Miles Sanders: ‘It Sucks To Be A Running Back Right Now

Carolina Panthers running back Miles Sanders hopes to ‘force a new contract’ amid a difficult time for players in the position.

Miles Sanders is actually one of the luckier running backs in this years’ market. His four-year, $25.4 million contract is the most valuable multi-year contract signed by a running back this summer.

His deal includes $13 million guaranteed, although the $6.35 million yearly wage is less than past years.

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Running backs have been lamenting their inability to get paid after Barkley, Jacobs and Pollard were all franchise tagged at $10 million. The Packers’ Aaron Jones actually took a $5 million pay cut in a restructured contract. 

“It’s nothing that we’re doing wrong,” Miles Sanders said. “We’re doing everything that we have to do as far as on the field and stuff like that. For people and GMs or owners to think that running backs are not as valued as much is a lie because you’ve got to see how everything plays out. You’ve got to see what guys like Christian McCaffrey, the stuff he does, things that Saquon Barkley (does), the things that Josh Jacobs (does) consistently each year.

“You want to franchise tag and create a certain market for running backs just because you have this way of thinking that they only last three or four years. I think it’s B.S., honestly. Almost every running back is underpaid right now. I don’t know what it’s gonna take. That’s a topic that needs to be brought up a little more because it sucks to be a running back right now, honestly.”

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“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.”