A deadline passed Monday for franchise players to agree to long-term contracts without deals for Saquon Barkley of the New York Giants, Josh Jacobs of the Las Vegas Raiders and Tony Pollard of the Dallas Cowboys.
The three running backs were the only players awarded the franchise who weren’t drawn to a long-term contract and had until 4 p.m. ET on Monday to get one. They will now have to play the 2023 season in their franchise bids, which are worth $10.09 million to appear. Pollard has already signed his tender. However, Barkley and Jacobs remained unsigned and walked away from their teams’ programs for the offseason.
“It is what it is,” Barkley tweeted Monday.
Because they’re not signed, Barkley and Jacobs can’t be fined for not attending training camp, which for veterans of both the Giants and Raiders starts July 25. Barkley and Jacobs are not expected to report to training camp with the rest of their teams, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported Monday. The two unsigned superstars will only lose money if they miss regular season games and lose their game checks.
The Giants’ contract negotiations with Barkley did not go smoothly from the start. The Giants made an initial bid during their bye week last November that Barkley didn’t seriously consider, multiple sources told ESPN’s Jordan Raanan. The two sides then floated talks until the post-season.
The Giants’ offers for Barkley increased earlier this year, reaching a point where the deal could run as high as $14 million a season, Raanan’s sources reported. But the sticking point was ensuring money and structure. They did not come close to satisfying him.
Once the Giants signed quarterback Daniel Jones just minutes before the start of the new league year, they immediately used the franchise tag on Barkley. That was always an option, according to general manager Joe Schoen. At that point, the Giants pulled their latest bid off the table and talks didn’t move seriously until recently.
Barkley admitted that this opened his eyes to the fact that the NFL is a business. However, he did not like the sign and how the whole process was publicly filmed, making it known on multiple occasions that the shows were not always what they were perceived to be.
“I’ve been tagged, am I upset about it? No one wants to be tagged,” Barkley said last month. “To sit here and say I was frustrated, I was angry, I was upset, what really bothered me were the stories that were leaked, how misleading they were and how untrue they were. I feel like she was trying to paint a picture story of me, it’s not even true. And it doesn’t even come close to being the truth.”
Barkley’s feud all along was the way money was perceived, which made him appear greedy. The Giants had never provided the nearly $22.2 million required (the total amount franchises tag this year and next) as of late last week, a source told Raanan.
Barkley, 26, finished fourth in the NFL with a career high 1,312 yards last season and ran for 10 touchdowns. He also tied for the team lead with 57 receptions. He’s played a career-high 60 games over five seasons since being the second-best pick in 2018, when he was named Offensive Rookie of the Year. He has 4,249 rushing yards and 37 total touchdowns.
Schefter reported Monday that the Raiders offered Jacobs a deal and he chose not to accept it because he wanted a bigger payday.
Jacobs, a first-round draft pick for the Raiders in 2019, when John Gruden was coach and Mike Mayock general manager, was not picked as a fifth-year draft pick last spring by the staff of coach Josh McDaniels and GM Dave Ziegler.
Jacobs, 25, surprisingly played in the Raiders’ season opener, leading to rumors of him being a trade candidate. Instead, he responded with a career season, leading the NFL in rushing yards (1,653) and yards from scrimmage (2,053) while scoring a career-high-tying 12 touchdowns and catching 53 catches. His 86-yard TD pass for Seattle was the longest of the NFL’s last season. He became the first Raiders player to lead the league in rushing since Marcus Allen in the 1985 season MVP.
Jacobs’ production surprised McDaniels, who admitted he’s used to a run-down-by-committee approach in his offensive system. After the season Jacobs insisted he wanted to return to Las Vegas, though he added, “It has to make sense.”
Raiders owner Mark Davis said at the NFL’s annual meeting in March that Jacobs was “the heart of our team.” Meanwhile, Jacobs has been essentially silent throughout the process aside from some cryptic tweets.
“Sometimes it’s not about you,” he tweeted in June, giving the impression that he wanted to bring about change in a system that reduces the financial value of a backtracking stance. “We have to do that for those after us.”
The last time a running back was signed to a long-term contract worth $10 million or more in a season, Nick Chubb of the Cleveland Browns was in 2021 – 716 days.
Pollard, 26, will take over the running back role this season for the Cowboys after the team released longtime starter Ezekiel Elliott earlier this season. Pollard said in May that he expects to be fully ready for training camp after undergoing surgery to repair an ankle injury he sustained in Dallas’ playoff loss to the San Francisco 49ers in January.
Two days after losing the match, Pollard underwent a “tight rope” procedure instead of the surgery, which required screws to the tibia and fibula to repair. In this procedure, a braided polyethylene cord is placed, in place of a rigid surgical screw, to restore the original position of the bones and to allow for proper recovery. He also suffered a broken fibula, which healed.
Pollard was named to the Pro Bowl after rushing for a career high 1,007 yards on 193 carries with nine rushing touchdowns. He also caught 39 passes for 371 yards and three touchdowns. Prior to last season, he had never had more than 130 carries or 719 yards in a season.
ESPN’s Paul Gutierrez and Todd Archer contributed to this report.