Running back Javonte Williams bet on himself last year, signing a one-year deal worth $3 million. He delivered on his promise with a career-high 1,200 rushing yards.
His reward was a $24 million deal over three years stay with the Cowboys.
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Given that the Williams deal was the first significant contract signed by an impending free agent, it’s important to remember a few things as we head into new contract season. Initial reports regularly overestimate the true value of the contract. For example, the reported $16 million in guarantees for Williams is surely not fully guaranteed at the time of signing, and there is little known about the structure of the deal. There might be a bit of fudging going on to make the deal look better than it is, with journalists rushing to Twitter with the first reports rarely, if ever, insisting on full and accurate details. (If they do, someone else will have the scoop.)
For now, even the potentially inflated initial reports reinforce an important point: The running back position continues to be undervalued.
The deal, if it’s truly worth $8 million per year, puts Williams 16th among all current running backs. And he accepted the offer before the annual forgery festival in Indianapolis, where he may have learned that someone may have offered much more than that.
It’s possible that the Cowboys were aggressively trying to prevent this from happening, perhaps by asserting their anti-CBA practice of negotiating directly with the player.
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Yet what would Williams have gotten on the open market? Only superstars in this position get market value. Eagles running back Saquon Barkley leads the way, making $20.6 million per year. 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey’s current deal calls for an average new money of $19 million.
This happens for a very simple reason. The supply of capable running backs exceeds the demand. Teams can resort to drafting for a younger, cheaper and generally healthier player instead of paying a veteran who might not be able to replicate his performance in a contract year.
Every year, college football generates many running backs who can play at the NFL level, if they can be trusted to hold onto the ball and if they are able to catch blitzers in pass protection. Most of them are having their best years under rookie contracts. When these expire, teams look for another young player to replace them.
And while the Cowboys may have done themselves a favor by locking up Williams before he could see what else was out there, the Cowboys gave other teams a data point that will become relevant to their negotiations with running backs. The other players who will try to get paid (Kenneth Walker III, Breece Hall, Travis Etienne, Rico Dowdle, Rachaad White, Isiah Pacheco, JK Dobbins) will have to face the argument that a guy who ran for 1,200 yards in 2025 only got $8 million a year.
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Then there’s Lions running back Jahmyr Gibbs. Currently eligible for a second contract, he has shown the kind of superstar ability that would warrant a market-level contract. Will the Williams deal maintain what the Lions offer?
It shouldn’t. Gibbs is much closer to Barkley and McCaffrey than the players coming onto the market. Still, any running backs set to become free agents will have to face the fact — as the Williams deal underscores — that the running back market still isn’t what it could be, or perhaps what it should be.
