Austin Ekeler Addresses Current State of the Running Back Position

The running back has been devalued, and no one has spoken out more as a result than Los Angeles Chargers running back Austin Ekeler.

Transcript

00:00 Let's talk a little bit about the business side when it comes to a running back.

00:04 Obviously last offseason there was a lot of the RBs upset trying to get their due paper.

00:11 Emmitt Smith, Jaron Bettis, I got a chance to speak with them a couple months ago and

00:14 they said there's a lot of disrespect going into the value of the running back.

00:20 Speak a little bit about that.

00:22 Yeah, absolutely.

00:23 So what we were pissed off about at the beginning of the season is we had Saquon, we had Josh

00:28 Jacobs who just came off of 1600 rushing yards, 13 touchdowns or something like that.

00:33 And then Tony Pollard who just came off of one of his best years too.

00:36 And they're on their first contract.

00:37 So after that, okay great, I've been building up and these guys have been, Josh Jacobs has

00:41 been a staple of the Raiders for a while.

00:43 So okay, he's coming up to contract year.

00:45 Hey Josh, we're not going to pay you.

00:47 Not only are we not going to pay you, we're going to give you one year, you get to take

00:50 all the risk and you don't get to negotiate your contract.

00:54 This is your number.

00:55 You don't get to go talk to any other teams, you don't get to do any of that.

00:58 Here you go.

00:59 Yep.

01:00 And all the other running backs were like, you can't keep doing this to all three of

01:04 those guys.

01:05 Right, right.

01:06 And so it's not just the running backs, it's the players in general.

01:08 It's terrible for us because we're trying to continue to extend our career, make an

01:12 impact.

01:13 And when we have success, we want to continue to spread that and lock in some years because

01:16 of that.

01:17 You know, reap the benefits of us giving to the game.

01:20 And so we got together because we are getting disrespected.

01:23 And they're treating us like, oh well these guys don't last.

01:25 You can go look at Christian, he's in year seven.

01:27 He's still doing it.

01:28 Look at Rahim, he's still doing it.

01:29 It's not that every running back is worthy of getting the top pay, but they're definitely,

01:33 when the guys are playing at that level, they should get the opportunity to go get that.