Jahmyr Gibbs let Bijan Robinson and Jonathan Taylor both agree to running back extensions before he did this week, then landed $51.5 million guaranteed — the highest guarantee of any deal signed in that stretch, and enough to make him the highest-paid running back in NFL history.
Detroit’s new extension for Gibbs runs three years, with a base value of $67.5 million and worth up to $75.75 million on incentives. At $22.5 million a year, his average annual value tops what either Robinson or Taylor got, and the $51.5 million guaranteed tops both deals before it. That’s the number that actually matters in a market like this one. Guarantees are what a front office commits to before a player proves anything else, and Gibbs got more of it than the two backs who signed ahead of him.
He also didn’t sound like a guy negotiating from “prove it.” Asked whether he’d played his best football yet, Gibbs told ESPN: “Nah. I don’t think so. Me personally, I could’ve done a lot of stuff throughout the year to get us out of some holes.”
That’s a strange thing to say the day after signing the richest guarantee in the position’s history. It also tracks for a player who’s already outproduced the guy whose record he just took.
Gibbs has 49 total touchdowns through his first three seasons.
Barry Sanders had 47.
Gibbs waited for Robinson and Taylor to set the market before he ever put pen to paper, and the sequencing is the whole story. Robinson signed his own three-year deal with the Atlanta Falcons two days earlier, worth up to $75 million with $51 million guaranteed — CBS Sports reported his APY as high as $25 million in one line and $22.25 million in the next, and neither side of that argument has settled. Taylor agreed to a two-year, $44 million extension with the Colts the same day Gibbs’ deal came together, a shorter, lower-ceiling structure that guaranteed him $39 million.
Sure, all three deals landed within a few million dollars of each other, and it’s tempting to call this a clean staircase: Robinson, then Taylor, then Gibbs, each rung higher than the last. It isn’t that tidy. Taylor’s extension is two years, not three, and worth less total money than Robinson’s; that’s a prove-it deal, not an escalation. What happened is simpler: three agents got three separate looks at what this market would bear, in the same week, and Gibbs’ camp had the best player and the best information when it mattered most.
Mike Garafolo said the position’s top tier is “officially established.” Rapoport put it simpler, on X:
https://twitter.com/RapSheet/status/2085477694305689951
Neither one mentions that Robinson’s run as the highest-paid back in football lasted about two days before Gibbs buried it.
I spent two years after Northwestern freelancing at fifty dollars a story, which teaches you to think in guaranteed money instead of theoretical ceilings pretty fast. That’s why Gibbs’ $51.5 million guaranteed reads as the smarter contract than Robinson’s higher, disputed one, before you even get to what Gibbs does on the field.
It’s not the only headline the Falcons have made this summer. Atlanta’s other big roster story has been a quarterback competition nobody in that building asked for, which makes Robinson’s clean, drama-free extension look even better by comparison. Losing a negotiation to Jahmyr Gibbs isn’t an insult. Almost nobody wins that one this week — check the rest of this week’s NFL news and the running back market is the only thing that moved twice.
Robinson held the record for two days; Gibbs made sure nobody remembers that part.
