Three high-end running backs got new contracts this week. The 2025 NFL rushing champion did not.<\/p>\n
Bills running back James Cook, who rushed for 1,621 yards last season, has a deal that pays $11.5 million per year. With Lions running back Jahmyr Gibbs resetting the bar to $22.5 million, Cook is sitting at nearly 50 percent of the total market.<\/p>\n
He has made no public noise about getting a new deal. Then again, he doesn\u2019t need to. The numbers speak for themselves.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s 2027, when Cook is due to make $9.72 million. <\/p>\n
Presumably, Cook will make it known after the 2026 season that he wants a new deal. And if the Bills dig in, it could be a problem next year.<\/p>\n
If, as it appears, 2027 will be the target for a new deal, the latter weeks of the 2026 season could get interesting. By December, no one is 100 percent. If Cook is rumbling through the holidays with a smattering of manageable bumps and bruises, at what point would he decide to protect himself in advance of negotiations in 2027?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s one thing to show up for training camp and cite an injury to avoid practicing until the contract is enhanced. It\u2019s quite another to point to a legitimate injury through which the player is playing when the regular-season salary shifts to the far less lucrative postseason game checks.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve mused in the past about the possibility of a player in the last year of his contract refusing to play in the postseason in an effort to get a new contract. The far more subtle (and possibly far more effective) approach would be to decide not to risk major injury by disregarding one or more minor injuries.<\/p>\n
For the Bills particularly, whose overall anxiety level will skyrocket when the single-elimination phase arrives, the prospect of the workhorse tailback tapping out due to a legitimate injury (or two) becomes more than enough reason to consider fixing a contract that has quickly gotten out of whack, after the recent signings of Gibbs, Falcons running back Bijan Robinson, and Colts running back Jonathan Taylor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three high-end running backs got new contracts this week. The 2025 NFL rushing champion did not. Bills running…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":806014,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-806013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/806014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}