The offseason started ominously for backs, with the top three pending free agents (Barkley, Jacobs and Tony Pollard) getting franchise tagged at $10.091 million. The Green Bay Packers and Aaron Jones reworked his deal, cutting out $5 million from his previous contract.
Sanders noted that the franchise tag situation essentially capped his market.
“Just to really try to get a deal done because I know that the numbers were dropping literally daily as soon as free agency started,” he said when asked about inking his deal early in the process. “Once they made the market $10 million, it was very hard to even negotiate anything even more than that or get like a deal that everybody’s been dreaming of — the Christian McCaffrey deal, the Alvin Kamara deal. It is what it is. It makes me hungrier. I’m a still go and do what I do each year and hopefully earn, force a new contract.”
Sanders projects as the Panthers’ top back alongside Chuba Hubbard and Raheem Blackshear in Carolina after a career year in Philadelphia, earning 1,269 rushing yards and 11 touchdowns en route to his first Pro Bowl.
The issue for Sanders and all other running backs is that the supply outweighs demand in a pass-happy NFL. That won’t stop RBs from clamoring to be compensated better than the current market.
“It’s definitely something that needs to be fixed,” Sanders said, “because there’s too much talent out there being underpaid as far as in the running back position.”