Bad, Not Horrible: Inside Chuba Hubbard Extension
There are unwritten rules about how to treat running backs in the NFL. The first rule, is never draft a running back in the first round. Whether it's Barry Sanders, or Adrian Peterson, or belle of the ball 2025, Ashton Jeanty. It's not personal, it's business, and in the modern NFL, running back is slightly more important than kicker and punter.
This doesn't mean that the running game should be abandoned. Establishing and maintaining the run was, is, and will always be critical. Running backs individually, however, are not worth their weight in lead tokens. Think of a football team like an entertainment system, and the running back is a DVD. If it's a good DVD, you watch it a lot, and wear it out. Once it's too scratched and worn to use, you wouldn't spend $100 to fix it, you'd just buy a new copy of the same DVD.
The goal of any team should be to take the four critical positions in round one (Quarterback, Tackle, Edge, Corner), and find a young healthy running back in later rounds that can be run into the ground and replaced. This brings up rule number two, which is never extend a running back (unless it's done on the cheap).
The Carolina Panthers just did this with their Chuba Hubbard extension. Of all teams, the Panthers should know better than to extend a running back. The player responsible for rule number two, and the worst running back extension in recent memory, is Christian McCaffrey. Mere seconds after inking him to a four year extension, worth $64 million, McCaffrey was injured, playing 16 games for Carolina in 3 years, before getting traded to the San Francisco 49ers.The former eighth overall pick then signed an extension with the team by the bay, and gets injured again. Running backs wear like a Dollar Tree scrub sponge.
Back to Chuba Hubbard, the latest mistake by the Panthers. His extension is also four years, but only $33 million, with $15 million guaranteed. It's still a bad deal, because it's a running back deal, but it's not awful. The Panthers can still get out of the deal early, fairly unscathed, if need be.
Stadium Rant reached out to Jerry Dempster and Stephen Costner of the Meow Mix Podcast, on iTunes and Youtube, to get their thoughts on the contract offered by the team they cover.
"Locking up Chuba Hubbard for a very fair deal is a win for the Panthers. Chuba has improved every season, and has evolved into an excellent running back. Seeing the franchise reward a player for once is really refreshing."
It's unlikely that Hubbard will finish this contract, and there's a strong possibility that the Panthers will cut ties with him sooner rather than later. In the meantime, there appears to be optimism, at least short term, for Chuba and the team. Hopefully, for their sake, this extension ends up a winner, like Derrick Henry's with the Titans.