Bijan Robinson Passes Saquon Barkley for NFL’s Highest-Paid Running Back on $75M Falcons Extension
Saquon Barkley’s reign as the NFL’s highest-paid running back lasted about a year. Bijan Robinson just ended it.
The Atlanta Falcons and Robinson agreed to a three-year extension worth up to $75 million, per Adam Schefter of ESPN. Robinson will earn $22.5 million per year with $51 million guaranteed, including $37 million at signing. That resets the running back market and pushes Bijan past the $20.6 million per year Barkley is getting with the Eagles.
Nicole Lynn and the Falcons had been quietly working this out for weeks. It closed on Monday and Robinson goes into 2026 as the highest-paid running back in the league. He also does not turn 25 until January.
The Falcons made the right call, and they made it early. Bijan is the best young running back in football. Over 34 games since his rookie season he has racked up 2,934 rushing yards and 21 touchdowns on 591 carries, averaging exactly 5.0 yards per attempt. He is a receiver out of the backfield, he can shed contact, and he has a rare combination of vision and burst for a back his size. This is the guy you pay before someone else gets a chance to.
Running back contracts have been the loudest debate in NFL front offices for a decade. The analytics crowd tells you to never spend big at the position because the injury risk is too high and the replacement cost is too low. The Barkley deal was the counter-punch to that argument. The Bijan deal is the follow-up left hook.
The truth is somewhere in the middle. You do not want to build your cap sheet around running backs. You also cannot pretend elite backs do not swing games. Barkley was a huge part of Philadelphia’s Super Bowl run last year. Christian McCaffrey has been the engine of the 49ers’ entire era. When you find a real one, you pay him and you deal with the trade-offs.
Bijan is a real one. Atlanta knows it. Kirk Cousins knows it. Michael Penix Jr. knows it, because Penix is going to lean on Bijan the way any young quarterback should lean on a top-tier running game.
The bigger question for Atlanta is not the contract. It is whether the rest of the roster catches up to their skill players. The Falcons have Bijan, they have Drake London, they have a quarterback situation in flux, and they have a defense that has been mediocre for years. Paying Bijan does not fix any of that. It just makes sure the one certain thing on offense is locked in for the long haul.
Barkley will not hold this record for long. Christian McCaffrey is out there. So is the eventual next generation of backs coming out of college.
For today, Bijan is the top of the mountain. He earned every dollar.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
