7-26-2023 Bo Crouch ~ Host of Football Talk IMG. TMZ / Jalen Ramsey at Jaguars Facility
With Aaron Rodgers being the last "old guy" in the league, you are looking at a new era of the NFL. You are also now seeing some unprecedented contract numbers that have all stemmed from the Browns giving Deshaun Watson a fully guaranteed 230 million dollar contract. You Could make the argument that Mahomes 10 year 450 million dollar contract did but there were a lot of options for that to be reworked in the future. Josh Allen's 6 year deal for 255m Actually gave the team some options but with the high level of guaranteed money on the new Lamar Jackson (5/260m), Jalen Hurts (5/255m) and as of yesterday Justin Herbert's (5/262.5m) contracts and Kyler Murry's last year (5/230.5) you have to start looking at if those teams will continue to be competitive when the bulk of those contracts hit. Arizona is already starting to lose talent in the form of cap casualties and despite having one of the highest paid QB's they are expected to be one of the worst teams in the league.
Joe Burrow's contract will inevitably reset the market yet again coming in somewhere close to 5 years 270m and 200 of it guaranteed. The current NFL salary cap sits at 224.8 million and the 50m+ per year QB's gobble up just over 22% of the Cap. This will make it hard for teams to stay competitive when it comes to resigning top talent so even more pressure will be on those front offices and the GM's to really hit homeruns on draft day because they will largely be out of the free agency market. The Cap has been growing at about 7% going from 75 million in 2003 to 123 million in 2013 and now at the aforementioned 224.8 million for the 2023 season. These contracts will be over before the Cap growth would catch up and although they aren't currently paying running backs (A conversation for another day) that's not a sustainable trend for such an important position in the league.
It's the jump in salaries for the quarterbacks that has been impressive, basically going from 150/160m (Carr, Prescott, Cousins) to these 230+ monsters in just a couple of years. The way these contracts will likely be hitting their teams may hurt them moving forward, unless they do restructuring every year or so and applying some creative accounting where you convert a roster bonus into a signing bonus to dodge the cap hit, these teams will be left with rosters that begin to have glaring holes. Or they may take the Rams approach where they go all in on a ring but have to have a fire sale right after. On that note it's only a bad idea if it doesn't work or if you want sustained relevance.
Personally I would like to be in the mix every year rather than push all your chips in for a ring but then mostly be below average after. If you are arguing that a ring is better than in the mix you're not wrong you can't take away that banner but if you are in the playoffs every year I like the odds of being able to put a couple wins together in January and February in one of those years.
There may not be a right answer to this but historically teams struggle to win it all once the QB takes up around 14 to 15% of the teams cap space. Although Mahomes just defied those that hasn't been the norm so time will tell if that remains true or if the NFL is just in a new era all together.
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