Ravens running back J.K. Dobbins had a solid rookie season, gaining more than 800 rushing yards and averaging six yards per carry.
Then came what often happens to running backs, given the nature of the position. He suffered a torn ACL.
Then came what often happens after a player tears an ACL. It takes some time to get back to 100 percent.
He played in eight regular-season games last year, again averaging 5.7 yards per carry and gaining more than 500 rushing yards.
Dobbins is now entering the final year of his rookie contract. He’s due to make $1.391 million in 2023.
He doesn’t have a new deal. He seems to want one.
“The business side is very hard, it’s very different,” Dobbins told WJZ-TV on Thursday, via Jamison Hensley of ESPN.com. “You saw with Lamar [Jackson]. . . . It’s never just roses and daisies. It can be hard at times and it’s business though.”
Dobbins isn’t trying to get out, even as the offense seems to pivot toward more passing and less running.
“I would love to be a Baltimore Raven for the rest of my career,” Dobbins said. “I would love to because I love the city, I love the people. It feels like family here. It feels like my second home. And I hope that happens.”
It all comes down to whether he and the Ravens can work out a new contract. The Ravens can, as they did with Jackson, use the franchise tag to hold Dobbins in place for 2024, if he has a strong season in 2023.
Dobbins, who didn’t practice during the team’s mandatory minicamp, declined to confirm a report that he is dealing with a soft-tissue injury. He said he’ll be ready for the start of training camp.
Comments from coach John Harbaugh and offensive coordinator Todd Monken dance around the question of whether Dobbins opted not to practice due to his unresolved contractual situation.
Said Harbaugh of Dobbins not practicing, “It just wasn’t in the cards apparently.”
Said Monken: “As I told him [Wednesday], ‘I’m excited. Give me something. Run a swing route. I don’t care. Just jog down the field. Do something.’ We’d love for him to be out here. Obviously, he’s not ready to go. But we’re excited, and I know he’ll be ready when he’s out there. But we certainly are better with him out there.”
They’ll have him out there through the upcoming season. A holdout becomes expensive. A hold in becomes an option, but there’s no guarantee that will result in a new contract -- and it will impair his preparation for the new offense.
Dobbins is in a tough spot, because he’ll never get paid for what he has done, only what he’s expected to do. If he has a solid season for the Ravens, it will be too late to get compensated for that when 2024 rolls around.
That’s why we’ve been arguing in recent weeks for a league-wide fund that would pay young running backs as they go, rewarding them for gaining yards and scoring touchdowns at a time when their low-money rookie contracts don’t. For most running backs, the best years come before the second contract does.
One solution would be for teams to rip up the rookie deal of a proven running back as soon as possible, at a minimum replacing the fourth-year salary with incentives tied to playing time and yards and other objective factors.
Maybe that’s the right answer for Dobbins. Give him a way to make more money if he has a big season this year, with per-game roster bonuses and so-called not-likely-to-be-earned incentives (which would kick the cap charge, if the money is earned, to next year) that would operate as an inducement to make more money than the $1.391 million he’s scheduled to make.
Or the Ravens could just sign him now, recognizing the talent and assuming the injury risk that is inherent to the position he plays.
Without that, Dobbins will have to figure out how to compartmentalize his frustration with the business and to try to have the best season possible, hoping that he has the kind of year that makes it impossible for the Ravens to let him go.
Again, with the franchise tag in their back pocket, Dobbins would simply become next year’s version of Saquon Barkley, Josh Jacobs, and Tony Pollard, faced to go another year (at least) before hitting the open market -- as perhaps the best years of his career fade into the rear-view mirror.