The Running Back position or Half-Back or Full Back in Football is, football. Its integral to football as pigskin and once upon a time mythical Impis as Barry Sanders, The Great Jim Brown, The Battering Rams of Jerome Bettis, John Riggins and of course the improbable Walter "Sweetness" Payton ruled the 120 yards of battlefield, AKA the Gridiron of football war as Running Backs. Yup Running Backs. Now Herm Edwards has seen the bottoms of many runningback cleats and the resulting torn and ripped turf introduced to his face from those cleats to respect and I stress respect those Impis as runningbacks ruling the gridiron. So what's possessed him to now join in enabling and further advancing the lie and treachery, yes treachery that is specifically in the employ of the billionaire owners of teams in the NFL, that the runningback isn't valuable and the game has passed them a narrative that only has one purpose which is squeezing as much value from the human being as capital, then casting off the exploited and used husk, human beings which in this specific circumstance are runningbacks, yup human beings who are football players. So I ask again what is Herm Edwards in his role as ESPN NFL analyst selling when he argues that modern football is a passing game and as such the runningback isn't integral to its offensive schemes (and I'm paraphrasing) as such should appreciate the pennies tossed their way. But the reality is even if modern football is a passing game, then it all the more emphasizes the runningback in all aspects of its function and purpose: from the pure function of running the ball, to blocking, being a check down safety valve for the quarterback and being the one and only reason, the passing from play action works. Here is an anecdote that I challenge Herm Edwards to refute, Matthew Stafford as the former Detroit Lions Quarterback was traded to The LA Rams and he promptly won a Superbowl, why? With the LA Rams, Stafford was compelled to use his runningback as opposed to his fetishzing the jump ball pass to Calvin Johnson aka Megatron, that only padded stats but nothing to quote Herm Edwards played to win, so what we see is the runningback is as integral to modern football as the position was back during Jim Thorpe's Dog Soldier days on the Gridiron. There isn't any insight I'm providing that isn't obvious to any perfunctory appreciator of the game of football, so it's incomprehensible to hear and have ESPN and its serfs stridently pushing the runningback isn't valuable narrative when we know it's a lie. The devaluation of the runningback position is due to the treachery of the NFL Players Union selling out the runningback position under the gambit of a rookie salary cap. Regardless of the rationale and logic of the rookie salary cap the NFL Players Union should've carved out an exemption for the runningback position from the top end. On the issue of Sequon Barkley selling out I'll leave that to the barbershop to remind him that the ancestors survived slavery so he wouldn't have to kowtow to the New York football Giants, come on man.
By William Thorpe
