Does Saints RB Alvin Kamara deserve to be paid as if he is among the NFL’s elite?

You tell me, should New Orleans Saints running back Alvin Kamara be mentioned in the sentence with the likes of, say, Christian McCaffrey, Ezekiel Elliott, Le’Veon Bell, David Johnson, Derrick Henry and Todd Gurley?

I think so. I just did.

That said, it seems that Kamara is a forgotten man. In fact, I think AK41 has taken a back-seat to the aforementioned top NFL breadwinners when it comes to average yearly dollars — as in show him the money. More than 70 running backs pocket more money on average than Kamara entering the COVID-20 season.

Seventy-two to be exact, according to the 2020 census taken by OVER THE CAP.

That’s absurd.

Granted, Kamara is coming off an injury-plagued season in 2019, a season in which he seemed a shell of himself after suffering a potentially devastating knee injury in Game 6 against the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Though not requiring surgery, Kamara said he basically “tore (his) knee up,’‘ causing him to miss two games and plod his way through the final eight games on a limited snap count and sharing the workload with Latavius Murray.

Kamara still competed but he wasn’t the dual game-breaking threat Saints fans are accustomed to seeing. Until scoring two rushing touchdowns each in Games 15 and 16, Kamara had only reached the end zone twice, both times during a critical road win at Seattle in Game 3 with backup QB Teddy Bridgewater subbing for injured starter Drew Brees.

This from a player who had scored 31 TDs in his first two seasons, including 18 in 2018 when he accounted for 1,592 scrimmage yards and teamed up with running mate Mark Ingram II to form “Boom & Zoom.’‘

If not for the injury and COVID-19, I’m fairly certain Kamara would be entering Year One of a new, lucrative contract more commensurate with his past and future value in New Orleans and not operating in the last year of a four-year rookie deal that pays him a base salary of $2.133 million in 2020.

He wouldn’t be making McCaffrey-type money — $16 million per year with $30 million fully guaranteed through 2025. Nobody else is, either, though Elliott makes a shade less on average at $15 million per year.

But Kamara would be making top-10 money for a running back.

Unfortunately, AK41 got injured. And his production decreased. And our economy has gone to hell in a hand basket because of a deadly, unabated virus, resulting in a fractured business model for 32 anxious NFL owners, including Gayle Marie Benson of the Saints.

Consider: If games are played this season without fans in the stands, the NFL stands to lose $5.5 billion of stadium revenue (the sum of tickets, concessions, sponsors, parking and team stores) — or 38 percent of its total revenue — based on figures for the 2018 season, according to Forbes Magazine.

The Saints alone would lose $161 million in stadium revenue.

Next season, if this season goes the way of COVID-19, the projected 2021 NFL salary cap could dip well below the current salary cap of $198.2 million, and the Saints have other future free agent mouths to feed, such as defensive tackle Sheldon Rankins, linebacker Demario Davis and possibly backup quarterback Jameis Winston in 2021 and bookend tackles Terron Armstead and Ryan Ranczyk a year later.

That might not bode well for Kamara who, when healthy, can run with the NFL’s big dogs and deserves to be paid like one.

This story was originally published August 11, 2020 at 12:38 PM.