I guess it's all semantics, and thanks for the very helpful hard numbers. I should qualify that further, since there's certainly nothing wrong with calling any of these guys starters. Perfectly fine to identify a "starting RB" in a more a narrow / general discussion. But my point is that it doesn't make much sense in today's NFL for the analyst to paint the picture of a RB landscape with 32 starting jobs.
Guess what, there's a batch of hungry young RBs coming in for 2023, so look out cuz your starting RB might be out on his ###!!
The general point is fine. The RB workloads will continue to trend more and more towards disposable committee members, if we're not to the absolute end of that spectrum already. 2023 is a healthy crop. If you're sitting on Josh Jacobs and think no sweat if he moves on, maybe he'll get an 83-17 Najee-like workload on his next squad, you're probably going to be really disappointed. If you think AJ Dillon will be a 75+ guy once A. Jones moves on, you're probably going to be disappointed. A formidable #2 will probably make his way to town, limiting it to a 60-40 or 65-35 at best. However, presenting the landscape as anything close to a game of musical chairs with only 32 seats is not the way to look at it in my opinion.
For me "bellcow" will always be Najee last year, Lev Bell on the Steelers, Emmitt Smith, etc. Rather than letting the 60/65% guys become the new standard for that title, I would rather continue to identify those guys as "feature backs" and just call a spade a spade and say that the "bellcow RBs" are endangered species that could one day be on the verge of extinction. But that's just what those phrases mean to me. Nobody appointed me Word Police.