The Maurice Jones-Drew Holdout situation—now it's the Maurice Jones-Drew Trade Rumor situation, I think, to be followed shortly by the Maurice Jones-Drew Talks About Playing Baseball, or Something situation—is not the kind of thing you'd expect to happen if the NFL in general and the Jacksonville Jaguars in particular still believed running backs were as valuable as the press and fantasy football commissioners seem to.
↵After all, MJD has gotten better every year since emerging as the feature back. He's 27-years-old, which isn't quite decrepit, yet, in running back years. He led football with 1606 yards on the ground last year, and the Jaguars' offense is going to be almost entirely inexperienced without him.
↵But they seem perfectly willing to let him go, and other teams don't seem especially eager to take advantage of a situation in which the Jaguars and MJD both appear to have little leverage.
↵Running backs are important. Anybody who watched Steven Jackson and then Kenneth Darby back-to-back, back in 2010, can vouch for that. But they're getting less important every year, and as teams continue to replace run-oriented offenses with pass-oriented offenses, and one running back with two, the titans of fantasy football are getting less and less valuable in the real thing.
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