Roland Fryer
Appearances
Freakonomics Radio
620. Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore?
But on the other hand, I don't see any Super Bowl winners in the last 20 years with a mediocre quarterback, maybe Brad Johnson of the Tampa Bay Bucs. I see several with average running backs and really good quarterbacks. Is that a reason that the quarterback position is valued more?
Freakonomics Radio
620. Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore?
Why do you think the running back market is so challenging today?
Freakonomics Radio
620. Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore?
I was really interested in why salaries of running backs have declined and why they seem to be less important parts of the offense than I remembered.
Freakonomics Radio
620. Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore?
It's been kind of a slow drip, a slow decline of running backs. And then you think, why? What is it?
Freakonomics Radio
620. Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore?
Learn how to throw. I mean, I don't know what you want me to say. When market demand changes, particularly in something as intricate as the NFL, then certain positions will be more or less valued. And going in, people will expect that. The other option would be to say, when you do get the ball... Run further? Exactly. Be more productive.
Freakonomics Radio
620. Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore?
This duality has lived in me since I became an economist. But you didn't ask Juju, the kid from Daytona, to advise the players. But as an economist, again, this is all being driven by market forces.
Freakonomics Radio
620. Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore?
I've always had a crush on you, Stephen, so I just want to get closer.
Freakonomics Radio
620. Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore?
I don't know. I've had a series of knee injuries. You might be able to get me now.
Freakonomics Radio
620. Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore?
I think it's such an intriguing question. It's one of these things where your intuition and your eyeballs can oftentimes be inconsistent with what the actual data tell us. Where does our intuition fail us? I think it does it a lot in life.
Freakonomics Radio
620. Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore?
I'm just fascinated by human behavior generally, but how we think about the use of my favorite subject, economics, when it comes to issues like valuing positions in a game that's as complex as football.
Freakonomics Radio
620. Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore?
So, look, I'm of two minds about this because I have this job at Harvard. I'd give it away in a second if I could have been an NFL player, right?
Freakonomics Radio
620. Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore?
I started playing football at age five. The coach asked me to race their fastest player. And I won. And he said, you're on the team. In Texas, you play flag football five and six years old. And seven years old onwards, you strap on the pads and go to work. The coolest thing about playing was that they had a legitimate draft. You'd run a 40-yard dash. You'd kick the ball. You'd throw the ball.
Freakonomics Radio
620. Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore?
You'd catch some balls. They had a little shed there at the fields. They'd put all your measurements up and then the coaches would select by lottery who went first. So we cared about where we were drafted as early as like eight or nine years old. And how did you do in the draft? Oh, man, I was always a number one draft pick.
Freakonomics Radio
620. Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore?
Of course, because it was Texas Pop Warner football. My coaches early on told me my real talent was what they called running to the light, that you would just figure out where the gaps were and go, and it was all intuition. You'd score five, six touchdowns a game. I loved it. I absolutely loved playing football, and running backs were revered back then.
Freakonomics Radio
620. Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore?
Every part of football is physical, right? But when you're running the ball, it's not just the person in front of you that you're going into. People are coming from the side and taking hits at knees. You can get rolled up on. There's a lot of bodies there.
Freakonomics Radio
620. Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore?
Years, because it's been a slow decline of running backs. And it's my favorite position. I thought, why are my boys being paid less when these quarterbacks who aren't nearly as tough as running backs are being paid more? I grew up in the era of Barry Sanders, Walter Payton, Emmett Smith. I've always liked these really, really explosive running backs just because they look like pure athletes.
Freakonomics Radio
620. Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore?
So the non-economist in me wanted them to be paid more. The economist in me understands that marginal value is what matters, and that's what's happening. So Fryer put his research skills to work. The first thing to do was to walk through and just verify those basic statistics, right? Look at the salaries as a share of total spend of running backs relative to quarterbacks.
Freakonomics Radio
620. Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore?
And of course, that's what you find out. You can verify the intuition very quickly that the proportion of spend for running backs has gone down over time and quarterbacks much higher. And not just quarterbacks much higher, everybody else on the offensive team. Everybody, right? And so the running backs...
Freakonomics Radio
620. Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore?
So the first thing I did was test a bunch of supply side theories. We went and collected all the data we could on passing yards, running yards over the years by team, et cetera. But also we needed to understand the characteristics of the players.
Freakonomics Radio
620. Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore?
So we looked at combine statistics and all the data we could collect from there in terms of 40 speed, three cone drill speeds, which is a measure of explosiveness, bench press, all those kinds of things.
Freakonomics Radio
620. Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore?
And what we found was that running backs, in terms of their abilities in the Combine, have not changed. So the supply going in has not changed. And importantly, because it is a team sport, the supply of the other people around them hasn't changed much. But what has changed is the expected value of a passing play relative to a running play.
Freakonomics Radio
620. Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore?
The NFL and the teams want to maximize wins, maximize revenue. And the way you do that is that you score a lot of points. The way you score a lot of points is that you pass the ball more. Pretty simple.
Freakonomics Radio
620. Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore?
So just give me your name and what you do.
Freakonomics Radio
620. Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore?
So tell me, I want people to hear from you, like what it's like playing running back. I mean, what part of it is mental, physical, how much of it can be taught versus instincts?
Freakonomics Radio
620. Why Don’t Running Backs Get Paid Anymore?
Tell me, in your view, why is the running back market like it is today? I mean, do you feel like the current situation is unfair? Do you feel like it's fine? I hate it. It's unfair.