Jahmyr Gibbs and Bijan Robinson are both due for massive contract extensions.
The Detroit Lions and Atlanta Falcons both know they'll have to pay their superstar running backs more than any RB has ever gotten before.
The only questions are when and how much.
Also: Who goes first?
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Saquon Barkley holds the current annual average value record at $20.6 million per year with the Philadelphia Eagles. Gibbs and Robinson should both surpass that.
The thing is, whichever goes first will probably be the highest-paid RB for 10 seconds or so before the other back leapfrogs for that honor.
It's often the way it works on NFL salary leaderboards, and particularly considering the immense talents and the overlapped timing of this pair, it's definitely how it'll work.
Who will blink first? It doesn't actually matter a ton, but it's a funny storyline to track.
"If Robinson signs a four-year, $82 million deal with the Falcons, Gibbs will sign an $84 million deal a week later," ESPN's Bill Barnwell wrote as part of a new article on Thursday. "The same holds true if Gibbs is the first to put pen to paper. We're admittedly talking about a small amount on top of a life-changing amount of money, but there's cachet that comes with being the highest-paid running back. Whoever signs first won't have that title for very long."
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Gibbs and Robinson are both elite at pretty much everything. They catch passes, run hard, sprint away from defenses -- they're two of the most dynamic playmakers in the NFL.
They're proof that at least at the very top end of the RB ranks, a running back can still make a difference in the modern NFL.
Some teams approach the position as interchangeable, and maybe that's true to an extent, but not with guys like Gibbs and Robinson.
They've both proven supremely worthy of record-setting paydays, and they'll both get them. It's just a matter of which player waits out the other one long enough to get a tiny bit more.
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