal to be part of a committee, but it might not be in Washington.
Rachaad White is considered one of the best pass-catching and especially pass-blocking backs in football, but he is a dreadful runner. For his career, he has -92 yards over expected on his 545 carries, per NFL Pro. Still, pass-catching backs have a ton of value around the league, so he should be able to carve out a nice niche for himself over the next several years once the Bucs presumably let him hit the open market after this season.