Running away from best option?
Mostert’s trade demand highlights some tough truths about his leverage
Here’s a hard business truth: You are paid by how hard you are to replace, not how well you perform.
Someone should tell 49ers running back Raheem Mostert.
Brett Tessler, the agent for the breakout star of the Niners’ 2019 campaign, wrote on Twitter Wednesday that he was seeking a trade for his client after contract negotiations with the team broke down. Mostert signed a three-year, $8.6 million deal last March and ran for 772 regular-season yards and 220 yards in the NFC Championship game last season. He’s set to be paid $2.87 million in 2020.
Now, he reportedly wants to be the highest-paid running back on the Niners. Tevin Coleman currently holds
that title — he’s set to make $4.5 million this upcoming season.
Mostert is the Niners’ best running back, and wanting to make more than 1.5 percent of the NFL salary cap this upcoming season seems more than reasonable. He was outstanding in his first fulltime campaign in the Niners’ backfield last year, looking like a perfect fit for Kyle Shanahan’s outsidezone running scheme with his elite speed coming out of cuts and vision that can only be developed by playing special teams for years.
But it’s also reasonable for the Niners to ask Mostert to honor the contract he signed 137 carries ago.
This contract showdown, like so many before, comes down to leverage. Mostert might always find the right angle with the ball in his hands, but I’m not seeing an angle for him in this negotiation
Despite Tessler’s claims, the Niners didn’t sign Mostert as a special teams ace last year — they signed him as a special teamer who also could contribute as a running back. As such, San Francisco built some upside into the three-year deal and subsequently paid him more guaranteed money than the best special teams player in the NFL, the Patriots’ Matthew Slater.
It must be noted that the threeyear deal was the second contract Mostert signed with the 49ers in March 2019. Mostert was a restricted free agent and the Niners tendered him a contract early in the month.
Had Mostert — who to that point had 41 NFL carries to his name — really wanted to bet on himself, he could have played last year on a one-year contract and come into this past offseason with dollar signs in his eyes.
Instead, both sides made a bet with the subsequently negotiated three-year deal. The Niners paid Mostert more than what he was worth on the open market, betting that there was value in him as a running back down the line. Mostert took the improved annual pay, the $3 million guarantee, and the security that comes from a threeyear term.
There’s no question the deal has worked out better for the 49ers. The question now is how this new drama will work out ahead of the 2020 season.
The public trade demand isn’t going to deter the Niners — they always knew that Mostert’s camp had to play this card, because it’s one of the few cards they have.
The next card is a holding out. That won’t matter much either.
Unless Mostert is willing to sit out his entire age-28 season, forgoing his salary in the process, the Niners can ignore this entire saga. Even if he goes that route, I’m not sure that the 49ers will be affected.
Mostert is a running back, after all, and the truth is that running backs — unless they are also prolific receivers, which Mostert is not — are largely interchangeable and, sadly, disposable in the modern game. That’s interchangeability is especially true inside Shanahan’s outside zone system.
Mostert might be a perfect scheme fit for the Shanahan’s offense, but how much of his success last year was the system? Matt Breida — who couldn’t see the field last season and was traded for a day-three draft pick during the NFL draft — ran for more than 1,000 yards in 2018 for a terrible team.
Shanahan’s scheme turned Alfred Morris — a sixth-rounder who ran a 40-yard dash that would be slow for a linebacker — into a twotime Pro Bowler who ran for almost 4,000 yards in his first three seasons.
Shanahan’s dad might have coached Hall of Famer Terrell Davis with the Broncos, but who was Terrell Davis before he was Mike Shanahan’s running back? There’s a long list of no-names who have succeeded in the Shanahan zone running game.
Mostert is player to be added to that list.
And how long will his success last? There are countless examples of running backs’ usefulness expiring “before their time.” Just look at Todd Gurley, or even Coleman — you can only take so many hits from NFL defenders before you lose a step or two. And don’t forget, a big reason Mostert signed the three-year deal last March is because of his injury history.
The Niners, of course, would be a better team if Mostert — who crossed the line of scrimmage faster than any running back in the NFL last year — played in 2020. He’s an exceptional back — better than some of running backs who somehow landed big-money deals. But if Mostert does decide to play the holdout card, it’s not hard to see a circumstance where another no-name, say ... Jeff Wilson or undrafted free agent JaMycal Hasty, steps in and performs well. Perhaps not as well as Mostert, but well enough.
After all, Shanahan sees potential in both players, just like he saw potential in Mostert. At this point, you have to think he knows what he’s doing in that department.
So is Mostert irreplaceable to the 49ers?
I know which way Shanahan leans. We’ll see if Mostert picks up the loud-and-clear message in the coming weeks.