Sell, sell, sell.
With plenty of recognizable names available at running back, only one has signed a contract. And he’s the one who is recovering from a torn ACL suffered in September.
Danny Woodhead’s deal with the Ravens covers three years and pays out $8.8 million, with $4.25 million guaranteed, according to Ian Rapoport of NFL Media. (The report doesn’t specify how much is fully guaranteed at signing.)
That a far cry from last year, when in the early days of free agency multiple running backs got significantly better deals. Consider the following.
1. Doug Martin, Buccaneers: Five years, $35.75 million, $15 million fully guaranteed at signing.
2. Chris Ivory, Jaguars: Five years, $32 million, $10 million fully guaranteed at signing.
3. Matt Forte, Jets: Three years, $12 million, $9 million fully guaranteed at signing.
4. Bilal Powell, Jets: Three years, $11.25 million, $6 million fully guaranteed at signing.
Those are the deals that the likes of Eddie Lacy, Latavius Murray, Jamaal Charles, and Adrian Peterson will be pointing to when the time comes to talk turkey. They’ll also likely look to the significant fullback contracts done this week (Kyle Juszczyk’s $21 million over four years, Patrick DiMarco’s $8.4 million over four years) as proof regarding the value that ball carriers bring.
On the other side of the not-so-much coin is the one-year, $1 million deal signed by fullback/running back Mike Tolbert in Buffalo, and the one-year, $775,000 contract inked before free agency by C.J. Spiller in Kansas City.
So what does that mean for the firm of Lacy, Murray, Charles & Peterson? It means that the deals given last year to Martin and Ivory will be very, very, very hard to even come close to matching when the time comes to collect checks from Duke & Duke.