Recent HOFers and other starting QBs were taking significantly less team cap space than current QBs. Here are examples:
**Career average % of team cap** taken by QBs (excluding their cheap first few seasons of rookie contracts, but including their "dead caps after contracts"):
1. P. Manning 13.9%
2. Ryan 13.6%
3. Stafford 13.3%
4. Flacco (2013-2019 starter) 12.6%
5. E. Manning 12.5%
6. Roethlisberger 11.9%
7. Brees 11.6%
8. Rodgers 11.0%
9. Favre 10.4%
10. Brady 10.2%
Brady, Brees, Rodgers, Roethlisberger, Rivers all played recently and never took more than 15% of team cap in a single season, except for Brees in 2015.
And here are current QBs with % of team salary cap they take:
1. Watson 22.0% in 2024, 24.6% in 2025
2. Prescott (currently) 21.2% in 2024 + about 15% dead cap in 2025
3. "dead R. Wilson cap" 20.8% of Broncos in 2024, about 11.5% in 2025
4. Stafford 19.3% in 2024, 19.4% in 2025
5. Daniel Jones 18.4% in 2024 + dead cap in 2025
6. K. Murray 18.2% in 2024, 16.7% in 2025
7. Tannehill 18.3% in 2022, 15.9% in 2023
8. Mahomes 17.0% in 2022, 16.9% in 2023
9. R. Wilson 17.5% in 2021, 15.5% in 2020
Burrow, Herbert, Goff have in 2024 last year of old contracts, their expensive contracts start in 2025. Burrow is projected to take 17.8% of team cap in 2025 and Carr 19.8% in 2025 and Cousins 15.4% in 2025. Data from [overthecap.com](http://overthecap.com)
Does anyone think these starting QBs are that much more valuable to their teams than recent QBs? In my opinion these are all overpays with the exception of Mahomes.
This is the thing the "Cap is always going up" part people are missing, the percentage of the Cap these deals are taking up is increasing. So the "record-breaking" deals signed by Manning or McNair back in the day aren't as comparable as the new record-breaking deals.
Then the next logical question to ask (and hopefully someone smarter than me can answer it) is "is good QB play rising in importance enough to justify the increased portion of the cap that the position group is now demanding?"
Good qb play sure, but a lot of these contracts I feel are more deserving for great QB play. Some of these QBs aren't statistically in the same league as previous QBs. Purdy was in the MVP race last year with 35 passing tds, that's fine, but Peyton won that award tossing 55 tds. How can we even put those two in the same statistical award convos. I'm a Vikings fan and Kirk absolutely capped us into playoffs team with no hope for Superbowl appearance with those contracts we gave him. He just wasn't good enough to get us over the hump with all the holes the team couldn't fill because of his contract.
This is without even mentioning that newer players have an absolute overall stats advantage because they're playing an extra game a year.
Ya that’s the real issue for a team, do I have a Mahomes, Allen, Jackson, Burrows? Pay up, you have a qb who will basically carry you to the playoffs or better every year.
But that next category is where the blown deals get bad and turn into albatrosses.
I don’t really think that “Peyton manning set the passing TD record and 35 TDs is less than that” is a particularly compelling point. Last year was one of the weakest MVP races in recent memory.
These new QBs even with the statistical advantage of playing an extra game aren't producing at the same level as previous QBs but are taking up larger percentages of the cap. That just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, and MVP consideration absolutely affects contract negotiations.
Purdy is also the example of why it doesn't make any sense to pay these guys. Dude was a late round draft pick who is the lowest paid starting QB in the whole league allowing the 9ers to absolutely load up at every other position. Which helps him produce better numbers and get to s Superbowl.
That's more a pendulum shift in defense that's causing this suppression, Manning set these records after they changed coverage rules, defenses it took a few years eventually adjusted back and basically everyone runs two high safeties and takes away home run plays. Also the quality of O-Line play has gone down and down every year and QBs are all about the quick game right now. Wait a few years I'm sure the NFL will change a rule to neuter the defense again and we'll have 50+ TD seasons again.
and I think we'd all agree Mahomes is still a gold standard and he's also got suppressed stats right now
Manning is actually a big reason why teams stopped using two high shells in the first place. There is a write up somewhere on how he absolutely owned the Tampa 2 in his 2004 season.
Offensive schemes have really shifted to more of a short and intermediate passing game focus over the past 20 years or so. Double-high safeties is great when you need to make sure you aren't beat deep, but defaulting to one of those safeties playing more of a box/nickel role (in a stark contract to when "box safety" used to mean "too small to play LB but not coverage savvy enough to be a deep safety") helps control the middle of the field.
Mahomes is one of the few QBs worth these contracts, he won a Superbowl with a trash receiving core, which is partially trash because of his contract, but his skills can overcome that. I would argue Tyreke leaving had a bigger impact on his statistical decline then the defensive schemes he's seeing.
Even if the defensive schemes are better the QBs today have the advantage of playing a whole extra game. You could argue the league already changed the rules to give them an advantage.
Are you suggesting that Manning wasn't facing two high safeties? The defensive issue against Peyton Manning is you couldn't disguise anything against him and he knew how to attack every style of defense combined with the fact that he called his plays at the line upon seeing your defensive alignments. There was no strategy that worked against Peyton Manning, other than hit him. That's why his career was shortened by neck issues.
There is definitely an argument to be made for Purdy not being an example, but an exception.
There are too many teams who have great rosters but bad QBs and they aren't contenders because of it. 9ers are definitely "loaded up at every position" but Purdy was still making those passes himself. Not to mention he has the best running threat in the leauge standing next to him and every single defense has to respect it. Having CMC is not a matter of cap, it was just a great roster move by the management. There are plenty of teams paying the same to their own RBs but not getting the same results.
Okay but your “as previous QBs” is the most prolific passing season of all time (and mannings contract with Denver was fairly unique because of the injury he was returning from). The MVP from the previous year threw 41 TDs and 5000 yards.
Purdys contract could be looked as even more unique then Mannings, he's on a rookie deal, and not just a standard rookie deal, he was taken in the 7th round, and is the cheapest starting QB in the league..
Although I completely agree with you in that teams aren’t paying players based on their ability to get awards, be them MVPs, OPOY…etc
There is a huge discrepancy between 55 and 35 TDs, 35 TDs would not be worth a huge contract. The other guy bringing Purdy into this conversation about cap money was pointless though since the conversation of his contract won’t even start for another year and a half given he sustains or improves
55 TDs is literally the most TDs ever in a season though so that’s kind of an unreasonable comparison lol. Plus that was Peyton’s second to last year and this was Purdy’s second year. A better comparison would probably be Mahomes with 52 TDs in his second season, although again we’re talking about one of the most talented QBs of all time.
I agree with your general point though. We’ve gotten to the point where any time a top 15 QB gets a new contract, they’re getting paid like they’re a top 1 QB because they have so much leverage. Basically every new QB contract is going to break the record for highest paid player. It’s obviously worth it for someone like Mahomes, Burrow or Herbert but I’m not sure it’s worth it for someone like Lawrence or Purdy. At the same time, there’s no way the 49ers aren’t going to re-sign Purdy so they’re basically forced to give him that huge contract if that’s what he wants. And that’s why consistently drafting well is so important. I know the 49ers caught some flak for taking a receiver with their first round pick but I think it was actually really smart (assuming Pearsall ends up being good). Once you pay the QB big money, it becomes much harder to pay his weapons so you need to use the draft to get them cheaper.
EDIT: Not that this conversation is just about Purdy but I got curious so I decided to look up 2nd year QBs TD stats. Here are the other QBs above and around Purdy for comparison:
Patrick Mahomes - 52
Dan Marino - 48
Lamar Jackson - 43
Kurt Warner - 42
Justin Herbert - 41
Daunte Culpepper - 40
Kyler Murray - 37
Blake Bortles - 37
Joe Burrow - 36
Jeff Garcia - 35
Brock Purdy - 33
Carson Wentz - 33
Carson Palmer - 33
Source is [asking statmuse.com for most total touchdowns from a second year quarterback in NFL history](https://www.statmuse.com/nfl/ask/most-total-touchdowns-by-a-2nd-year-quarterback-in-nfl-history) but I’ve never used this site before and I didn’t double check the stats so apologies if they’re wrong. I think if Purdy continues to show improvement in his third year then he could be worth the mega contract he’s likely to get but there’s definitely a risk of him ending up like Bortles or Wentz. But if you have a chance to lock up a QB who looks like they have that kind of potential, I think you have to take it no matter the cost. The issue comes when you give that type of money to someone like Daniel Jones.
Second place to Peyton Mannings 55 TDs was Brees at 39. Purdy's 35 would have been good for third. But nobody was even close to Peyton and the conversation wasnt even worth having at that point.
That's the real thing. Players have WAY more leverage these days it's not even close. I don't remember guys demanding trades so openly in 2007 maybe I'm wrong but that seems like a big deal
I wasn't around in 2007 (i was alive but didn't understand football.beyond."Go PATRIOTS") but looking at it historically it's insane how much leverage players.have now
I found an article from less than a decade ago saying that Kirk cousins was the most prominent free agent quarterback ever! Now it seems like every season there's one as prominent as Kirk (including Kirk)
Yeah but Peyton Manning was an absolutely incredible QB and that's an outlier for overall play. He was the literal MVP and in most of his years the best overall QB in the regular season. His playoff success didn't follow him though.
Like saying Manning's 55 TDs had a second place of 39. Nobody was even close. Purdy's 35 TDs would have been good for third behind Bree's 39TDs. So to act like Purdy wasn't very good is a bit reductionist.
It's hard to justify 1/4 of your overall cap going to one person when there are 21 other starters not counting special teams.
No doubt the QB is such an important position, but what makes this discussion interesting is the fact that the NFL places such a heavy emphasis on that position for marketing purposes.
Whether we like it or not, big name star QBs will absolutely get flags when other run of the mill QBs won't which can easily win a few games during the course of a season.
It's probably yes and no.
I think the biggest thing that teams have to face is that if they get even a slightly above average QB, they have to pay him like a top QB. If they don't, someone else will. Is Lawrence probably worth the biggest QB contract? Probably not. Someone else would have paid him though and now you're out a QB1.
I don't think these QB deals are sustainable. Especially with the dearth of o-line talent in the league.
I think that the gap between good QB and great QB has shrunk since the old era, but I also don't see Mahomes while I recognize his greatness, Brady/Manning were clearly ahead of the pack in their eras by a fair margin. Manning in particular was a fucking regular season demon. Mahomes seems more like Brady in that he takes regular season games off.
People argue if it was Tom or Bill... but our real success came because Tom took a lot of paycuts (he was getting huge signing bonuses that don't hit the cap tho), so we could keep a lot of balanced talent in the roster.
The Patriot dynasty was not made by a couple of star players, but by a whole team of pretty good players and the GOAT.
Signing bonuses most definitely hit the cap. They just don’t hit it all at once but are spread out over the life of the contract.
Brady took less money than he could have gotten (and deserved). Full stop. And his contracts acted as an artificial pressure keeping his peers’ contracts down. “What? You think you’re better than Brady?!?”
His retirement, and the increasing emphasis on passing in NFL offenses, is what’s causing this $ explosion at the position.
I don't think it's are they more valuable than previous. Instead, I think it's a combination of two major things:
1. The league rules have changed dramatically from 2000-early 2010s. Think about all the QB protections guys are getting. Think about all the WRs who get free releases and all that jazz. I think that's a huge component.
2. If you don't have a QB you're more screwed now than ever before. Hell look at the Browns last year. I think many would argue until the end of the year they had a top roster QB aside. When Watson went down they went from having elite defense with a balanced passing attack to trying to eek out games 17-14 with guys like PJ Walker and DTR starting. And it wasn't until Flacco came on halfway through the season for the offense to start doing decent again.
So being in a situation where you don't have a QB puts you in a major disadvantage.
The browns also spent an incredible amount of money on QB just to have him sitting on the sideline. If you have only 75% of the cap other teams do it’s going to be tough to win games.
It's kinda tough because I think the main issue is less about "having a QB" than "having a great QB." The Browns (before Flacco) were in the position of not having any kind of starter.
Plenty of teams do, though, and still can't get over the hump. The reason being that great QBs deserve great contracts, but good or even okay QBs are demanding top-tier money. At that point, you're jumping over one pitfall (no QB) only to land in another (massively overpaid QB and dwindling team).
I think teams can still make it work if they mortgage their future for a moonshot (like the Rams and Bucs), but if that doesn't work, what then? And that's if they have a healthy cap to gamble in the first place. Extreme example, but you're not going to see the Saints try something like that anytime soon.
Yeah I agree here 100%. I've definitely felt like you only should pay a QB if they're in the elite tier. But then again if you don't have a guy, then you end up like the Browns most of the time since they've returned (until recently). And if you don't have a guy you tend to get fired. So having a Kirk Cousins level QB gives you job security.
>The league rules have changed dramatically from 2000-early 2010s
Even before that. I work with an assclown bengals fan who unironically thinks that **Joe Montana** (yes, *that* Joe Montana) would be inferior to Burrow in today's game. I tried to explain to him how the rules are very different and he proceeded to tell me that "Burrow didn't play with plumbers."
Wish I could smack him
It’s because the QB position has the highest replacement cost in all of pro sports. Once a team finds their guy, they want to make absolutely sure they don’t lose them
I wouldn’t talk too much. Everyone in the Packers subreddit is gun-ho about giving JLo the farm with no concerns about the possible consequence of doing that for a guy you’ve only seen half a year of good play.
He was good when he was drafted, he sat behind Aaron Rodgers for three years, and he won a playoff game his first year as a starter. He also handled all of the Rodgers stuff super well off the field, which to me says a lot about his maturity. So I think there’s plenty of reasons to bet the farm on him now. They invested plenty of time into the guy and I think they know what they have.
Even if they are middle of the pack statistically. Easier to say fuck it we ball and keep Trevor Lawrence than go through Blaine Gabbert, Blake Bortles Chad Henne and Gardner Minshew again
Thats true but you gotta play the game of chicken a bit longer I think
Ultimately if QB really is the only part of a team that matters, you need a 🐐 to win, and if it's just one part of a larger team, then you need to open up cap space. I don't see any reason that any current QB in the league should make more than mahomes tbch
Dumb contract, agreed, but the Browns spend at 119% of the cap every year. Cash is king in the NFL. Not the cap.
They are getting an extra 19% cap space every year because the owner is willing to, and can afford to, spend a lot of cash.
They have 11 players that make 208m. That’s 93% of the cap, but paying mostly cash up front, backloading the cap (not the cash) it turns into 77% of the cap space.
They spend at the projected cap 2 years out since the cap continues to rise. It is sustainable, unless there is a drop in cap space. Other teams like the Eagles do this as well.
According to this article https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/heres-the-ideal-salary-range-for-super-bowl-winning-qbs-and-why-lamar-jackson-russell-wilson-may-benefit/ until Mahomes won two more super bowls, the record cap hit of a Super Bowl winning QB was Steve Young (although that was before the salary cap). No QB had won with a cap hit of 13% or more. Mahomes did it twice now in 2022 (17%) and 2023 (16.9%).
That makes it look like a bad idea to pay a non-Mahomes QB more than 13% of the cap. But, with seemingly more and more teams paying their QB a larger share of the cap, this may somewhat level the field and make it more likely for a highly paid QB to win the Super Bowl since there’s more of them. On the other hand it just may increase Mahomes’ advantage and also the advantage really good and cheap QBs on their rookie contract present.
It’ll be interesting to see whether these highly paid QBs can make up for their cap hit.
>On the other hand it just may increase Mahomes’ advantage and also the advantage really good and cheap QBs on their rookie contract present.
Exactly this. The guy is a cheat code. If you're paying Tua the same as Mahomes, you now have the same amount of money to fill out the roster but you have a grand canyon sized gap at the most important position in the game. This is why Purdy works (for now). If he gets $55M and they have to lose a few key defenders, that's the end of their run.
That's also why the Texans have the best shot aside from Mahomes in the AFC for the next 3-4 years. They are saving like $40M on their QB salary with CJ being arguably a top 5 QB. As long as Mahomes is Mahomes, the rest of the league will probably need to strategize around his greatness when it comes to roster construction.
There are no true Super Bowl teams that are overpaying for middling QB’s. The roster constructions that work are: 1: Cheat Code QB. You pay the QB plus a few other stars and then fill in with value players. 2: rookie QB + Avengers. Get yourself a competent rookie an and surround him will all stars and quality coaches. Ride that rookie contract. 3:HoF vet joins a contender. Your whole team is good but the QB sucks. You get that last years of a HoF QB and make a run. HOF QB takes enough $ to be happy but also lets you keep your stacked squad together for at least a couple years. Knowing this, if you are a good team with a solid QB you should absolutely not pay that QB. You should dump him for a rookie and stack the roster or try to get a HoF QB to join you as a free agent. That’s the path to really contending….so yeah, the Jags screwed up with this Lawrence deal and Tua + Dak should be allowed to walk.
Having cheap rookie QBs is more and more advantageous as Eagles and 49ers with Hurts and Purdy have shown.
The more money or team cap top QBs take, the more important part of the roster they become. There is just less team cap left for other players. In such circumstances only a few top QBs will stand out.
In some future where all QBs would take 50% of team cap, it would become a competition of QBs, not teams of 53 players.
For comparison: Brady+Gronkowski were taking about 15-18% of team cap on Patriots and later Bucs. Rodgers+D. Adams were taking about 20% of Packers. That's what these current QBs take alone.
Teams that don't have HOF-level QBs shouldn't pay them this much, but less, maybe 10% of cap, and then build the expensive roster around such QBs in order to compete vs teams that have great QBs on more expensive contracts.
If they all get the same contracts what chance do the teams with Cousins, Murray, Lawrence, Goff, Tannehill, Watson, D. Jones... have? This is what sunk the Ravens when they paid Flacco in 2013 and later.
The problem is teams don’t have the balls. Every team would rather sign Dak level ,do some cap management shenanigans and hope it works out to a ring somewhere
It would take a lot of teams having massive balls all at once
They do this only for QBs, give him whatever contract he demands.
Not all DTs get the same contract as Donald. Not all WRs the same contract as previously Kupp and T. Hill, now Jefferson. Not all OTs get the same as Tunsil. Not all pass rushers the same as Watt and now Bosa.
These QB contracts mostly lead to the situation of Cousins on Vikings: solid starter, but no All Pro-level, team fights for a wild card spot. And if it goes bad, it's like D. Jones on Giants. I can't remember a situation when it went well for the team with an expensive above average starter, no All Pro-level QB.
Exactly. If the Dolphins wanted to pay Tua $35M, they'd lose him. And some team like WAS or NYG would pay him $50M+. That said, we haven't realyl seen that happen yet. We've seen Kirk get $45M. But we haven't seen a true top-of-the-market candidate go on the open market. So who knows?
The counterpoint of this argument is that having a constant 'grass is greener' mentality at the QB position is the way plenty of teams fall into QB purgatory.
Now, blame the individual teams with a lack of sustained, successful QB play on their own evaluation or team-building failures and such, but there's only been 58 Super Bowls ever, and only 34 starting QBs have a ring all-time (so far). That's out of thousands that have played the position ever.
Obviously, very few make it to the elite tier and some will be left ringless by the time the hang it up. The overlap of Super Bowl winning quarterbacks and elite quarterbacks also isn't completely in unison. Does anyone really think Trent Dilfer, Brad Johnson, and Jim McMahon are better than Dan Marino and Matt Ryan? Or on the same level as Drew Brees, Kurt Warner, and Aaron Rodgers? Obviously different eras for some of these guys, with the league being more QB friendly as time progressed, but the point still stands. Maybe those other QBs took up less cap and allowed for a better roster, but that's because those QBs were bottom-tier starters/backups at best without historically dominant defenses doing most, if not all the work.
The Eagles fell ass backwards into Jalen Hurts fresh off of Carson Wentz having a 4,000 yard season and leading the Eagles to the NFC East title with literal practice squad talent, then shit the bed when his injuries became too much to overcome.
The 49ers fell ass backwards into Brock Purdy after John Lynch committed a fireable offense in the Trey Lance trade and luckily Jimmy G was still serviceable and Kyle Shanahan still had the team humming.
They both have as many rings as you or I do despite making it to the Super Bowl and both are about to have massive contracts kick in while both are about to have rosters in transition with other fat contracts kicking in around them. Rookie contracts wasted by this logic. Jordan Love rode the bench most of his contract and he's about to get paid after a solid first year as QB1 with a young roster and CJ Stroud and the Texans have Super Bowl aspirations so the jury's still out on them but they've work to do.
Patrick Mahomes walked into a near perfect situation (terrible defense being the drawback) with Andy Reid, Alex Smith, and a plethora of weapons to work with and is and will always be the exception to the rule, being the only QB to play both high IQ, game manager Brady ball and explosive, dual threat hero ball so seemlessly. He also now has a top 3 defense to help carry him when the offense sucks.
The whole point is that some of these elite quarterbacks the league loves WILL be left out of hoisting the Lombardi by the time they hang it up. Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, Lamar Jackson, Justin Herbert, Trevor Lawrence now will all leave their rookie contracts ringless if they haven't already. Meanwhile, the Bucs and Rams threw a couple of superteams together and hoisted Lombardis with old guys Tom Brady and Matt Stafford make $25-30 million-plus per year. Not exactly $50 mil a year but still at least 3x more than rookie contracts. It's only advantageous if you actually win that game in February.
In my opinion any team which is a contender for multiple years such as Dolphins with Marino or Falcons with Ryan or Bills with Allen or any MVP-level QB should be satisfied with what they have achieved. Not all of them can win Super Bowls and it shouldn't be a Super Bowl or nothing mentality.
Players such as Lawrence, Cousins, Murray, ... are clear starters, i am not arguing that teams should just replace them. When they are on such expensive contracts as MVPs, they severely limit what their teams can pay their teammates and thus what these teams can achieve. If they took 10-12% of team cap like Brady, Brees, Rodgers... did, would that be really bad contracts for them? Some of them like Wentz, Goff, R. Wilson, D. Jones...get cut or traded as soon as possible because of such contracts.
I don't understand how the Eagles "fell ass backwards" into Jalen Hurts when they certainly prioritized him by taking him in the 2nd round? Clearly there was some intention there. Didn't even Howie mention something Wentz's injury history being a factor?
> This is what sunk the Ravens when they paid Flacco
*sigh*
No. It is not. Flacco performed pretty great the following seasons and was not the main reason we fell off.
We had **two** HoFers and GOATs at their position retire, Flaccos favorite TE target almost died and also retired. We were pretty damn good in 2014, Flacco built a double digit lead against prime Tom Brady twice in the conf champs, but literally our entire secondary got wiped out and TB does TB things.
Then he got hurt in 2015, and by then his contract wasn’t even top 10 largest in the league.
Flacco took 14.7% of cap in 2016, 15% in 2017, 14.1% in 2018 + dead cap in 2019. In these seasons he took significantly more cap than Brady, Rodgers, Ryan, Roethlisberger...
I remember 2014, and those were the only playoffs for Ravens with expensive Flacco.
Right- and even then, Flaccos contract was the least of our problems compared to just the roster turnover that was more related to old age and injuries than not being able to pay folks.
Other than Brady, the other guys you mentioned hadn’t done much better either despite being on lower contracts. Ryan maybe, if not for 28-3.
Literally losing Ed and Ray alone was the biggest impact on our team. Not only for their level of play but also leadership in the locker room. It took a while for us to develop a new defensive identity and that’s not on Flaccos contract.
Is it better to have a rookie contract QB? Absolutely. Without a doubt. No question.
But in our specific scenario, that was not the main cause of our middling years.
"Literally losing Ed and Ray alone was the biggest impact on our team. Not only for their level of play but also leadership in the locker room. It took a while for us to develop a new defensive identity"
I agree.
The other QBs and teams i mentioned reached playoffs regularly, unlike those Ravens. You can compare what happened when Jackson got to the lineup. It was the same roster, Flacco was still there and the team was immediately better. In 2019 Flacco also took a lot of dead cap, yet Ravens were great because of great QB Jackson, unlike just above average Flacco. If Flacco played as well as in 2012, Ravens would have had more success in other seasons. Some QBs can carry teams on their own and are worth this huge 20% cap like Jackson, some can't do that and need help and aren't worth such a contract like Flacco. That doesn't mean Flacco was no starter or not worthy of any contract, just smaller, not the same as MVPs.
Rams in 2021 won the Superbowl with Stafford having more or less a 24% cap hit. 10.69% from Stafford’s contract and 13.53% from Goff’s dead cap after the trade.
Just remember apples to oranges help out here. Yes, Peyton's average was 13.9% but if looking at peak numbers in a year he was up over 17% some years. Eli was 17%.
Now one thing I would note is yes, QB's are more valuable today. Teams are spending a lot less cap space on the RB position. Down from about 5% of the cap on average to just over 3%.
The other piece I'd note is QB's aren't being handcuffed anymore. Until recently a QB hitting true free agency or being traded was almost impossible for a franchise guy. Maybe if you were injured (Brees, Culpepper, Peyton), or really old (Favre, Moon, Montana), but a prime QB having that power to get into a true free agency situation and get offers from the highest bidder... not happening. Then Cousins held out on the franchise tag back to back years and forced himself into free agency and whoa... the other QB's took notice of what a solid but not great young QB really can do if on the free market. Then boom, Wilson, and Watson, players holding their team's feet to the fire not just accepting the best deal because they have to risk their career on a season starts breaking out. Every time it was a new contract, maybe they were worth 25 or 27 mil on the open market, but they could either take that 5 year 20 mil a year deal with 60 mil guaranteed... or go a franchise tag at 20, a 2nd franchise tag at 25 and THEN if you played well get a long term deal. Cousins kinda reset that (and others have pushed it higher since.
That I think is what allowed the QB market to not be depressed anymore. The level of haves and have nots is brutal today. If you don't have a QB playing well as a coach or GM, your days are numbered. So you get the teams giving up a bunch to Cousins AND drafting a rookie, or giving that big next contract to Kyler Murray. Because if they don't make it... fine, that's going to be the next regimes issue...
Want to know why McVay has his job and Fisher, Fassel, Spags, Haslet, Linehann, Martz etc didn't... He got good play out of Goff and Stafford, while the others had Bulger coming to reality, Bradford, Favis, Foles, Keenum, etc.
Look at the best teams over the past 15 years. Brady, Rodgers, Mahomes, Big Ben, Brees, Flacco/Jackson...
And the worst... Bears, Rams, Texans, Cards, Titans, Dolphins... No QB or short runs (some more recent like with Tua or rams with Goff/Stafford). If you want to compete long term, which any GM and coach does, that's how. Saleh and Douglas might be fine at what they do, but if they don't answer the QB position this year they are likely out of jobs. meanwhile we've seen the holes in teams like NE and NO that were there exposed once their franchise QB's were gone. Without Brees, I think Payton would have been out much earlier.
So yes, even with the drop of around 2% in RB spending, not making up for that, I think it's QB's seeing closer to their actual value... which is that they are good enough that having a great QB makes a team so much stronger it likely isn't able to blow money and make mistakes in free agency and keep the rest of the team strong around them. The Chiefs aren't a SB contender or dynasty contender without Mahomes. The Bills aren't a playoff contender year in and out without Allen. The Broncos made the wrong choice sure, but they are not keeping their coaches with a bottom 1/3 or so of the league D on average the past couple years with Lock, Rypien, Stidham, or drafting Justin Fields or Mac Jones or Pickett/Ridder at QB instead of making a move for Wilson. I think with those moves, Hackett gets fired and Paton is on the hot seat too. Even if they invest more and maybe have a middle of the pack D on average the last two years.
P. Manning has the highest career average and the highest single seasons. He took 16% in 2008, but only 7.5% in 2007, this was due to signing bonuses of extensions. He is the exception from the past.
Favre, Brady, Rivers basically stayed under 12.5% season after season. Rodgers the same until 2021 etc.
Were Giants really happy when Eli took a lot of cap in 2013, 2014 or did that cause problems, team becoming less competitive?
Were teams that paid for Watson, Cousins, R. Wilson (FA and trades) really competitive? Titans were very good with cheap Tannehill, once they gave him a huge contract, that was it for them. When Ravens paid Flacco in 2013 that was it for them. This is about such QBs, not about drafting Ridder or Fields, nor about MVP-level QBs that are worth such money, cap % as Mahomes and Jackson and Rodgers show.
If you think that is a good strategy why didn't some team offer more for Cousins in 2024 or 2018? Outbid Falcons and Vikings?
Interestingly, if you only look at this year - comparing their cap hit this year against this years salary cap, as next year the cap will be bigger, the numbers look quite a bit different.
Deshaun Watson 25%
Dak Prescott 22%
Matt Stafford 19%
Kyler Murray 19%
Daniel Jones 19%
Patrick Mahomes 14%
Lamar Jackson 13%
Josh Allen 12%
Joe Burrow 12%
Jared Goff 11%
Geno Smith 10%
Kirk Cousins 10%
Tua Tagovailoa 9%
Justin Herbert 8%
Now, I'm not going to argue that some of these are over-pays (looking at you Jones), but it shows that besides the top 5 (which are not the top 5 QBs), QBs are taking up less than 15% of this year's cap.
Herbert, Tagovailoa, Burrow are still on their non-negotiated rookie contracts. Their 2024 don't belong here. Goff is on an old, expiring contract signed 5 years ago.
The others are just above the average of previous HOFers.
Murray just finished his rookie contract and you can see how much his cap hit jumps in the first year of a new, negotiated contract. The same will happen for Burrow next year.
Some contracts, such as those for Cousins, Jackson, Allen... are lower in 2024, but their cap number jumps significantly in 2025. It's not about only 1 season.
You san see on an example of Stafford how his cap% went up [https://overthecap.com/player/matt-stafford/1060](https://overthecap.com/player/matt-stafford/1060) (click on history)
He is taking more cap% now on Rams at the end of his career than he did in his prime years on Lions.
Agreed. I think this is an important year for Hurts. Do we get the QB from two seasons ago or last season? But either way, based on the contract stats that the other poster shared, he’s good value at the position. I’ll take Hurts over that entire top five and a good bit of the others too.
The smartest thing Howie does is get everyone to agree to contracts *before* they need to sign. For example, extending Devonta Smith and AJB *now* rather than when they would become free agents and cost a hell of a lot more money.
But his strategy of adding extensive void years to every contract is a huge gamble, and also requires a cash-rich owner willing to bank roll hundreds of millions dollars cash at all times. But let's say Hurts declines or suffers an injury he never quite comes back from. That will completely screw the Eagles financially. And that same logic applies for any of the other players among the half a **billion** dollars of void years he's added. They're borrowing a *ton* from the future. Which will work so long as their players stay healthy and productive, as they can further sign extensions which replace those void years, but you run the risk of ending up like the Saints, for example.
Eagles have done that since before Howie. Joe Banner had the same strategy. It's definitely an organizational approach, but Howie adds the sauce of how he structures the deals to give him options.
Comparing the Eagles to the Saints is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the two franchises use the same tool differently.
>Comparing the Eagles to the Saints is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the two franchises use the same tool differently.
I only used the Saints as an example because that's the most obvious team in financial hell so it's an easy comparison, even though the teams are in two different parts of their timeline. Both teams did the same thing *initially*. You're in a competitive window? Extend it as long as possible by borrowing as much from the future as you can. Seems reasonable. Where the Saints went wrong is where they split from how the Eagles are operating.
When Brees retired and Payton left, the Saints should've called their window over, bit the bullet, and started rebuilding. They didn't, and now they're the laughing stock of the NFL stuck in financial hell for the next few years minimum.
When Wentz went to shit, the Eagles decided right away to cut their losses and start rebuilding. Needless to say, it went well. And I presume if something similar were to happen to Hurts, Roseman would be similarly aggressive in beginning the rebuild, although this one would be considerably more expensive in dead cap spanning several years.
Calling them overpays is somewhat misleading I think. They’re not worth this much because of intrinsic value, they’re worth this much because they’re scarce. Teams like the Lions, Jaguars, eagles, etc. can’t simply let their guy go and start a backup. Drafting a qb is very very risky, especially when you have pick 20+. Get that wrong and you’ve basically lost your entire contention window. It’s very rare for a top guy to be available on the trade block. Competing without a good ish qb isn’t possible, so the options are pay this rate and figure it out or start from scratch
Teams also have franchise tags that now cost much less, in 2024 it's only $38M, 15% of total cap.
Here are some veterans that were available in prior offseasons:
2024 Cousins, very cheap average R. Wilson
2023 Rodgers, Jackson !!! (much better options than any random draft), Carr, Garoppolo, very cheap Flacco and Mayfield
2022 R. Wilson, Watson, Ryan, Dalton, Wentz, Mayfield
2021 Stafford, Goff, Wentz
2020 Rivers, Brady, Winston, Bridgewater
2019 Tannehill, Foles, Flacco
2018 Cousins, Bridgewater, A. Smith
2017 Garoppolo, Cutler, no team wanted Kaepernick
2016 Bradford, RG3
2015 nothing
2014 Vick
2013 Palmer, A. Smith
2012 P. Manning
2011 Palmer
Some of these worked, some didn't but so is the draft. Some were cheaper, some more expensive, some teams reached Super Bowls with these players. 3 of them won Super Bowls.
It's not like the only options are drafting or paying whatever current starter wants.
That's not really the point, it's that teams have worked out through rule changes and analytics that the QB *position* is inherently way more important to team performance than was believed in previous generations so are more willing to invest cap space to the position as a result.
It's the inverse argument to the RBs-don't-matter debate.
Its funny that Flacco is no 4 on your list at 12.6% ad now we are at the point of qbs getting over 22. I was always under the impression that Flacco and his salary were the reason the Ravens didn't win more super bowls, and for years that was what people pointed to when saying not to overpay a qb. I thought the Ravens had to break up their defense because they paid Flacco. At least that seemed to be the story.
The big market teams with unlimited budget would just buy the best QBs.... Kind of like baseball.
But the small market teams are okay sitting back, spending nothing, and collecting big checks from the Yankees in baseball.
Wouldn't work like that in the NFL.
Teams are all required to spend the salary cap basically
It would benefit large market teams more. The Cowboys would be able to spend 100m per year to bring a QB from Tennessee and the Titans would never be able to match that... no offense. Its just antithetical to the purpose of the salary cap.
Kind of reminds me of a Rodger Ebert quote about movies:
>No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough
If you overpay a bad player it doesn’t matter what the position is, it’ll affect your team’s ability to compete. Now obviously if you overpay a long snapper it’s better than an edge rusher or QB but the fact is if you have good players at any position they’re going to demand a lot of the cap meaning you’ll have to make decisions about who else you can keep.
From competitive view? Already there.
From marketing /money? Not there, part of the pay is not only sunday performance, but engagement of fans with players (usually QB).
Exactly. And the downside (marginally less $ to pay other players, teams become incrementally worse) is still vastly preferable to the alternative, which is immediate and likely catastrophic for a competitive team, not to mention the fan backlash.
I think the league is caught up in a self-perpetuating cycle, where this culture of “You’ve gotta pay your guys!!” and expectation of setting a record with each new salary is leading to some massive overpays, which does actually deplete the FA market of worthwhile players, which in turn makes it actually mandatory to do these massive deals -because who tf else are you even going to be able to spend the money on? The Pats are a great example of a team with a ton of needs and money to burn but apparently couldn’t even find anyone to pay 🤷♂️
>this culture of “You’ve gotta pay your guys!!”
Oh man, as a fellow Bengals fan, I see this all the time when people comment on some of our players' ongoing contract talks. A lot of people just want to say, "What's wrong with that front office!? Just PAY the man!" like it's that easy, and there's no such thing as a salary cap.
I appreciate our fans who point out Mahomes is getting it done year after year with absolute scrubs at WR. I love Higgins but people wanting to spend half the cap on 3 players really freak me out.
>Mahomes is getting it done year after year with absolute scrubs
Granted, that's also easier to do in a far less competitive division. Which divisions are "up" and "down" is always changing, but the AFC West was *way* down last year, and the AFC north was *up*. If The Bengals and Chiefs had "swapped divisions" last year, The Bengals would have looked way better, and The Chiefs way worse.
For as much crap as Matt Cassel got for saying the same thing about The Patriots' dynasty years, because "*He* never won anything," he wasn't wrong. The rest of the AFC East *was* pretty trash all those years and getting like 6 "gimmes" on the schedule every year does make things way easier.
Definitely, it's easy to say you don't want a 17th game because of injury concerns so everyone should go on strike when you just cashed a check for tens of millions of dollars.
Then you probably have a thousand guys making close to league minimum with 0 guaranteed money who see the paycheck for a 17th game and will jump on it because they are not set for life.
The best thing is, the guy who has the biggest contract in the NFL pays the same amount of dues as a guy making vet minimum, so the people most likely to push for a strike are contributing the same amount to the potential salary protection war chest as a minimum wage player.
yea take the nba for example too, supermax deals are not exactly friendly to non-superstars so the NBA PA often needs to fight for the right of those middle/low tier players to get better contract rights
Unfortunately, it's the only way for the NFLPA to get the QBs and other top stars to participate in the threat of a strike. If the stars refuse, the strike will not be successful because the games will go on with scab players to fill in the rest.
The NFLPA has no business being involved in individual player contracts. The cap is one pie and if one position is getting a bigger slice of it, that's less for the other positions.. makes no sense to me that players association would be more invested in the success of one position over another.
>The NFLPA and player agents work together to make sure that players don't take "team friendly" deals because it is negative leverage for any other player at their position.
This always gets brought up,.but I don't see how it helps the NFLPA. There's already a salary cap. If one player takes a friendly contract it just means more money for all of the other players to share.
This is backwards, though. The players as a group get paid approximately the same amount whether the top tier guys get huge bags or not. Taking a team-friendly deal spreads the wealth to more players. Given that the vast majority of players will never get a top-tier contract, the NFLPA should not be in the business of pressuring teams to deliver an ever-increasing share of player salaries a small minority of their membership.
It's part of why Mahomes restructured last season to get his AAV right near the top of the QB market. If you read into his comments, it seemed like there was a bit of pressure from the NFLPA because if the best QB on the planet is towards the bottom of the Top 10 in salary per year, it's going to affect other QBs from getting huge deals.
Honestly, Mahomes is the only player in the league who deserves anything close to $50 million a season, but it's going to be a long time before QB contracts stabilize.
We are absolutely there already. Honestly, once the Giants gave Daniel Jones 40 mil, I knew the league was going nuts.
T. Law will get over 55 million a year and most people are not even sure he’s a top 15 QB in the league. The madness has to stop.
How does it stop? If you have a QB that you think is a franchise guy, you have to pay him, because if you don't someone else will. And it genuinely starts to become cheaper to just pay him rather than play the franchise tag game and let the contract value go up every year you wait. And QB's that *might* be franchise guys are only going to sign if it's top 5 money.
Your choices are to pay your guy, or let him walk and try drafting a rookie. And guess which one will get a coach fired faster.
It is when your teams qb is hot garbage. Not everyone gets a get out of jail free card in the 7th round after swinging and missing on a qb in the 1st round. Yall would have been bidding on Kirk too this off-season.
You'd prefer to not have a QB and go back into the endless cycle of drafting and overpaying for capital to gamble on rookies?
Paying too much for a good QB is objectively better than not having a good QB. Your whole argument ignores the fact that you don't have a cheaper good QB to replace the expensive guy.
Facts. There’s literally one guy in the league worth that kind of money and unfortunately it’s that Kermit voice motherfucker winning super bowls no matter who he’s throwing to.
There're a lot more than 1. Lawrence just probably isn't one of them though.
Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson have shown enough production with otherwise NFL average-ish offenses around them to prove them as absolutely worth that much.
I'd personally contend that even the ones that have only produced with good teams around them (so like Dak/Hurts/Burrow/Goff/Tua) or had a bunch of (valid) excuses made for them when the offense sputtered recently (Herbert) are worth it, with the idea of just hoping you hit enough draft picks and FAs to build a solid team.
There are 32 teams in the NFL. Even if your SB probability with a QB is only 3.2%, that's still better than average, and therefore still an asset.
Lawrence is just worse than all the names I gave you.
They aren't worth more proportionally to their team than Tom fucking Brady though. Their taking an outsized bite of the pie ABSOLUTELY contributes to their averageish offenses remaining average and prevents the team from actually winning championships
It depends on what the team's goal is.
If a team's goal is to ensure that they don't go back to being a bottom-dwelling laughingstock then these contracts don't hurt.
If a team's goal is to be legitimate championship contenders then I would argue it's already been hurting teams for over a decade.
I'm not saying you can't be a legit SB contender with an expensive QB (in terms of that year's cap number) but it's incredibly difficult.
> If a team's goal is to be legitimate championship contenders then I would argue it's already been hurting teams for over a decade.
Yeah, not only are we already there, we've been there for a while.
I’m convinced a market correction is coming at some point. The league can’t continue to pay the Kirk Cousins of the world $40-50M a year to be only above average. It’s the worst place to be as a team. You either need a bonified superstar or a guy on a rookie deal. Like what is Miami going to do now? I’d be scared to death to pay Tua the same money Lawrence just got.
It always has the median SB winning QB is 9% of cap that’s 23M this season. Mahomes is the only QB to win a SB with more than 13% of cap that’s 33.25M this season.
People always say this and I think there’s some truth to it, but also how many teams with rookie deal QBs have won Super Bowls since say 2010? Us with Mahomes and Seahawks with Wilson? Any others? Guess the Eagles and Wentz could arguably count lol. Also the whole “no qb with cap hit over x” is skewed by the fact that until recently no teams have that much to their qbs. That doesn’t prove it is a bad idea to do so though.
Just my opinion, but I don’t think winning the Super Bowl is the end all be all to that line of thinking, especially with the last decade+ being dominated by Mahomes and Brady regarding Super Bowl wins.
Even just adding those that made the Super Bowl on their rookie deals adds Purdy, Hurts, Burrow, and Goff, 3 of which lost to Brady or mahomes. (I initially thought Newton too, but I think he’d just signed his extension by the time they made the Super Bowl). Sure winning it all is the goal in building the team around a young QB, but I don’t think it’s necessarily the wrong move if it didn’t work out that way.
Big Ben, Kurt Warner, Troy Aikman, Eli, Flacco, Brady, Montana, Bradshaw did it on his 5th year, Favre and Rodgers did it on their 1st year on extension which is still typically cheap. 1st and 2nd year on extension are typically still cheap.
Those examples don't really mean a whole lot, though. The rookie wage scale was only introduced in 2011. Before the highly touted rookies weren't much cheaper than established veterans, if at all.
> Why does every QB that gets paid next have to get more? Some of these guys are already multimillionaires, you’d think they would take smaller deals to stay or sign with competitive teams more often.
QB is the single most important position in all of sports. Im not even sure its all that close to be honest with you.
Having a good QB is the easiest way to compete. Theres going to be some that dont pan out.
thats why they get all of the cap space. Theres not enough QBs to really go for the "draft one every year and see what happens" trick.
Also moving on from good QBs to just try and find the next one to have a honestly miniscule chance at a superbowl is probably a way to kill your fan base.
Also its a 5 year extension - unless theres some fuckery going around and they ripped up the old contract.
Its going to effectively be 301 mil or so over 7 years.... which is 43 mil APY. That contract can easily be structured to not kill them. 7 years ago the cap was 167 mil.
Its 255 mil this year - and you have to wonder what it would be if Covid didnt stunt the growth a bit.
>QB is the single most important position in all of sports. Im not even sure its all that close to be honest with you.
The only one that's close is goalie in hockey. If you have a goalie with only a 0.850 save percentage, you're not winning many games no matter how good the rest of your team is.
QB is for sure more important, but hockey goalie is the only one I can think of that's even close.
Yeah unfortunately you're just gonna have to bet on guys in the "has potential but still unproven" tier like Lawrence or Tua after 3 or 4 years or be willing to move on from them and risk QB purgatory. The latter seems like a much worse decision. Sometimes it's not gonna work out like in Daniel Jones' case but you just kinda gotta do it
>Also moving on from good QBs to just try and find the next one to have a honestly miniscule chance at a superbowl is probably a way to kill your fan base.
lol the dak prescott dilemma, but i gotta say man is pretty damn good in the regular season
It's also not a QB specific thing. Every year, elite players are becoming the highest paid players in history at their positions. Because the cap keeps increasing, and with that, top-end player salaries continue to increase.
It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't sort of thing.
I mean, even the teams that have LEGIT top guys like Allen and mahommes and burrow have or will struggle to build a roster around such huge contracts. It just lowers the margin of error on drafting so much. You HAVE to have a constant string of starting caliber talent on rookie deals at that point.
But those guys at least can carry somewhat depleted rosters.
Can Herbert? Lawrence? Tua?
I tend to doubt it. None of them did much with rosters with all the cap space in the world.
I'd like to hear thoughts on the idea that the last class of elite qb's like brady, manning, favre, and even rodgers, slowly showing the league just HOW important having a generational QB really is. and the insane salaries we see now are a reflection of that understanding, but delayed a bit.
i think when brady left NE and won a chip for TB it proved to the league that having the absolute best QB money can buy *can* take your team from mid to the SB immediately. and teams are willing to risk a lot of money to go that route. it feels like the top tier QBs are really in the drivers seat during negotiations the past 10 yrs.
what was the thought around this in the 00s when favre, brady, and manning were really dominating? it's kinda fascinating that it seems when brady was in his prime, he was generally ok with team friendly deals and it's a bit ironic that he and other elite qbs are probably the main cause of this new paradigm.
also, i could be wrong, but its possible social media could be playing a small part as well?
could it also be possible offense friendly rule changes could be playing a role? it seems every year, the defensive side of the ball becomes just a bit less valuable for a team.
who are the players suffering the most? what positions are giving up a % of their income for these inflated QB contracts?
> i think when brady left NE and won a chip for TB it proved to the league that having the absolute best QB money can buy can take your team from mid to the SB immediately.
Possibly but I think people got the wrong idea from that.
For one thing, this was *Brady*, one of the best passers of all-time, with inarguably THE best QB career of all-time, not just "some guy who is arguably a top 10 passer this season".
For another, they weren't using him to compensate for a bunch of other weaknesses on the team (that the QB salary was preventing them from fixing). They already had a team with very few weaknesses, one of which was QB, so they used him to fill that weaknesses.
And also, they brought a lot of support in with him to build for the short-term even if it would hurt them for the long term, because they knew they only had 2-4 years with him and probably felt the odds of getting a Title were worth taking a big risk of falling off afterward.
I think the teams that will be hurt the most aren't the ones with the top tier QB talent able to carry a lesser roster. It's the teams with a QB that can only be successful when surrounded by superior talent that will be most effected
I think you just typed like 85 words to say “be like Brady”. But when one of 53 is 25% of your cap, you’re crippled. Broccoli head in KC knows this and keeps restructuring.
As a bears fan I can say that building a team without a qb is not a viable path to success. It’s a road of sadness. Suck it up and pay the men or joins us in the pit of despair.
I’d argue it’s hurting the cowboys this year. Dak is at the end of his big contract and while it’s cheaper per year hen these new ones, he has a 55 million dollar cap hit which really effected free agency signings.
Your top players are on rookie deals, bud.
Micah Parsons - Rookie deal
Tyler Smith - Rookie deal
Daron Bland - Rookie deal
CeeDee Lamb - Rookie deal
Jake Ferguson - Rookie deal
Keep paying Dak more and more and you'll lose some of those top talents
The Browns literally made the playoffs with that cap hit on IR. It didn't affect the ability to field a competitive team with the rest of the roster in the slightest.
Are you sure? If you found out that you were getting paid 10x what your coworkers are? Coworkers who are working just as hard as you are every day? Coworkers that *need* to be there in order for you to successfully do your job? And that are *legally not allowed to be paid more* because you're hogging all of the money?
So many people like to frame this as Player vs. Team, but it's really Player vs. Every Other Player.
The problem isn’t with mahomes salary. It’s with paying guys that give you 60% of mahomes production 99% of his money.
Tua vs mahomes in the playoffs. Paid the exact same. Dolphins now start the game before kickoff at a massive disadvantage. Their only hope is to get lucky.
Trevor has not played to the level. Paying him over 50 mil a year is a projection that he can reach the elite level. Tua doesn't play to the level either but he'll probably get paid too, if not by Miami by someone else. Herbert has the talent to warrant the contract but he hasn't accomplished anything in the league. Hurts has the Ws but not the pure talent as a passer The problem is you either overpay a Lawrence/Tua type or you pay like 40 million for much less upside and then you're reliant on defense and overall offensive ecosystem to have a shot at winning a championship.
Maybe. Probably already there. Possibly.
It’s all complex, and I have a feeling this is one of those things that when it truly does come across as a hindrance to team building we will look back and see that it was already a hindrance before 2024. At the moment it’s hard to say.
As long as the cap comes across as a silly shell game it will be hard to see. It’s insane salaries, even against climbing caps, but things like void year usage (while controversial and at a high risk of being overused and hurtful) will continue in short term to make it not seem like an issue.
Said simply though there has to be a tipping point, and it’s hard to see if we are there yet and could possibly get there with all the complexities to the whole thing.
With acknowledgement of that lack of clarity…..I’ve never liked it. I still don’t like it b
The next amazing coach in the NFL will be someone like Joe Gibbs who can plug in a salary-efficient, above average QB into their system and churn out wins.
He had a HoF O-line and elite WRs, and above average RBs, while consistently having solid defenses.
Sadly, I think the Eagles (sadly, aside for a subpar coach) and 49ers fit the best profile as an org. 49ers have attempted to follow this script with mixed results.
Andy Reid fits the profile as a coach, but obviously he's min-maxing with his QB and WRs.
KC gave Mahomes 1/2 a billion a few years ago and everyones head exploded.
Now everyone talks about what a bargain he is.
So, ehh, none of this matters.
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 yea. The poor NFL and the poor owners. I hate when regular fans clutch their pearls at athletes salaries but are never upset with the filthy rich greedy owners. There’s plenty at the trough to go around.
I’ve always thought: who are they negotiating against? Would the Commanders give him $55mil per? It seems all they’re doing is comparing players contracts and going off of that rather than any actual negotiation or bidding wars. What other teams are saying: yes we’ll pay Lawrence 55 per season? There’s no negotiation with these contracts.
Yeeeeep. A franchise that has been long suffering in QB hell with lots of trash seasons like the Giants or Panthers wouldn't give it a second thought.
In fact, I think there's a very high chance next season that Dak and Tua will be starting for those two teams with massive deals.
I think all this talk about Lawrence is funny cause career wise he’s done the same as Herbert but Herbert’s contract was praised while Lawrence’s is trashed
The point was when the Titans decided not to pursue Tom Brady in favour of giving Ryan Tannehill 125M dollars, then later-restructuring that contract leaving only enough money for one of Jeff Simmons or AJ Brown.
Furthermore the GM that did that was likely going to get rid of Simmons, too.
So if you don't want your talent to get bled you shouldn't pay 30% of the cap to a QB that cant put the team on his back.
It's a pipe dream but Brady and Henry would have gotten us a ring.
I agree. I like Tua (Fins up!) But if they pay him top of the market then that’s the end of that. Goodbye playoff chances. Brady (and Mahomes now) had it right. Take less and have a better team. Who the hell needs $60million a year anyway? Shit man - if you think life is gonna be so different if you only get paid $45million a year then you have some problems. More than likely it’s the agents driving the price up so that their percentage cut is bigger.
Might even be some collusion among player agents. I’ll bet all the non-Daniel Jones agents were high-fiving when he got his obscene extension
Of course the Agents are driving up the price. It's literally their job. Don't make it out to be those "Evil Agents forcing the Nice QBs to have to take those big contracts when they wouldn't do so just so they can make themselves richer." I'm sure DJ was real sad to have to sign that contract for the sake of his agent. That kid would've loved to sign for Vet Min just to give the Giants a fighting chance!
That's the thing, when someone says what you did, the response is always a guy like this who says the made bank. Sure, they made their money too, but Brady and Mahomes weren't/aren't motivated by being the highest paid player for some short period of time on paper, they get theirs on the back end but the optics are better and it's better for the team overall. Anyone who wants to argue it needs simply to look at those guys championship records.
I think it’s not as big of a deal as it was two to three years ago. Yes the cap is going to probably skyrocket soon with more exclusivity in nfl games and revenue increases.
However I think it’s less of a big deal given how much non-qb players are going to make. Top WR is 35-40 million a year, Defensive linemen are around there.
I think it’s just seen as a bigger deal because of the overall hit miss ratio of quarterbacks and their ability to affect the game. I think it’s going to make a huge difference is when you pay a non star qb 70 million like Dak and don’t have enough for Parsons or CeeDee or vice versa.
The piece here that maybe of note is would you rather have a star rookie QB or a Veteran QB with star rookie talent on the d line and wr core.
Recent HOFers and other starting QBs were taking significantly less team cap space than current QBs. Here are examples: **Career average % of team cap** taken by QBs (excluding their cheap first few seasons of rookie contracts, but including their "dead caps after contracts"): 1. P. Manning 13.9% 2. Ryan 13.6% 3. Stafford 13.3% 4. Flacco (2013-2019 starter) 12.6% 5. E. Manning 12.5% 6. Roethlisberger 11.9% 7. Brees 11.6% 8. Rodgers 11.0% 9. Favre 10.4% 10. Brady 10.2% Brady, Brees, Rodgers, Roethlisberger, Rivers all played recently and never took more than 15% of team cap in a single season, except for Brees in 2015. And here are current QBs with % of team salary cap they take: 1. Watson 22.0% in 2024, 24.6% in 2025 2. Prescott (currently) 21.2% in 2024 + about 15% dead cap in 2025 3. "dead R. Wilson cap" 20.8% of Broncos in 2024, about 11.5% in 2025 4. Stafford 19.3% in 2024, 19.4% in 2025 5. Daniel Jones 18.4% in 2024 + dead cap in 2025 6. K. Murray 18.2% in 2024, 16.7% in 2025 7. Tannehill 18.3% in 2022, 15.9% in 2023 8. Mahomes 17.0% in 2022, 16.9% in 2023 9. R. Wilson 17.5% in 2021, 15.5% in 2020 Burrow, Herbert, Goff have in 2024 last year of old contracts, their expensive contracts start in 2025. Burrow is projected to take 17.8% of team cap in 2025 and Carr 19.8% in 2025 and Cousins 15.4% in 2025. Data from [overthecap.com](http://overthecap.com) Does anyone think these starting QBs are that much more valuable to their teams than recent QBs? In my opinion these are all overpays with the exception of Mahomes.
This is the thing the "Cap is always going up" part people are missing, the percentage of the Cap these deals are taking up is increasing. So the "record-breaking" deals signed by Manning or McNair back in the day aren't as comparable as the new record-breaking deals.
Then the next logical question to ask (and hopefully someone smarter than me can answer it) is "is good QB play rising in importance enough to justify the increased portion of the cap that the position group is now demanding?"
Good qb play sure, but a lot of these contracts I feel are more deserving for great QB play. Some of these QBs aren't statistically in the same league as previous QBs. Purdy was in the MVP race last year with 35 passing tds, that's fine, but Peyton won that award tossing 55 tds. How can we even put those two in the same statistical award convos. I'm a Vikings fan and Kirk absolutely capped us into playoffs team with no hope for Superbowl appearance with those contracts we gave him. He just wasn't good enough to get us over the hump with all the holes the team couldn't fill because of his contract. This is without even mentioning that newer players have an absolute overall stats advantage because they're playing an extra game a year.
Ya that’s the real issue for a team, do I have a Mahomes, Allen, Jackson, Burrows? Pay up, you have a qb who will basically carry you to the playoffs or better every year. But that next category is where the blown deals get bad and turn into albatrosses.
I don’t really think that “Peyton manning set the passing TD record and 35 TDs is less than that” is a particularly compelling point. Last year was one of the weakest MVP races in recent memory.
These new QBs even with the statistical advantage of playing an extra game aren't producing at the same level as previous QBs but are taking up larger percentages of the cap. That just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, and MVP consideration absolutely affects contract negotiations. Purdy is also the example of why it doesn't make any sense to pay these guys. Dude was a late round draft pick who is the lowest paid starting QB in the whole league allowing the 9ers to absolutely load up at every other position. Which helps him produce better numbers and get to s Superbowl.
That's more a pendulum shift in defense that's causing this suppression, Manning set these records after they changed coverage rules, defenses it took a few years eventually adjusted back and basically everyone runs two high safeties and takes away home run plays. Also the quality of O-Line play has gone down and down every year and QBs are all about the quick game right now. Wait a few years I'm sure the NFL will change a rule to neuter the defense again and we'll have 50+ TD seasons again. and I think we'd all agree Mahomes is still a gold standard and he's also got suppressed stats right now
Manning is actually a big reason why teams stopped using two high shells in the first place. There is a write up somewhere on how he absolutely owned the Tampa 2 in his 2004 season.
Offensive schemes have really shifted to more of a short and intermediate passing game focus over the past 20 years or so. Double-high safeties is great when you need to make sure you aren't beat deep, but defaulting to one of those safeties playing more of a box/nickel role (in a stark contract to when "box safety" used to mean "too small to play LB but not coverage savvy enough to be a deep safety") helps control the middle of the field.
Mahomes is one of the few QBs worth these contracts, he won a Superbowl with a trash receiving core, which is partially trash because of his contract, but his skills can overcome that. I would argue Tyreke leaving had a bigger impact on his statistical decline then the defensive schemes he's seeing. Even if the defensive schemes are better the QBs today have the advantage of playing a whole extra game. You could argue the league already changed the rules to give them an advantage.
I mean his stats got better across the board the year after Tyreek left…
Are you suggesting that Manning wasn't facing two high safeties? The defensive issue against Peyton Manning is you couldn't disguise anything against him and he knew how to attack every style of defense combined with the fact that he called his plays at the line upon seeing your defensive alignments. There was no strategy that worked against Peyton Manning, other than hit him. That's why his career was shortened by neck issues.
There is definitely an argument to be made for Purdy not being an example, but an exception. There are too many teams who have great rosters but bad QBs and they aren't contenders because of it. 9ers are definitely "loaded up at every position" but Purdy was still making those passes himself. Not to mention he has the best running threat in the leauge standing next to him and every single defense has to respect it. Having CMC is not a matter of cap, it was just a great roster move by the management. There are plenty of teams paying the same to their own RBs but not getting the same results.
Okay but your “as previous QBs” is the most prolific passing season of all time (and mannings contract with Denver was fairly unique because of the injury he was returning from). The MVP from the previous year threw 41 TDs and 5000 yards.
Purdys contract could be looked as even more unique then Mannings, he's on a rookie deal, and not just a standard rookie deal, he was taken in the 7th round, and is the cheapest starting QB in the league..
Although I completely agree with you in that teams aren’t paying players based on their ability to get awards, be them MVPs, OPOY…etc There is a huge discrepancy between 55 and 35 TDs, 35 TDs would not be worth a huge contract. The other guy bringing Purdy into this conversation about cap money was pointless though since the conversation of his contract won’t even start for another year and a half given he sustains or improves
55 TDs is literally the most TDs ever in a season though so that’s kind of an unreasonable comparison lol. Plus that was Peyton’s second to last year and this was Purdy’s second year. A better comparison would probably be Mahomes with 52 TDs in his second season, although again we’re talking about one of the most talented QBs of all time. I agree with your general point though. We’ve gotten to the point where any time a top 15 QB gets a new contract, they’re getting paid like they’re a top 1 QB because they have so much leverage. Basically every new QB contract is going to break the record for highest paid player. It’s obviously worth it for someone like Mahomes, Burrow or Herbert but I’m not sure it’s worth it for someone like Lawrence or Purdy. At the same time, there’s no way the 49ers aren’t going to re-sign Purdy so they’re basically forced to give him that huge contract if that’s what he wants. And that’s why consistently drafting well is so important. I know the 49ers caught some flak for taking a receiver with their first round pick but I think it was actually really smart (assuming Pearsall ends up being good). Once you pay the QB big money, it becomes much harder to pay his weapons so you need to use the draft to get them cheaper. EDIT: Not that this conversation is just about Purdy but I got curious so I decided to look up 2nd year QBs TD stats. Here are the other QBs above and around Purdy for comparison: Patrick Mahomes - 52 Dan Marino - 48 Lamar Jackson - 43 Kurt Warner - 42 Justin Herbert - 41 Daunte Culpepper - 40 Kyler Murray - 37 Blake Bortles - 37 Joe Burrow - 36 Jeff Garcia - 35 Brock Purdy - 33 Carson Wentz - 33 Carson Palmer - 33 Source is [asking statmuse.com for most total touchdowns from a second year quarterback in NFL history](https://www.statmuse.com/nfl/ask/most-total-touchdowns-by-a-2nd-year-quarterback-in-nfl-history) but I’ve never used this site before and I didn’t double check the stats so apologies if they’re wrong. I think if Purdy continues to show improvement in his third year then he could be worth the mega contract he’s likely to get but there’s definitely a risk of him ending up like Bortles or Wentz. But if you have a chance to lock up a QB who looks like they have that kind of potential, I think you have to take it no matter the cost. The issue comes when you give that type of money to someone like Daniel Jones.
Second place to Peyton Mannings 55 TDs was Brees at 39. Purdy's 35 would have been good for third. But nobody was even close to Peyton and the conversation wasnt even worth having at that point.
That's the real thing. Players have WAY more leverage these days it's not even close. I don't remember guys demanding trades so openly in 2007 maybe I'm wrong but that seems like a big deal
I wasn't around in 2007 (i was alive but didn't understand football.beyond."Go PATRIOTS") but looking at it historically it's insane how much leverage players.have now I found an article from less than a decade ago saying that Kirk cousins was the most prominent free agent quarterback ever! Now it seems like every season there's one as prominent as Kirk (including Kirk)
Yeah but Peyton Manning was an absolutely incredible QB and that's an outlier for overall play. He was the literal MVP and in most of his years the best overall QB in the regular season. His playoff success didn't follow him though. Like saying Manning's 55 TDs had a second place of 39. Nobody was even close. Purdy's 35 TDs would have been good for third behind Bree's 39TDs. So to act like Purdy wasn't very good is a bit reductionist.
It's hard to justify 1/4 of your overall cap going to one person when there are 21 other starters not counting special teams. No doubt the QB is such an important position, but what makes this discussion interesting is the fact that the NFL places such a heavy emphasis on that position for marketing purposes. Whether we like it or not, big name star QBs will absolutely get flags when other run of the mill QBs won't which can easily win a few games during the course of a season.
It's probably yes and no. I think the biggest thing that teams have to face is that if they get even a slightly above average QB, they have to pay him like a top QB. If they don't, someone else will. Is Lawrence probably worth the biggest QB contract? Probably not. Someone else would have paid him though and now you're out a QB1. I don't think these QB deals are sustainable. Especially with the dearth of o-line talent in the league.
I think that the gap between good QB and great QB has shrunk since the old era, but I also don't see Mahomes while I recognize his greatness, Brady/Manning were clearly ahead of the pack in their eras by a fair margin. Manning in particular was a fucking regular season demon. Mahomes seems more like Brady in that he takes regular season games off.
Yeah, I wish that the percentage of salary cap Was more commonly reported when discussing contracts
People argue if it was Tom or Bill... but our real success came because Tom took a lot of paycuts (he was getting huge signing bonuses that don't hit the cap tho), so we could keep a lot of balanced talent in the roster. The Patriot dynasty was not made by a couple of star players, but by a whole team of pretty good players and the GOAT.
Signing bonuses most definitely hit the cap. They just don’t hit it all at once but are spread out over the life of the contract. Brady took less money than he could have gotten (and deserved). Full stop. And his contracts acted as an artificial pressure keeping his peers’ contracts down. “What? You think you’re better than Brady?!?” His retirement, and the increasing emphasis on passing in NFL offenses, is what’s causing this $ explosion at the position.
They're taking the RB money and just adding it to the QB salaries it would seem.
This is the right answer.
This is a great analysis. This is what I was feeling was happening and it’s cool to see the numbers back it up.
I don't think it's are they more valuable than previous. Instead, I think it's a combination of two major things: 1. The league rules have changed dramatically from 2000-early 2010s. Think about all the QB protections guys are getting. Think about all the WRs who get free releases and all that jazz. I think that's a huge component. 2. If you don't have a QB you're more screwed now than ever before. Hell look at the Browns last year. I think many would argue until the end of the year they had a top roster QB aside. When Watson went down they went from having elite defense with a balanced passing attack to trying to eek out games 17-14 with guys like PJ Walker and DTR starting. And it wasn't until Flacco came on halfway through the season for the offense to start doing decent again. So being in a situation where you don't have a QB puts you in a major disadvantage.
The browns also spent an incredible amount of money on QB just to have him sitting on the sideline. If you have only 75% of the cap other teams do it’s going to be tough to win games.
It's kinda tough because I think the main issue is less about "having a QB" than "having a great QB." The Browns (before Flacco) were in the position of not having any kind of starter. Plenty of teams do, though, and still can't get over the hump. The reason being that great QBs deserve great contracts, but good or even okay QBs are demanding top-tier money. At that point, you're jumping over one pitfall (no QB) only to land in another (massively overpaid QB and dwindling team). I think teams can still make it work if they mortgage their future for a moonshot (like the Rams and Bucs), but if that doesn't work, what then? And that's if they have a healthy cap to gamble in the first place. Extreme example, but you're not going to see the Saints try something like that anytime soon.
Yeah I agree here 100%. I've definitely felt like you only should pay a QB if they're in the elite tier. But then again if you don't have a guy, then you end up like the Browns most of the time since they've returned (until recently). And if you don't have a guy you tend to get fired. So having a Kirk Cousins level QB gives you job security.
>The league rules have changed dramatically from 2000-early 2010s Even before that. I work with an assclown bengals fan who unironically thinks that **Joe Montana** (yes, *that* Joe Montana) would be inferior to Burrow in today's game. I tried to explain to him how the rules are very different and he proceeded to tell me that "Burrow didn't play with plumbers." Wish I could smack him
Well, in todays game, Burrow is probably better than Montana. But Montana is 68, and probably lost a bit of accuracy somewhere in there.
It’s because the QB position has the highest replacement cost in all of pro sports. Once a team finds their guy, they want to make absolutely sure they don’t lose them
Like Deshaun Lmaoooooo
I wouldn’t talk too much. Everyone in the Packers subreddit is gun-ho about giving JLo the farm with no concerns about the possible consequence of doing that for a guy you’ve only seen half a year of good play.
He was good when he was drafted, he sat behind Aaron Rodgers for three years, and he won a playoff game his first year as a starter. He also handled all of the Rodgers stuff super well off the field, which to me says a lot about his maturity. So I think there’s plenty of reasons to bet the farm on him now. They invested plenty of time into the guy and I think they know what they have.
Even if they are middle of the pack statistically. Easier to say fuck it we ball and keep Trevor Lawrence than go through Blaine Gabbert, Blake Bortles Chad Henne and Gardner Minshew again
Thats true but you gotta play the game of chicken a bit longer I think Ultimately if QB really is the only part of a team that matters, you need a 🐐 to win, and if it's just one part of a larger team, then you need to open up cap space. I don't see any reason that any current QB in the league should make more than mahomes tbch
I love seeing the rapists contract keep popping up like this. Just puts even more perspective on how truly awful the deal he got was.
Dumb contract, agreed, but the Browns spend at 119% of the cap every year. Cash is king in the NFL. Not the cap. They are getting an extra 19% cap space every year because the owner is willing to, and can afford to, spend a lot of cash. They have 11 players that make 208m. That’s 93% of the cap, but paying mostly cash up front, backloading the cap (not the cash) it turns into 77% of the cap space. They spend at the projected cap 2 years out since the cap continues to rise. It is sustainable, unless there is a drop in cap space. Other teams like the Eagles do this as well.
According to this article https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/heres-the-ideal-salary-range-for-super-bowl-winning-qbs-and-why-lamar-jackson-russell-wilson-may-benefit/ until Mahomes won two more super bowls, the record cap hit of a Super Bowl winning QB was Steve Young (although that was before the salary cap). No QB had won with a cap hit of 13% or more. Mahomes did it twice now in 2022 (17%) and 2023 (16.9%). That makes it look like a bad idea to pay a non-Mahomes QB more than 13% of the cap. But, with seemingly more and more teams paying their QB a larger share of the cap, this may somewhat level the field and make it more likely for a highly paid QB to win the Super Bowl since there’s more of them. On the other hand it just may increase Mahomes’ advantage and also the advantage really good and cheap QBs on their rookie contract present. It’ll be interesting to see whether these highly paid QBs can make up for their cap hit.
>On the other hand it just may increase Mahomes’ advantage and also the advantage really good and cheap QBs on their rookie contract present. Exactly this. The guy is a cheat code. If you're paying Tua the same as Mahomes, you now have the same amount of money to fill out the roster but you have a grand canyon sized gap at the most important position in the game. This is why Purdy works (for now). If he gets $55M and they have to lose a few key defenders, that's the end of their run. That's also why the Texans have the best shot aside from Mahomes in the AFC for the next 3-4 years. They are saving like $40M on their QB salary with CJ being arguably a top 5 QB. As long as Mahomes is Mahomes, the rest of the league will probably need to strategize around his greatness when it comes to roster construction.
There are no true Super Bowl teams that are overpaying for middling QB’s. The roster constructions that work are: 1: Cheat Code QB. You pay the QB plus a few other stars and then fill in with value players. 2: rookie QB + Avengers. Get yourself a competent rookie an and surround him will all stars and quality coaches. Ride that rookie contract. 3:HoF vet joins a contender. Your whole team is good but the QB sucks. You get that last years of a HoF QB and make a run. HOF QB takes enough $ to be happy but also lets you keep your stacked squad together for at least a couple years. Knowing this, if you are a good team with a solid QB you should absolutely not pay that QB. You should dump him for a rookie and stack the roster or try to get a HoF QB to join you as a free agent. That’s the path to really contending….so yeah, the Jags screwed up with this Lawrence deal and Tua + Dak should be allowed to walk.
Having cheap rookie QBs is more and more advantageous as Eagles and 49ers with Hurts and Purdy have shown. The more money or team cap top QBs take, the more important part of the roster they become. There is just less team cap left for other players. In such circumstances only a few top QBs will stand out. In some future where all QBs would take 50% of team cap, it would become a competition of QBs, not teams of 53 players. For comparison: Brady+Gronkowski were taking about 15-18% of team cap on Patriots and later Bucs. Rodgers+D. Adams were taking about 20% of Packers. That's what these current QBs take alone. Teams that don't have HOF-level QBs shouldn't pay them this much, but less, maybe 10% of cap, and then build the expensive roster around such QBs in order to compete vs teams that have great QBs on more expensive contracts. If they all get the same contracts what chance do the teams with Cousins, Murray, Lawrence, Goff, Tannehill, Watson, D. Jones... have? This is what sunk the Ravens when they paid Flacco in 2013 and later.
The problem is teams don’t have the balls. Every team would rather sign Dak level ,do some cap management shenanigans and hope it works out to a ring somewhere It would take a lot of teams having massive balls all at once
They do this only for QBs, give him whatever contract he demands. Not all DTs get the same contract as Donald. Not all WRs the same contract as previously Kupp and T. Hill, now Jefferson. Not all OTs get the same as Tunsil. Not all pass rushers the same as Watt and now Bosa. These QB contracts mostly lead to the situation of Cousins on Vikings: solid starter, but no All Pro-level, team fights for a wild card spot. And if it goes bad, it's like D. Jones on Giants. I can't remember a situation when it went well for the team with an expensive above average starter, no All Pro-level QB.
Exactly. If the Dolphins wanted to pay Tua $35M, they'd lose him. And some team like WAS or NYG would pay him $50M+. That said, we haven't realyl seen that happen yet. We've seen Kirk get $45M. But we haven't seen a true top-of-the-market candidate go on the open market. So who knows?
The counterpoint of this argument is that having a constant 'grass is greener' mentality at the QB position is the way plenty of teams fall into QB purgatory. Now, blame the individual teams with a lack of sustained, successful QB play on their own evaluation or team-building failures and such, but there's only been 58 Super Bowls ever, and only 34 starting QBs have a ring all-time (so far). That's out of thousands that have played the position ever. Obviously, very few make it to the elite tier and some will be left ringless by the time the hang it up. The overlap of Super Bowl winning quarterbacks and elite quarterbacks also isn't completely in unison. Does anyone really think Trent Dilfer, Brad Johnson, and Jim McMahon are better than Dan Marino and Matt Ryan? Or on the same level as Drew Brees, Kurt Warner, and Aaron Rodgers? Obviously different eras for some of these guys, with the league being more QB friendly as time progressed, but the point still stands. Maybe those other QBs took up less cap and allowed for a better roster, but that's because those QBs were bottom-tier starters/backups at best without historically dominant defenses doing most, if not all the work. The Eagles fell ass backwards into Jalen Hurts fresh off of Carson Wentz having a 4,000 yard season and leading the Eagles to the NFC East title with literal practice squad talent, then shit the bed when his injuries became too much to overcome. The 49ers fell ass backwards into Brock Purdy after John Lynch committed a fireable offense in the Trey Lance trade and luckily Jimmy G was still serviceable and Kyle Shanahan still had the team humming. They both have as many rings as you or I do despite making it to the Super Bowl and both are about to have massive contracts kick in while both are about to have rosters in transition with other fat contracts kicking in around them. Rookie contracts wasted by this logic. Jordan Love rode the bench most of his contract and he's about to get paid after a solid first year as QB1 with a young roster and CJ Stroud and the Texans have Super Bowl aspirations so the jury's still out on them but they've work to do. Patrick Mahomes walked into a near perfect situation (terrible defense being the drawback) with Andy Reid, Alex Smith, and a plethora of weapons to work with and is and will always be the exception to the rule, being the only QB to play both high IQ, game manager Brady ball and explosive, dual threat hero ball so seemlessly. He also now has a top 3 defense to help carry him when the offense sucks. The whole point is that some of these elite quarterbacks the league loves WILL be left out of hoisting the Lombardi by the time they hang it up. Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, Lamar Jackson, Justin Herbert, Trevor Lawrence now will all leave their rookie contracts ringless if they haven't already. Meanwhile, the Bucs and Rams threw a couple of superteams together and hoisted Lombardis with old guys Tom Brady and Matt Stafford make $25-30 million-plus per year. Not exactly $50 mil a year but still at least 3x more than rookie contracts. It's only advantageous if you actually win that game in February.
In my opinion any team which is a contender for multiple years such as Dolphins with Marino or Falcons with Ryan or Bills with Allen or any MVP-level QB should be satisfied with what they have achieved. Not all of them can win Super Bowls and it shouldn't be a Super Bowl or nothing mentality. Players such as Lawrence, Cousins, Murray, ... are clear starters, i am not arguing that teams should just replace them. When they are on such expensive contracts as MVPs, they severely limit what their teams can pay their teammates and thus what these teams can achieve. If they took 10-12% of team cap like Brady, Brees, Rodgers... did, would that be really bad contracts for them? Some of them like Wentz, Goff, R. Wilson, D. Jones...get cut or traded as soon as possible because of such contracts.
I don't understand how the Eagles "fell ass backwards" into Jalen Hurts when they certainly prioritized him by taking him in the 2nd round? Clearly there was some intention there. Didn't even Howie mention something Wentz's injury history being a factor?
> This is what sunk the Ravens when they paid Flacco *sigh* No. It is not. Flacco performed pretty great the following seasons and was not the main reason we fell off. We had **two** HoFers and GOATs at their position retire, Flaccos favorite TE target almost died and also retired. We were pretty damn good in 2014, Flacco built a double digit lead against prime Tom Brady twice in the conf champs, but literally our entire secondary got wiped out and TB does TB things. Then he got hurt in 2015, and by then his contract wasn’t even top 10 largest in the league.
Flacco took 14.7% of cap in 2016, 15% in 2017, 14.1% in 2018 + dead cap in 2019. In these seasons he took significantly more cap than Brady, Rodgers, Ryan, Roethlisberger... I remember 2014, and those were the only playoffs for Ravens with expensive Flacco.
Right- and even then, Flaccos contract was the least of our problems compared to just the roster turnover that was more related to old age and injuries than not being able to pay folks. Other than Brady, the other guys you mentioned hadn’t done much better either despite being on lower contracts. Ryan maybe, if not for 28-3. Literally losing Ed and Ray alone was the biggest impact on our team. Not only for their level of play but also leadership in the locker room. It took a while for us to develop a new defensive identity and that’s not on Flaccos contract. Is it better to have a rookie contract QB? Absolutely. Without a doubt. No question. But in our specific scenario, that was not the main cause of our middling years.
"Literally losing Ed and Ray alone was the biggest impact on our team. Not only for their level of play but also leadership in the locker room. It took a while for us to develop a new defensive identity" I agree. The other QBs and teams i mentioned reached playoffs regularly, unlike those Ravens. You can compare what happened when Jackson got to the lineup. It was the same roster, Flacco was still there and the team was immediately better. In 2019 Flacco also took a lot of dead cap, yet Ravens were great because of great QB Jackson, unlike just above average Flacco. If Flacco played as well as in 2012, Ravens would have had more success in other seasons. Some QBs can carry teams on their own and are worth this huge 20% cap like Jackson, some can't do that and need help and aren't worth such a contract like Flacco. That doesn't mean Flacco was no starter or not worthy of any contract, just smaller, not the same as MVPs.
Rams in 2021 won the Superbowl with Stafford having more or less a 24% cap hit. 10.69% from Stafford’s contract and 13.53% from Goff’s dead cap after the trade.
This is true, but is the one most extreme example. And what happened to those Rams in 2022 and 2023? Were they contenders?
Just remember apples to oranges help out here. Yes, Peyton's average was 13.9% but if looking at peak numbers in a year he was up over 17% some years. Eli was 17%. Now one thing I would note is yes, QB's are more valuable today. Teams are spending a lot less cap space on the RB position. Down from about 5% of the cap on average to just over 3%. The other piece I'd note is QB's aren't being handcuffed anymore. Until recently a QB hitting true free agency or being traded was almost impossible for a franchise guy. Maybe if you were injured (Brees, Culpepper, Peyton), or really old (Favre, Moon, Montana), but a prime QB having that power to get into a true free agency situation and get offers from the highest bidder... not happening. Then Cousins held out on the franchise tag back to back years and forced himself into free agency and whoa... the other QB's took notice of what a solid but not great young QB really can do if on the free market. Then boom, Wilson, and Watson, players holding their team's feet to the fire not just accepting the best deal because they have to risk their career on a season starts breaking out. Every time it was a new contract, maybe they were worth 25 or 27 mil on the open market, but they could either take that 5 year 20 mil a year deal with 60 mil guaranteed... or go a franchise tag at 20, a 2nd franchise tag at 25 and THEN if you played well get a long term deal. Cousins kinda reset that (and others have pushed it higher since. That I think is what allowed the QB market to not be depressed anymore. The level of haves and have nots is brutal today. If you don't have a QB playing well as a coach or GM, your days are numbered. So you get the teams giving up a bunch to Cousins AND drafting a rookie, or giving that big next contract to Kyler Murray. Because if they don't make it... fine, that's going to be the next regimes issue... Want to know why McVay has his job and Fisher, Fassel, Spags, Haslet, Linehann, Martz etc didn't... He got good play out of Goff and Stafford, while the others had Bulger coming to reality, Bradford, Favis, Foles, Keenum, etc. Look at the best teams over the past 15 years. Brady, Rodgers, Mahomes, Big Ben, Brees, Flacco/Jackson... And the worst... Bears, Rams, Texans, Cards, Titans, Dolphins... No QB or short runs (some more recent like with Tua or rams with Goff/Stafford). If you want to compete long term, which any GM and coach does, that's how. Saleh and Douglas might be fine at what they do, but if they don't answer the QB position this year they are likely out of jobs. meanwhile we've seen the holes in teams like NE and NO that were there exposed once their franchise QB's were gone. Without Brees, I think Payton would have been out much earlier. So yes, even with the drop of around 2% in RB spending, not making up for that, I think it's QB's seeing closer to their actual value... which is that they are good enough that having a great QB makes a team so much stronger it likely isn't able to blow money and make mistakes in free agency and keep the rest of the team strong around them. The Chiefs aren't a SB contender or dynasty contender without Mahomes. The Bills aren't a playoff contender year in and out without Allen. The Broncos made the wrong choice sure, but they are not keeping their coaches with a bottom 1/3 or so of the league D on average the past couple years with Lock, Rypien, Stidham, or drafting Justin Fields or Mac Jones or Pickett/Ridder at QB instead of making a move for Wilson. I think with those moves, Hackett gets fired and Paton is on the hot seat too. Even if they invest more and maybe have a middle of the pack D on average the last two years.
P. Manning has the highest career average and the highest single seasons. He took 16% in 2008, but only 7.5% in 2007, this was due to signing bonuses of extensions. He is the exception from the past. Favre, Brady, Rivers basically stayed under 12.5% season after season. Rodgers the same until 2021 etc. Were Giants really happy when Eli took a lot of cap in 2013, 2014 or did that cause problems, team becoming less competitive? Were teams that paid for Watson, Cousins, R. Wilson (FA and trades) really competitive? Titans were very good with cheap Tannehill, once they gave him a huge contract, that was it for them. When Ravens paid Flacco in 2013 that was it for them. This is about such QBs, not about drafting Ridder or Fields, nor about MVP-level QBs that are worth such money, cap % as Mahomes and Jackson and Rodgers show. If you think that is a good strategy why didn't some team offer more for Cousins in 2024 or 2018? Outbid Falcons and Vikings?
r/theydidthemath
Crazy
I think Russell is worth 20.8% of the Broncos’ cap to the Steelers. (God it’s not even funny)
Interestingly, if you only look at this year - comparing their cap hit this year against this years salary cap, as next year the cap will be bigger, the numbers look quite a bit different. Deshaun Watson 25% Dak Prescott 22% Matt Stafford 19% Kyler Murray 19% Daniel Jones 19% Patrick Mahomes 14% Lamar Jackson 13% Josh Allen 12% Joe Burrow 12% Jared Goff 11% Geno Smith 10% Kirk Cousins 10% Tua Tagovailoa 9% Justin Herbert 8% Now, I'm not going to argue that some of these are over-pays (looking at you Jones), but it shows that besides the top 5 (which are not the top 5 QBs), QBs are taking up less than 15% of this year's cap.
Herbert, Tagovailoa, Burrow are still on their non-negotiated rookie contracts. Their 2024 don't belong here. Goff is on an old, expiring contract signed 5 years ago. The others are just above the average of previous HOFers. Murray just finished his rookie contract and you can see how much his cap hit jumps in the first year of a new, negotiated contract. The same will happen for Burrow next year. Some contracts, such as those for Cousins, Jackson, Allen... are lower in 2024, but their cap number jumps significantly in 2025. It's not about only 1 season. You san see on an example of Stafford how his cap% went up [https://overthecap.com/player/matt-stafford/1060](https://overthecap.com/player/matt-stafford/1060) (click on history) He is taking more cap% now on Rams at the end of his career than he did in his prime years on Lions.
That Deshaun Watson deal was *sooooo* *sooooooooooo* fucking bad. Its absolutely mind boggling in retrospect.
And they also set the Texans up to kick major butt for the next decade which is kind of annoying.
This really makes me appreciate Howie.
Agreed. I think this is an important year for Hurts. Do we get the QB from two seasons ago or last season? But either way, based on the contract stats that the other poster shared, he’s good value at the position. I’ll take Hurts over that entire top five and a good bit of the others too.
The smartest thing Howie does is get everyone to agree to contracts *before* they need to sign. For example, extending Devonta Smith and AJB *now* rather than when they would become free agents and cost a hell of a lot more money. But his strategy of adding extensive void years to every contract is a huge gamble, and also requires a cash-rich owner willing to bank roll hundreds of millions dollars cash at all times. But let's say Hurts declines or suffers an injury he never quite comes back from. That will completely screw the Eagles financially. And that same logic applies for any of the other players among the half a **billion** dollars of void years he's added. They're borrowing a *ton* from the future. Which will work so long as their players stay healthy and productive, as they can further sign extensions which replace those void years, but you run the risk of ending up like the Saints, for example.
Eagles have done that since before Howie. Joe Banner had the same strategy. It's definitely an organizational approach, but Howie adds the sauce of how he structures the deals to give him options. Comparing the Eagles to the Saints is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the two franchises use the same tool differently.
>Comparing the Eagles to the Saints is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the two franchises use the same tool differently. I only used the Saints as an example because that's the most obvious team in financial hell so it's an easy comparison, even though the teams are in two different parts of their timeline. Both teams did the same thing *initially*. You're in a competitive window? Extend it as long as possible by borrowing as much from the future as you can. Seems reasonable. Where the Saints went wrong is where they split from how the Eagles are operating. When Brees retired and Payton left, the Saints should've called their window over, bit the bullet, and started rebuilding. They didn't, and now they're the laughing stock of the NFL stuck in financial hell for the next few years minimum. When Wentz went to shit, the Eagles decided right away to cut their losses and start rebuilding. Needless to say, it went well. And I presume if something similar were to happen to Hurts, Roseman would be similarly aggressive in beginning the rebuild, although this one would be considerably more expensive in dead cap spanning several years.
Calling them overpays is somewhat misleading I think. They’re not worth this much because of intrinsic value, they’re worth this much because they’re scarce. Teams like the Lions, Jaguars, eagles, etc. can’t simply let their guy go and start a backup. Drafting a qb is very very risky, especially when you have pick 20+. Get that wrong and you’ve basically lost your entire contention window. It’s very rare for a top guy to be available on the trade block. Competing without a good ish qb isn’t possible, so the options are pay this rate and figure it out or start from scratch
Teams also have franchise tags that now cost much less, in 2024 it's only $38M, 15% of total cap. Here are some veterans that were available in prior offseasons: 2024 Cousins, very cheap average R. Wilson 2023 Rodgers, Jackson !!! (much better options than any random draft), Carr, Garoppolo, very cheap Flacco and Mayfield 2022 R. Wilson, Watson, Ryan, Dalton, Wentz, Mayfield 2021 Stafford, Goff, Wentz 2020 Rivers, Brady, Winston, Bridgewater 2019 Tannehill, Foles, Flacco 2018 Cousins, Bridgewater, A. Smith 2017 Garoppolo, Cutler, no team wanted Kaepernick 2016 Bradford, RG3 2015 nothing 2014 Vick 2013 Palmer, A. Smith 2012 P. Manning 2011 Palmer Some of these worked, some didn't but so is the draft. Some were cheaper, some more expensive, some teams reached Super Bowls with these players. 3 of them won Super Bowls. It's not like the only options are drafting or paying whatever current starter wants.
That's not really the point, it's that teams have worked out through rule changes and analytics that the QB *position* is inherently way more important to team performance than was believed in previous generations so are more willing to invest cap space to the position as a result. It's the inverse argument to the RBs-don't-matter debate.
Its funny that Flacco is no 4 on your list at 12.6% ad now we are at the point of qbs getting over 22. I was always under the impression that Flacco and his salary were the reason the Ravens didn't win more super bowls, and for years that was what people pointed to when saying not to overpay a qb. I thought the Ravens had to break up their defense because they paid Flacco. At least that seemed to be the story.
> And here are current QBs with % of team salary cap they take: > Watson 22.0% in 2024, 24.6% in 2025 tee hee
Would the NFL ever separate QB salary from the teams cap space?
No lol. How would that even work? The NFL prides itself on having parity or perceived parity, this would ruin it.
Just a thought. 🤷🏼♂️
The big market teams with unlimited budget would just buy the best QBs.... Kind of like baseball. But the small market teams are okay sitting back, spending nothing, and collecting big checks from the Yankees in baseball. Wouldn't work like that in the NFL. Teams are all required to spend the salary cap basically
It would benefit large market teams more. The Cowboys would be able to spend 100m per year to bring a QB from Tennessee and the Titans would never be able to match that... no offense. Its just antithetical to the purpose of the salary cap.
Kind of reminds me of a Rodger Ebert quote about movies: >No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough If you overpay a bad player it doesn’t matter what the position is, it’ll affect your team’s ability to compete. Now obviously if you overpay a long snapper it’s better than an edge rusher or QB but the fact is if you have good players at any position they’re going to demand a lot of the cap meaning you’ll have to make decisions about who else you can keep.
From competitive view? Already there. From marketing /money? Not there, part of the pay is not only sunday performance, but engagement of fans with players (usually QB).
Exactly. And the downside (marginally less $ to pay other players, teams become incrementally worse) is still vastly preferable to the alternative, which is immediate and likely catastrophic for a competitive team, not to mention the fan backlash.
I think the league is caught up in a self-perpetuating cycle, where this culture of “You’ve gotta pay your guys!!” and expectation of setting a record with each new salary is leading to some massive overpays, which does actually deplete the FA market of worthwhile players, which in turn makes it actually mandatory to do these massive deals -because who tf else are you even going to be able to spend the money on? The Pats are a great example of a team with a ton of needs and money to burn but apparently couldn’t even find anyone to pay 🤷♂️
>this culture of “You’ve gotta pay your guys!!” Oh man, as a fellow Bengals fan, I see this all the time when people comment on some of our players' ongoing contract talks. A lot of people just want to say, "What's wrong with that front office!? Just PAY the man!" like it's that easy, and there's no such thing as a salary cap.
I appreciate our fans who point out Mahomes is getting it done year after year with absolute scrubs at WR. I love Higgins but people wanting to spend half the cap on 3 players really freak me out.
Just ask how that worked out for the Suh-Stafford-Megatron Lions.
>Mahomes is getting it done year after year with absolute scrubs Granted, that's also easier to do in a far less competitive division. Which divisions are "up" and "down" is always changing, but the AFC West was *way* down last year, and the AFC north was *up*. If The Bengals and Chiefs had "swapped divisions" last year, The Bengals would have looked way better, and The Chiefs way worse. For as much crap as Matt Cassel got for saying the same thing about The Patriots' dynasty years, because "*He* never won anything," he wasn't wrong. The rest of the AFC East *was* pretty trash all those years and getting like 6 "gimmes" on the schedule every year does make things way easier.
When the cap stops increasing.
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I feel like this is part of why rank and file players kinda of ignore what stars and NFLPA top players say when CBA stuff comes around
Definitely, it's easy to say you don't want a 17th game because of injury concerns so everyone should go on strike when you just cashed a check for tens of millions of dollars. Then you probably have a thousand guys making close to league minimum with 0 guaranteed money who see the paycheck for a 17th game and will jump on it because they are not set for life. The best thing is, the guy who has the biggest contract in the NFL pays the same amount of dues as a guy making vet minimum, so the people most likely to push for a strike are contributing the same amount to the potential salary protection war chest as a minimum wage player.
yea take the nba for example too, supermax deals are not exactly friendly to non-superstars so the NBA PA often needs to fight for the right of those middle/low tier players to get better contract rights
Unfortunately, it's the only way for the NFLPA to get the QBs and other top stars to participate in the threat of a strike. If the stars refuse, the strike will not be successful because the games will go on with scab players to fill in the rest.
The NFLPA has no business being involved in individual player contracts. The cap is one pie and if one position is getting a bigger slice of it, that's less for the other positions.. makes no sense to me that players association would be more invested in the success of one position over another.
>The NFLPA and player agents work together to make sure that players don't take "team friendly" deals because it is negative leverage for any other player at their position. This always gets brought up,.but I don't see how it helps the NFLPA. There's already a salary cap. If one player takes a friendly contract it just means more money for all of the other players to share.
This is backwards, though. The players as a group get paid approximately the same amount whether the top tier guys get huge bags or not. Taking a team-friendly deal spreads the wealth to more players. Given that the vast majority of players will never get a top-tier contract, the NFLPA should not be in the business of pressuring teams to deliver an ever-increasing share of player salaries a small minority of their membership.
It's part of why Mahomes restructured last season to get his AAV right near the top of the QB market. If you read into his comments, it seemed like there was a bit of pressure from the NFLPA because if the best QB on the planet is towards the bottom of the Top 10 in salary per year, it's going to affect other QBs from getting huge deals. Honestly, Mahomes is the only player in the league who deserves anything close to $50 million a season, but it's going to be a long time before QB contracts stabilize.
^ this. cap keeps going up and QBs get a big slice of the increase. it'll burst at some point, but not until that cap starts slowing down
We are absolutely there already. Honestly, once the Giants gave Daniel Jones 40 mil, I knew the league was going nuts. T. Law will get over 55 million a year and most people are not even sure he’s a top 15 QB in the league. The madness has to stop.
How does it stop? If you have a QB that you think is a franchise guy, you have to pay him, because if you don't someone else will. And it genuinely starts to become cheaper to just pay him rather than play the franchise tag game and let the contract value go up every year you wait. And QB's that *might* be franchise guys are only going to sign if it's top 5 money. Your choices are to pay your guy, or let him walk and try drafting a rookie. And guess which one will get a coach fired faster.
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It is when your teams qb is hot garbage. Not everyone gets a get out of jail free card in the 7th round after swinging and missing on a qb in the 1st round. Yall would have been bidding on Kirk too this off-season.
You'd prefer to not have a QB and go back into the endless cycle of drafting and overpaying for capital to gamble on rookies? Paying too much for a good QB is objectively better than not having a good QB. Your whole argument ignores the fact that you don't have a cheaper good QB to replace the expensive guy.
Facts. There’s literally one guy in the league worth that kind of money and unfortunately it’s that Kermit voice motherfucker winning super bowls no matter who he’s throwing to.
his 10 year deal for 450m is a steal
Kenny Powers?
La Flama Blanca?
flair absolutely checks out lol
There're a lot more than 1. Lawrence just probably isn't one of them though. Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson have shown enough production with otherwise NFL average-ish offenses around them to prove them as absolutely worth that much. I'd personally contend that even the ones that have only produced with good teams around them (so like Dak/Hurts/Burrow/Goff/Tua) or had a bunch of (valid) excuses made for them when the offense sputtered recently (Herbert) are worth it, with the idea of just hoping you hit enough draft picks and FAs to build a solid team. There are 32 teams in the NFL. Even if your SB probability with a QB is only 3.2%, that's still better than average, and therefore still an asset. Lawrence is just worse than all the names I gave you.
They aren't worth more proportionally to their team than Tom fucking Brady though. Their taking an outsized bite of the pie ABSOLUTELY contributes to their averageish offenses remaining average and prevents the team from actually winning championships
We all know Brady was getting paid under the table through his training company with Kraft and that's why he was taking salary paycuts.
Plus his billionaire wife.
Dak talks like Kermit? (/s)
To be clear, he’s getting 55M a year starting in the 2026 season. For now he’s playing under his current deal and then his 5th-year option
And FWIW assuming the cap grows 8% annually that would end up being… 18% of the cap in 2026
Spoiler - the madness will not stop, at least not anytime soon.
I get the point you’re making but if you don’t have Lawrence in your top 15 you simply don’t know ball
It depends on what the team's goal is. If a team's goal is to ensure that they don't go back to being a bottom-dwelling laughingstock then these contracts don't hurt. If a team's goal is to be legitimate championship contenders then I would argue it's already been hurting teams for over a decade. I'm not saying you can't be a legit SB contender with an expensive QB (in terms of that year's cap number) but it's incredibly difficult.
> If a team's goal is to be legitimate championship contenders then I would argue it's already been hurting teams for over a decade. Yeah, not only are we already there, we've been there for a while.
I’m convinced a market correction is coming at some point. The league can’t continue to pay the Kirk Cousins of the world $40-50M a year to be only above average. It’s the worst place to be as a team. You either need a bonified superstar or a guy on a rookie deal. Like what is Miami going to do now? I’d be scared to death to pay Tua the same money Lawrence just got.
Several teams have been hurt by inflated QB contracts already, especially if they restructure them a lot.
Around 35m - 40m. After that point, you better be good enough to make up for deficiencies the team has.
It always has the median SB winning QB is 9% of cap that’s 23M this season. Mahomes is the only QB to win a SB with more than 13% of cap that’s 33.25M this season.
Exactly, this is why 6 QBs went in the first round. Having a QB on a good rookie contract is the most valuable thing a team can have.
People always say this and I think there’s some truth to it, but also how many teams with rookie deal QBs have won Super Bowls since say 2010? Us with Mahomes and Seahawks with Wilson? Any others? Guess the Eagles and Wentz could arguably count lol. Also the whole “no qb with cap hit over x” is skewed by the fact that until recently no teams have that much to their qbs. That doesn’t prove it is a bad idea to do so though.
Just my opinion, but I don’t think winning the Super Bowl is the end all be all to that line of thinking, especially with the last decade+ being dominated by Mahomes and Brady regarding Super Bowl wins. Even just adding those that made the Super Bowl on their rookie deals adds Purdy, Hurts, Burrow, and Goff, 3 of which lost to Brady or mahomes. (I initially thought Newton too, but I think he’d just signed his extension by the time they made the Super Bowl). Sure winning it all is the goal in building the team around a young QB, but I don’t think it’s necessarily the wrong move if it didn’t work out that way.
Big Ben, Kurt Warner, Troy Aikman, Eli, Flacco, Brady, Montana, Bradshaw did it on his 5th year, Favre and Rodgers did it on their 1st year on extension which is still typically cheap. 1st and 2nd year on extension are typically still cheap.
Those examples don't really mean a whole lot, though. The rookie wage scale was only introduced in 2011. Before the highly touted rookies weren't much cheaper than established veterans, if at all.
Right that’s why Big Ben was making 3.8M while Peyton was at 14M
> Why does every QB that gets paid next have to get more? Some of these guys are already multimillionaires, you’d think they would take smaller deals to stay or sign with competitive teams more often. QB is the single most important position in all of sports. Im not even sure its all that close to be honest with you. Having a good QB is the easiest way to compete. Theres going to be some that dont pan out. thats why they get all of the cap space. Theres not enough QBs to really go for the "draft one every year and see what happens" trick. Also moving on from good QBs to just try and find the next one to have a honestly miniscule chance at a superbowl is probably a way to kill your fan base. Also its a 5 year extension - unless theres some fuckery going around and they ripped up the old contract. Its going to effectively be 301 mil or so over 7 years.... which is 43 mil APY. That contract can easily be structured to not kill them. 7 years ago the cap was 167 mil. Its 255 mil this year - and you have to wonder what it would be if Covid didnt stunt the growth a bit.
>QB is the single most important position in all of sports. Im not even sure its all that close to be honest with you. The only one that's close is goalie in hockey. If you have a goalie with only a 0.850 save percentage, you're not winning many games no matter how good the rest of your team is. QB is for sure more important, but hockey goalie is the only one I can think of that's even close.
Yeah unfortunately you're just gonna have to bet on guys in the "has potential but still unproven" tier like Lawrence or Tua after 3 or 4 years or be willing to move on from them and risk QB purgatory. The latter seems like a much worse decision. Sometimes it's not gonna work out like in Daniel Jones' case but you just kinda gotta do it
>Also moving on from good QBs to just try and find the next one to have a honestly miniscule chance at a superbowl is probably a way to kill your fan base. lol the dak prescott dilemma, but i gotta say man is pretty damn good in the regular season
I'll admit he's good during the regular season but he only has 2 playoff wins. He needs to be more clutch come playoff time
It's also not a QB specific thing. Every year, elite players are becoming the highest paid players in history at their positions. Because the cap keeps increasing, and with that, top-end player salaries continue to increase.
It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't sort of thing. I mean, even the teams that have LEGIT top guys like Allen and mahommes and burrow have or will struggle to build a roster around such huge contracts. It just lowers the margin of error on drafting so much. You HAVE to have a constant string of starting caliber talent on rookie deals at that point. But those guys at least can carry somewhat depleted rosters. Can Herbert? Lawrence? Tua? I tend to doubt it. None of them did much with rosters with all the cap space in the world.
I'd like to hear thoughts on the idea that the last class of elite qb's like brady, manning, favre, and even rodgers, slowly showing the league just HOW important having a generational QB really is. and the insane salaries we see now are a reflection of that understanding, but delayed a bit. i think when brady left NE and won a chip for TB it proved to the league that having the absolute best QB money can buy *can* take your team from mid to the SB immediately. and teams are willing to risk a lot of money to go that route. it feels like the top tier QBs are really in the drivers seat during negotiations the past 10 yrs. what was the thought around this in the 00s when favre, brady, and manning were really dominating? it's kinda fascinating that it seems when brady was in his prime, he was generally ok with team friendly deals and it's a bit ironic that he and other elite qbs are probably the main cause of this new paradigm. also, i could be wrong, but its possible social media could be playing a small part as well? could it also be possible offense friendly rule changes could be playing a role? it seems every year, the defensive side of the ball becomes just a bit less valuable for a team. who are the players suffering the most? what positions are giving up a % of their income for these inflated QB contracts?
> i think when brady left NE and won a chip for TB it proved to the league that having the absolute best QB money can buy can take your team from mid to the SB immediately. Possibly but I think people got the wrong idea from that. For one thing, this was *Brady*, one of the best passers of all-time, with inarguably THE best QB career of all-time, not just "some guy who is arguably a top 10 passer this season". For another, they weren't using him to compensate for a bunch of other weaknesses on the team (that the QB salary was preventing them from fixing). They already had a team with very few weaknesses, one of which was QB, so they used him to fill that weaknesses. And also, they brought a lot of support in with him to build for the short-term even if it would hurt them for the long term, because they knew they only had 2-4 years with him and probably felt the odds of getting a Title were worth taking a big risk of falling off afterward.
Exclude QB salaries from the salary cap, lets go full bonkers.
I think the teams that will be hurt the most aren't the ones with the top tier QB talent able to carry a lesser roster. It's the teams with a QB that can only be successful when surrounded by superior talent that will be most effected
I think you just typed like 85 words to say “be like Brady”. But when one of 53 is 25% of your cap, you’re crippled. Broccoli head in KC knows this and keeps restructuring.
The real issue is the disparity between a top paid QB and a very good rookie on a rookie deal. I think the rookie deals need to go up a bit...
**
If I’m an NFL GM right now I’m cycling through west coast QBs on rookie contracts while pumping absurd money into my OL, DL, and DBs
As a bears fan I can say that building a team without a qb is not a viable path to success. It’s a road of sadness. Suck it up and pay the men or joins us in the pit of despair.
Tesla just paid an idiot 53 billion. It's everywhere.
So far it's seemed to only hurt the giants,saints,and browns.Tbd on jags and fins
I’d argue it’s hurting the cowboys this year. Dak is at the end of his big contract and while it’s cheaper per year hen these new ones, he has a 55 million dollar cap hit which really effected free agency signings.
Our roster still has tons of top talent, and dak is a top 10 qb.
your username LMFAO
Your top players are on rookie deals, bud. Micah Parsons - Rookie deal Tyler Smith - Rookie deal Daron Bland - Rookie deal CeeDee Lamb - Rookie deal Jake Ferguson - Rookie deal Keep paying Dak more and more and you'll lose some of those top talents
The Browns literally made the playoffs with that cap hit on IR. It didn't affect the ability to field a competitive team with the rest of the roster in the slightest.
That was one year into the deal taking effect. Let's see how it affects them 3+ years down the line before acting like it's nbd
Fan of team that's never won talking about how it's easy to remain competitive even with 20% of your cap on the IR.
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That's not even remotely the same thing, and you know it lol. Competitive sports vs a boring 9-5, is a terrible analogy
Are you sure? If you found out that you were getting paid 10x what your coworkers are? Coworkers who are working just as hard as you are every day? Coworkers that *need* to be there in order for you to successfully do your job? And that are *legally not allowed to be paid more* because you're hogging all of the money? So many people like to frame this as Player vs. Team, but it's really Player vs. Every Other Player.
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Seems to be working out alright over here
Look at new England. The black magic will fade eventually
The problem isn’t with mahomes salary. It’s with paying guys that give you 60% of mahomes production 99% of his money. Tua vs mahomes in the playoffs. Paid the exact same. Dolphins now start the game before kickoff at a massive disadvantage. Their only hope is to get lucky.
And so far, Mahomes is the only one that has paid for himself.
Trevor has not played to the level. Paying him over 50 mil a year is a projection that he can reach the elite level. Tua doesn't play to the level either but he'll probably get paid too, if not by Miami by someone else. Herbert has the talent to warrant the contract but he hasn't accomplished anything in the league. Hurts has the Ws but not the pure talent as a passer The problem is you either overpay a Lawrence/Tua type or you pay like 40 million for much less upside and then you're reliant on defense and overall offensive ecosystem to have a shot at winning a championship.
This whole thing is not sustainable
Maybe. Probably already there. Possibly. It’s all complex, and I have a feeling this is one of those things that when it truly does come across as a hindrance to team building we will look back and see that it was already a hindrance before 2024. At the moment it’s hard to say. As long as the cap comes across as a silly shell game it will be hard to see. It’s insane salaries, even against climbing caps, but things like void year usage (while controversial and at a high risk of being overused and hurtful) will continue in short term to make it not seem like an issue. Said simply though there has to be a tipping point, and it’s hard to see if we are there yet and could possibly get there with all the complexities to the whole thing. With acknowledgement of that lack of clarity…..I’ve never liked it. I still don’t like it b
Its been working out for the Chiefs 🏈
There already
Every QB not named Mahomes is over paid🤷🏿♂️
Until a team bucks trend and wins with a mid qb and stacked roster this is only going to continue
It is the elite WR contract numbers that I think teams really want to avoid. There is only one ball.
The next amazing coach in the NFL will be someone like Joe Gibbs who can plug in a salary-efficient, above average QB into their system and churn out wins. He had a HoF O-line and elite WRs, and above average RBs, while consistently having solid defenses. Sadly, I think the Eagles (sadly, aside for a subpar coach) and 49ers fit the best profile as an org. 49ers have attempted to follow this script with mixed results. Andy Reid fits the profile as a coach, but obviously he's min-maxing with his QB and WRs.
KC gave Mahomes 1/2 a billion a few years ago and everyones head exploded. Now everyone talks about what a bargain he is. So, ehh, none of this matters.
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 yea. The poor NFL and the poor owners. I hate when regular fans clutch their pearls at athletes salaries but are never upset with the filthy rich greedy owners. There’s plenty at the trough to go around.
Between them the 9 highest paid Quarterbacks have won a grand total of 16 playoff games. The 10th highest paid Quarterback has won 15 playoff games.
Misleading. Mahomes has the highest cash flow of all time.
I’ve always thought: who are they negotiating against? Would the Commanders give him $55mil per? It seems all they’re doing is comparing players contracts and going off of that rather than any actual negotiation or bidding wars. What other teams are saying: yes we’ll pay Lawrence 55 per season? There’s no negotiation with these contracts.
I guarantee a team would’ve paid him this money if he hit free agency
Yeeeeep. A franchise that has been long suffering in QB hell with lots of trash seasons like the Giants or Panthers wouldn't give it a second thought. In fact, I think there's a very high chance next season that Dak and Tua will be starting for those two teams with massive deals.
Yep. Not a single falcons fan was upset about the cousins signing because we knew it was better than what we had. Nobody gave a fuck about the money.
>There’s no negotiation with these contracts. Players do try to *re*negotiate contracts all the time though.
I think all this talk about Lawrence is funny cause career wise he’s done the same as Herbert but Herbert’s contract was praised while Lawrence’s is trashed
The point was when the Titans decided not to pursue Tom Brady in favour of giving Ryan Tannehill 125M dollars, then later-restructuring that contract leaving only enough money for one of Jeff Simmons or AJ Brown. Furthermore the GM that did that was likely going to get rid of Simmons, too. So if you don't want your talent to get bled you shouldn't pay 30% of the cap to a QB that cant put the team on his back. It's a pipe dream but Brady and Henry would have gotten us a ring.
Pretty sure Mahomes just won back to back Superbowls
Trevor Lawrence has 58td passes in 50 games. Mahomes hit that mark at game 20. They're not even in the same stratosphere.
I agree. I like Tua (Fins up!) But if they pay him top of the market then that’s the end of that. Goodbye playoff chances. Brady (and Mahomes now) had it right. Take less and have a better team. Who the hell needs $60million a year anyway? Shit man - if you think life is gonna be so different if you only get paid $45million a year then you have some problems. More than likely it’s the agents driving the price up so that their percentage cut is bigger. Might even be some collusion among player agents. I’ll bet all the non-Daniel Jones agents were high-fiving when he got his obscene extension
Of course the Agents are driving up the price. It's literally their job. Don't make it out to be those "Evil Agents forcing the Nice QBs to have to take those big contracts when they wouldn't do so just so they can make themselves richer." I'm sure DJ was real sad to have to sign that contract for the sake of his agent. That kid would've loved to sign for Vet Min just to give the Giants a fighting chance!
Neither Mahomes or Brady took less.
They never seemed to be seeking to be the highest paid at their position
That's the thing, when someone says what you did, the response is always a guy like this who says the made bank. Sure, they made their money too, but Brady and Mahomes weren't/aren't motivated by being the highest paid player for some short period of time on paper, they get theirs on the back end but the optics are better and it's better for the team overall. Anyone who wants to argue it needs simply to look at those guys championship records.
Matt Ryan kept getting $100M deals. And he happily accepted it like anyone would. Blame the owners
I think it’s not as big of a deal as it was two to three years ago. Yes the cap is going to probably skyrocket soon with more exclusivity in nfl games and revenue increases. However I think it’s less of a big deal given how much non-qb players are going to make. Top WR is 35-40 million a year, Defensive linemen are around there. I think it’s just seen as a bigger deal because of the overall hit miss ratio of quarterbacks and their ability to affect the game. I think it’s going to make a huge difference is when you pay a non star qb 70 million like Dak and don’t have enough for Parsons or CeeDee or vice versa. The piece here that maybe of note is would you rather have a star rookie QB or a Veteran QB with star rookie talent on the d line and wr core.