The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Assessing the state of the QB market

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

The QB market continues to make headlines with Trevor Lawrence’s new deal. Robert Mays is joined by Brad Spielberger, Director of Football Administration at Grand Central Sports Management, to break down these massive contracts. They dive into the deals and what we can really learn from them. They also talk about no trade clauses, upcoming contracts for Tua Tagovailoa and Jordan Love and much more.Follow Robert on Twitter: @robertmaysSubscribe to The Athletic Football Show...AppleSpotifyYouTube Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Football Show. Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert Mays. Great show for you guys today. Let's just peek behind the curtain. I'm sitting there. I can't remember what day it was. I think it might have been Wednesday night.

I'm on the couch with my wife. We're watching TV. And I opened my phone and I open Twitter. And I'm like, oh, damn it. And I see the Trevor Lawrence contract. And we had just recorded a show with Dan Orlovsky about the considerations the jag should be way. about whether or not they should pay Trevor Lawrence and how much.

So I'm going back and forth. God, do we run the conversation with Dan? Do we have to do something immediately to react to this? She's looking over to me. She's like, what's wrong with you? It's 9 p.m. This is how the sausage gets made on the content side of things. So we ultimately decided to run the conversation with Dan.

If you guys want to go check it out, I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed his perspective. But I also wanted to talk about the Trevor Lawrence contract. And not just about that deal specifically, but about what it means. means in the broader landscape of quarterback deals. Obviously, we got the Jared Gough contract earlier this summer. We all have the Trevor Lawrence contract, which is equal to Joe Burrow and AVAV, but has some nuances to it.

And we have some that have not yet been signed but are probably going to. The Tuatagvaloa contract, the Jordan Love contract, what's going to happen with Dak Prescott? So to help me kind of sort through the current quarterback market and the current quarterback market landscape and where things might be headed after the Lawrence deal, we had on our old buddy, formerly at PFF, now actually on the agent and contract side at Grand Central Sports Management, our friend Brad Spielberger, who does a great job of just putting this stuff in digestible terms.

So we talked about the Lawrence deal, but we talked about a bunch of stuff. How teams navigate these sorts of contracts, the best way to do that, how much length and cash flow and your owner's willingness to spend cash play into this, some of the kind intricate details of these things and the opportunity cost that comes along with them. So really enjoyed our conversation with Brad, and hopefully it's a really good primer for you guys, not only on the Lawrence deal, but on what the details within these contracts ultimately mean for the teams and the quarterbacks that signed them. So let's get to our conversation with Brad.

Joining us now, it is an old friend of the show who is in a new role as the director of football administration for Grand Central Sports Management, but it's one of my favorite people to talk about, contracts, the cap, all of that good stuff with. It's Bradst Billberg. Brett, how you doing, man? Yeah, I'm doing great. Yeah, I appreciate the new intro with the new bio and everything. It's been good.

Always wanted to get directly involved and truly advocate for players and go to battle. So we've been doing some of that. That's fantastic. But I love the fact that you still have perspective on that league-wide trends and kind of how things unfold at certain positions and just the general scope of the market. And that's what I wanted to do today. Obviously, with the Trevor Lawrence contract, we have kind of the moment that's going to kick off what I assume is going to be a flurry of quarterback deals that we're going to see over the next couple months. I think the Dak Prescott is still mystery and how that's going to unfold.

But any day now, it feels like the Tuataglaloa and Jordan Love deals are probably going to come down the pike here. So I wanted to kind of take a step back and just chat with you about what the Lawrence deal means in the grander scheme of the quarterback market and just what the state of the quarterback market is overall as we see some of these tier two deals coming down. Because last year, obviously, Justin Herbert sets the market. Joe Burrough sets the market. We understood that.

That was always going to happen. Those are the guys that in any quarterback list are probably going to be in the top five or six. Now we're getting to these deals that are maybe a tier or two down from that, which I think adds a little bit more intrigue in terms of where they should land and what this means for the position overall. No doubt about it. And I think Lawrence being the number one overall pick, kind of being touted as a generational prospect, even winning a playoff game, against the guy you just mentioned in Justin Herbert is maybe slightly removed from that conversation, even though to attack Volo has been extremely successful in back-to-back regular seasons, he did prove he can stay healthy.

So all that was great. Jordan Love, it's this very small snippet of information we have on him. But from the second half of last year through the playoffs, I think you could make a cogent argument he was the number one quarterback or in that conversation in the entire NFL last year. So there are all these like unique kind of different cases. But in reality, they played in an elite level for a certain stretch of time. And where we're at in the market is kind of some ways where we've been,

which is if you show some good play, you're going to get paid at or near the top. But then I also think there are some different elements of, which we'll get into, Lawrence not really resetting the market. And this mid-tier with a Baker-Mayfield with a Kirk Cousins, with a Derek Carr, is, you know, Gino Smith, et cetera, is that tier more solidified? So there's some old and some new, I think, in how, the whole thing shakes out. It's a very good point about the guys that we're talking about here. There's a caveat with all of them. With Lawrence, there are so many people just on the football

internet, or I guess just in the general public who are like, that guy's not good. I don't care what you try to sell me. That guy is not good. I don't believe that. And I think that he is somebody that was worth paying. We'll talk about the timeline and why it's important to get in front of that stuff. But if you look at a guy like Tua, even though the production has been incredible, and they've been one of the best offenses on the league when he's been healthy, health is been a concern. And I think what his role is, then that offense is something to talk about. What Jordan Love, like you mentioned, we got one year. And really, we had half a season of truly elite play. So what do you do with that? We'll get to some of the questions that those teams are

wrestling with as they consider those deals. But let's take a step back and talk about the Trevor Lawrence contract here for a second. When you saw the numbers come down last week, what was your first reaction to just the general snapshot of that contract? I think my perception there was framed by Jared Gough's most recent extension just before that. And then it ties back to history, though, as well. So what the golf deal kind of reminded me was we can vary year to year. And a guy's narrative and how we view them and kind of where we stack them up can swing wildly. And the original Jared Gough extension coming off a Super Bowl appearance, yes, obviously,

the Patriots defense gave him fits and he did not play well. But, okay, we had a number one overall pick who made a Super Bowl, who showed a lot of good, with Sean McVeigh and the Rams kind of bought high, right? To me, Trevor Lawrence, you're almost buying low. I know he just tied Joe Burrow for top of the market, but obviously in other factors we look at, you know, his average per year, $55 million. It's not really the same as Burrow when it's a year later

on a salary cap that's $30 million higher. Yeah, exploded. Exploded, right. The cash flows also, I mean, he's trailing by $30 million in cash flows in the first couple years of this contract. So it's not actually as strong later on. And that to me says this could age really well. Because if Trevor Lawrence has an awesome 2024, I know they had a weird off season,

but let's say Brian Thomas Jr. is great. The offensive line gets kind of sorted out and he goes off. We're all going to sit there and say, oh, it aged so well. It's such a good deal. Like we're just so reactionary at quarterback. And it applies the contracts as much as it does their on-field production. And obviously this is a different circumstance because Josh Allen is an MVP candidate. And I think the consensus probably number two quarterback in the league right now.

But we'll talk about this in a bit. Looking at Josh Allen's contract now, it's like, this is crazy. The $43 million a year that Josh Allen is making looks like an absolute bargain when you stack it up to what the quarterback market looks like right now. So there is a chance that with where this thing is headed, we'll have a similar conversation about Trevor Lawrence. You mentioned the percentage of the cap considerations. This reminds me a little bit of, remember 2017 when Derek Carr was the highest paid quarterback

in the league for like four months? But if you look at it, Derek Carr, when he signed that contract in April of 2017, the percentage of the cap and his AAV was actually ranked ninth, which I believe is exactly where Trevor Lawrence is right now. So that actually, it aligns with what we've seen from the last couple iterations of quarterback market extensions and kind of how these all unfold, where you can be at the top of the market. But if you're somebody that hasn't been one of the best quarterbacks in the league, you'll probably fall somewhere between like eight and 12. and when you look at those percentages, that's exactly where Derek Carr was, then Matthew Stafford beat him by AAB four months later, and then not surprisingly,

the next year, Aera Rogers and Matt Ryan, Matt Ryan recently coming off his MVP season, and Aera Rogers being Aera Rogers, were like, uh, guys, Matthew Stafford and Derek Carr are the highest paid quarterbacks in the league. I'm not sure how long this should continue. And that's why my question is, what's going to happen with Mahomes and Josh Allen?

A year from now, are they, there are people going to go to the bills and the chiefs and just say, Guys, right now, if you gave me the same percentage of the cap, you gave me when I signed my first extension, if I'm Allen, it would be $60 million a year. That's what I'm worth. That's what I should be paid. And it feels like that stuff is probably going to be coming sooner rather than later when you

look at the general curve of how this is all going. And that's the, I think, fascinating part where it also gets into signing a longer-term deal, in that I think a team can frame a player as being selfish or not the bills are going to do that. I think there's clearly a great relationship between the two people or two parties and also between the fans and Josh Allen. But when you sign a 10-year do like Mahomes or a six-year extension like Josh Allen, like that's why as agents don't really view that as positive sometimes because it's just harder to come back to the table. Mahomes obviously did get his raise, which in essence was them admitting they did not do right. And he didn't do a very good job, you know, the first time around giving away 10 years of control that needed to be augmented, I think what, one year, two years into the act.

actual new years of that deal. So I think that's probably more where Alan comes in is more, hey, like, I need a cost of living adjustment. I need a cost of quarterback adjustment, you know, to my deal, which he totally deserves. But yeah, I think it also just goes back to, that's why when you mentioned all those names you just talked about, those were four-year deals and five-year deals, and we're back there now. But Mahomes in the 10-year extension just kind of threw everything out of whack because it actually

did put a cap on quarterbacks. Like, you know, we talk about like a Grankowski. back in the day at Tudan, like different positions where you can't justify going above the number one guy. Mahomes was that for a brief period, but that doesn't last that quarterback. I want to talk about some of the benefits of getting

this done early. I had a conversation with Dan Rolofsky on the show that ran Tuesday about the kind of the questions and the considerations that the Jags and the Cowboys should be weighing as they think about extensions for these two guys. We still ran the conversation even after the Lawrence extension because I thought there was a lot of worthwhile stuff in there.

But one of the things that we were talking about was What are the downsides to waiting? And something I didn't mention that and should have. It's not necessarily just about other guys getting deals that are pushing the market up. That is something to consider. The Dolphins not getting too done before Lawrence is a negative because now the floor has been established. But you mentioned this, and I think it's a really important consideration. By doing it as early as possible, Trevor Lawrence is now under team control for seven years.

And that is so important with these quarterback deals. I remember talking to someone in the bills front office when they gave the Josh Allen contract out. And the numbers associated with the deal were almost inconsequential. It was mostly about now we have certainty for the next eight years. We can move money around. We know exactly what our timeline is. We know exactly what our runway is. And more than anything, I think that is the major benefit that the Jags get here by getting this done as early as they did.

I think football-evon people in the league would probably like scoff when I say this. but I think if you really said, how are you balancing your budget, how are you managing your assets and your roster? There's essentially a binary A and B. You either have the expensive quarterback or you don't, and then everything else funnels down from there, both from a salary cap standpoint

and honestly just a cash flow and a cash outlay standpoint. So, no, it's totally what you just said. The Jaguars can now say, okay, we have our Star Edge Rusher on a five-year deal. That's done. We have Trevor Lawrence. That's done. Every other decision we make,

whether it's a draft pick or more contracts given out free agency or not paying a Calvin Ridley, etc, et cetera, it all funnels down from there. And whether you want to nitpick each decision in their own vacuum, they have the clarity of knowing what they're building around and the construct they're working within. And like you said, maybe not seven years, but they know that for at least five years, maybe four years, right, at the absolute minimum before they have to think about that again, And that clarity gives you a lot of kind of runway to do what you want to do. And it gives you flexibility.

That, to me, is the biggest difference between the Jared Gough contract and the Trevor Lawrence contract. You can talk about age. You can talk about all of those things as well. But to me, it's the length of the deals. Jared Gough is going into the last year of his deal. He signs a four-year extension. So if you look at the numbers every single year for Jared Gough, he's got a $61 million cap hit in

2008. I don't think they're going to want to touch that stuff because the deal is so short that it's harder to move money around within individual years. With Lawrence, you have seven years and then you have two void years. He has a $35 million option bonus every single year, I think starting in 2025. You can pro-rate that thing until the cows come home because you have so long to do it on. And I think that is, that's something I didn't really understand about the practical realities of these quarterback contracts before really digging into it, is that if you have a six-year deal, If you have a seven years of control, you can keep pushing money out, and it's not really something that's going to cripple you or it's not something that's going to hurt you in the short term.

But when you have these three-year deals or these four-year deals that DAC has signed or Kirk Cousins has signed, it makes it so much harder on the team to build something around that quarterback because there's just less wiggle room in so many different areas. And it gives a ton of leverage, as we're seeing right now in Dallas, for the next deal as well. And DAC did allow them to put one void year in for proration. I know over the cap has two void years for Lawrence. I think that's actually just a placeholder. I frankly wouldn't be surprised if they had four void years in there because the fact there's $35 million option bonuses in every single year. My guess is they probably saw the Jalen Hertz deal

and maybe followed the exact same formula. So, yeah, we'll see. I don't think we had the full details there yet, but, you know, when we do, it'll be updated on the site. But yeah, like you said, you can just, it's flexibility around everything you're doing. And yeah, I'm not going to get fully into the whole option bonus. and why that's a big trend now. I do want to talk about that, though,

because when I saw the Lawrence deal, my first reaction was, this is the Jalen Hertz contract with a couple tweaks to it, because Jalen Hertz had, his option bonuses are even bigger. Lawrence is at $35 million every single year. The Jalen Hertz ones were $38, 40, $42,

even before the cap explosion. So just quickly, what do those option bonuses built in to the second, third, fourth years of these deals? Why are teams turning to that as kind of a modern mechanism within these quarterback contracts. So the way you're seeing it now or why you're seeing it is because they

prorate on the salary cap preemptively. So as of right now, technically those options have not been exercised. Technically, Jalen Hertz has these massive $50, $60 million salaries. And we know salary hits the cap all in that single year. So technically, as of right now, that is what he has. And an option is you're optioning or you have an option to exercise to basically convert a bunch of salary into a bonus and then prorated. But the way it works is when you put that in there, it gets prorated on the cap before you

even exercise it. But if you don't exercise it, you don't lose. Like it's not dead cap in the future like a signing bonus because you haven't paid the cash yet. So you're getting the benefit of proration and pushing money out in the road. You're also, you don't have to go to the player to restructure. And a lot of those are unilateral now. But it's basically pre-restructuring a deal.

Exactly. And then lastly, if you get down the road, you're not. road and you want to trade him or, you know, do, do whatever, you can still do that. There isn't this massive dead cap pushout. You can kind of undo that, you know, kind of, you know, reel it back in, so to speak, and not have the penalty. And that's why those extra years are so valuable because the signing bonus only pro rates over the first, I think, five years of the contract. So, but if you do an option bonus and that proration comes in, if you have an option bonus in year three, you then pro rate it over year over years three, four, five, six, seven.

So it's an ability to pro-rate more money into the future where it used to just be getting those first five years with the signing bonus. So I think that's why teams have really leaned into that as an advantage. And it's not been a surprise to see the Eagles be at the forefront of that and see a lot of other teams look at that and say, that's smart. I'm going to start doing that and follow suit. I want to talk more about some of the practical considerations here. When you think about these deals and the structures of them, the limitations caused by them, What do you think most fans misunderstand about a contract like the Trevor Lawrence deal? Yeah, I mean, I would say at a very high level, I think it's easy to get lost in the numbers.

And so I'm not saying fans should be, and by that, I mean like just the flat, traditional $55 million per year. So for a couple reasons. A, people say it's always making the same amount as Joe Burrow. He's the highest paid quarterback in the NFL. Yes and no. First part we just talked about a little bit, right? He's not really at the same level. You have to view it.

I'm not saying you should sit there and take every deal. of the cap, but just you can't look it as a solid singular number. It is part of a pie that has to get spent. And that pie just jumped in enormous, you know, capacity and size. So that is the one big thing. And I get it's hard to see 55 million and be like, oh, you know, it's not like, no, I get it. Well, they're on the same line.

When you look at a salary ranking, Joe Burrow and Trevor Lawrence are in the exact same spot. And it's easy to kind of be swayed by that. 100%. 100%. So, like, as hard as it is, I know we're all, you know, regular Joe's or maybe not all, but like, a lot of us are. But it's not just this number in a vacuum. It is part of a pie.

And you have to think of, you know, the denominator as much as you think of the numerator, so to speak. So that's probably the biggest one. And then also, yeah, I mean, just the reality that you also see people get obsessed with, well, Trevor Lawrence is not the best quarterback in the NFL. I'm not arguing he is. I mean, I think he's probably better than some people's perception of him. But that's also just not how the market works. He is a young, you know, still has a ton of upside potential, all these different things.

He's going to get that part of the market. And I'm not saying he's the best quarterback in the NFL, but that's not what the contract is saying either. I think we're a little bit too obsessed with that, too. What, in your opinion, if you're looking at the opportunity cost that comes with these sorts of deals and the actual restraints that they put in place from a team-building perspective, what are those and how real are those? giving Trevor Lawrence this contract, what over the life of the deal over the first four years of the deal,

does this prevent the Jaguars from potentially doing? It's a great question because I think we have finally seen kind of the veil be taken away from that a little bit. We always heard, and you can't win a Super Bowl if your quarterback is making X percent of the cap. And I know Patrick Mahomes is Patrick Mahomes, but he's blown that out of the water two years in a row. I think he was like 10% more than that number

that people throw around there is you can't go. I think it was 13% was this magic number that I used to get asked about on radio stations across the country and he's done it two years in a row at 20%, so... And there's so many...

The thing that drives me crazy about that shit is that there's so many like airline moments that would make that not true. The Matt Ryan, 28 to 3 Super Bowl is one of those. Like there's so many other examples

that I'm not coming to mind right now but there's like four or five guys that were a yard or two yards away from winning a Super Bowl that were making that percentage of the cap. It's also very funny.

If you just zoom out to conference championship game participants, it's like only high pay quarter of X. It's like, yeah, DeBreeze is in there every single time. There's so many Peyton Manning years. It is very funny, but I'm sorry, I cut you off. Go ahead. The answer I would say is your margin for error with other roster decisions is just smaller.

And even the Chiefs had some blunders. I mean, they'd probably tell you themselves using a first round pick on Clyde Edward Salair was a blunder. You know, spending on Frank Clark, maybe two. to a degree he was phenomenal in the playoffs and they could probably make the argument. You know what? Was he great in the regular season for his contract? No, but we got what we paid for.

But to say those decisions, that margin for error just shrinks. And so when they trade a Tyree kill, when they trade a Legerius need because they're making good draft picks, when they, you know, let a Willie Gaywalk because they have Nick Bolton and Leo Chanel, like everything they're doing where they're not paying guys, if they weren't winning Super Bowls, it would be harder and harder to do. and say, you know, we're so close to the mountain top. We're chasing it. We can't let really good players go.

Those tough decisions, you just have to make more of them. But then also, yeah, like, you can't have a draft class where you just miss. And it's just a flush down the toilet. Like nobody contributes. Whereas with a cheap quarterback that's really, really good, you can't. I think one of the chiefs draft classes, like 2019 maybe, they have nobody from that class, I want to say on the team. But it didn't really matter because Pat Mahomes was still not only Patrick Mahomes,

but also making, you know, pennies compared to right now. I mean, the Niners traded three first-round picks for a quarterback who no longer plays for them, and it doesn't matter because they pay their quarterback 20 cents every single season. So that helps. I think there are a few different considerations that I have when I'm looking at this stuff. One, how much cash is your owner willing to spend? Because the Josh Allen contract has not really been that much of an impediment to the bills making other moves because they've zeroed him out pretty much every single year.

If you look at it, Josh Allen, I think, has been restructural. as much as he can be pretty much every single season over the last three seasons. So against the cap, the Josh Allen contract has not been that much of a barrier to the chiefs, to the bills adding other talent. The chiefs are an interesting example because they're not a heavy cash spending team traditionally. They've done it a couple times with Mahomes, but there have been other years where they've just left that contract alone and they're able to survive it because he's the best player I've ever seen.

So they're almost in their own specific category with them. And then the other consideration with this in terms of, again, how much of a barrier is it to team building is the length of the deal? Because they're going to beat contracts like the Jared Gough deal. When Jared Gough is going to be making $69 million against the cap in 2026 and he has two more years left on his deal, how incentivized do you think the lions are going to be to zero out that deal when they have two years left on it and he's 34 years old? Probably not that much. So the length and the cash, I think those are the two things that give some teams more wiggle room when they've given out these contracts and give some teams less, at least from the outside looking in, that's kind of my perception of it. No, at that point, think about it for that specific example.

Okay, so like, you know, is Graham Glasgow still playing for the team? Is Kevin Zitler still playing for the team? Is Taylor Decker still playing for the team? Did James Williams get an extension or is it now Ammon Ra and new drafted receivers? right like it's you know sam lapporteur probably you know based on how good he was last year right but like all of those decisions and all those things that come up um you know they keep spending to make the defense better because it really hasn't been good enough as of yet of course good playoff run they had some fun there and they've made some great moves on that side of the ball but like like you just said it's gonna all come down to you know

this past year's draft class i think a lot of people loved it i love terran arnold coming out of alabama i think it was a great pick et cetera et cetera those things just you can't whiff and not have those things pull through for you because then, like you said, you're sitting there saying, we'll leave the $70 million cap hit because we're almost trying to like force ourselves to kind of hit the reset button now, not push into the future and make it harder to get back to where we were, you know, in 2023. It's interesting because the Browns are in this spot right now because they had, with the last two years, they zeroed out to Sean Watson's contract. And when I say that essentially means just converting all the base salary except for the minimum

down to converting all of the base salary except for the minimum that you can pay. It's around $1 million. So you convert all the rest to a signing bonus and you prorated over the life of the deal. The Browns had done that over the last couple of seasons. They did not touch his contract this year. He is a $63 million cap.

I don't know if they're going to, but I think there's probably a sense for Andrew Barry and for the money people over there that are saying, I don't want to torpedo this team in 2027. I want to make sure that on the other side of this, we have flexibility.

At a certain point, we can't keep doing this. And when teams come to that realization, I think is always kind of interesting to watch. For sure. And I think when they sign the deal, they probably had no concern to say, hey, if he plays at a top 10 level,

we'll just restructure it every year. Like, it does not matter. Like you talked about, they have an owner that is aggressive in spending. It's why he's in the team in the first place. And they've continued to add talent around him. But they basically restructured or zeroed out every other contract on the team

this off season, except for that one. it's not an accident. It could have done all the same accounting work with one move instead of doing it with 15. They chose Path B for a reason. Yes, and it's like you said, the wiggle room starts to shrink. If you have to do it with everybody else because you can't do it with the quarterback, eventually you run out of options. And the other one that I was going to mention when you were bringing that up in terms of,

okay, now you have to hit on these. They can do that in Buffalo with Josh Allen. You can't do it with Josh Allen and von Miller. You can't compound one and then the other. And that's why these moves. these swings financially when you take them in free agency becomes so, so important because you almost can't afford to miss on them. And I think that's a really good example of it.

So let's get to the other side of this. This is how you can get around it. How do you think teams paint themselves into a corner? Where do you think some of the mistakes or missteps come when teams are handing out these contracts and it actually does give them less flexibility and get in the way of them adding other talent? Yeah, you know, I think structure is key, and that is owner driven oftentimes, but you do, if you're going to make that decision of making this big expenditure or quarterback, which clearly you think you're in a window and all of these things, you also need to like stagger payments and have foresight and think through what you're going to do across the entire roster. So I'm not saying Cincinnati isn't doing this per se, but the way you look at this year for Cincinnati, and it is kind of an all-in year. We'll see what happens with T. Higgins, but like you have a franchise tag on your books, probably not.

really necessary. It certainly doesn't help. You have Trey Hendrickson who has a trade request out there also wants new money. He's going to have a larger cap hit as they try not to move things around there. You know, you lose DJ Reader. The secondaries kind of question mark right now. So like they just, they haven't really bought themselves a lot of flexibility. And the thing is, you still need to pay Jamar Chase by the time he's up. I don't know, $40 million a year.

Certainly 30 plus, no question about it. So you just have to also, it's not just how much are you paying to each player. It's also, did you have the. the foresight of like how can we stagger these, how can we stack these. So there's a big cap hit for this guy here and a small one and kind of all, and same with cash as well, because they have a budget to work under. So it's that too. It's kind of viewing everything holistically. And I'm not saying the bills didn't do it, but like you said, Von Miller is why Stefan Diggs is not there, probably. It's not a Josh Allen issue. It's,

it's probably a Von Miller issue. I wanted to ask you about two specific structure things that teams did with quarterbacks over the last year because I was looking at all the numbers and how they stack up. Joe Burrow, like you mentioned, Joe Burroughs make it $65 million in cash this year, 55 of it coming through an option bonus. Why did they do that? Why do you think they wanted to give him $65 million this year? Do you think it's because they know that they have to give Jamar a huge chunk of cash next year? Yeah, it probably is part of it. That's a great question because when they were going through that, I thought they were going to either give him the craziest cash

outlaw you've ever seen, which I mean, they kind of still did, or they were going to bend precedent on their guarantees because even like Carson Palmer, Andy Dalton, got signing bonuses and not any else guaranteed on their deal. I know those guys weren't quite Joe Burrow, but they were starting level, you know, franchise

quarterbacks. It's still notable that you did not bend when giving your starting quarterback an extension, even if they're not quote unquote elite guys. It's still, it's still an important data point. Totally, totally. And that was again, like not that long ago. It was like, what, 2016, right? So he got he got both of those things. But yeah, I think it's probably a good point. Yeah, they're probably are thinking, you know, we know there's another massive expenditure coming on

Jamar Chase. So let's not only do the big signing bonus, which they always have to do. And then they do a lot of big roster bonuses in year one and year two. But yeah, let's go the option bonus route. And then like Joe can't complain as those cash numbers come down a little bit, you know, relatively speaking. But yeah, those early year cash flows, Herberts and his were super, we're super strong. Like, Herbert's even ahead of Lawrence's like we talked about earlier on. It just at the end of the deal, you know, Lawrence catches up, you know, to both of them. Yeah, if you look at Burrough, I'll be fascinated to see if they're willing to move some of that money around as the deal goes. Because traditionally, they don't do a lot of that stuff.

So are they going to be willing to just sit there? And if you look at his cap hits compared to some of these other guys, like Lawrence, you know, for example, let's just read these off. Lawrence, it goes 15 million, 17 million, 24 million, 35,000, 47 million. That's all very palatable over the next five years. But then it jumps to 78 and 75, which I want to ask you about in a second. If you look at Burroughs, it goes 29, 46, 48, 52, 53538. That's just a natural progression. That's just a statement of, I think we'll be able to afford this against the cap

if we do enough stuff right. But again, that puts you in such a position where you have to hit on, doing the other stuff right if you're not going to be willing to move that money around. And what's fascinating there is not to say it can't continue, but the Bengals have been on a heater, like a personnel heater, both in the draft and with a lot of free agent decisions. And so I'm not saying it can't be continued, but we don't really have a lot of historical evidence of a team outperforming in the draft and or free agency for an extended period of time. It's just not really a thing we ever see.

It's a very difficult process. It's hard to do. I think we all like their draft class again this year kind of as a consensus for what, third, fourth year in a row, but eventually those things aren't really going to work out. I mean, last year, I guess the class didn't really give them a ton so far with Turner.

You know, Dax Hill hasn't done a whole lot, yada, yada, yada. So that, yeah, hot streak is already cooling off. And the same set of considerations applies to the Lions. Because if you look at what the Lions are going to have to pay Jared Gough in 2026 and 2027, it's so tempting to say that the error is just going to keep going up because that's what Brad Holmes has done. But history will tell us that you

can't just do what John Schneider did from 2010 to 2012 over and over and over again. Eventually those cold spells are going to come and then it gets really, really difficult when you're paying your quarterback this amount of money and it coincides with one of those slides in your draft quality. I mean, John Snyder might go down. His first two classes are probably the best first two classes any GM has ever had in the history of the sport. And then I don't think he hit in a first round pick five years in a row after that. It was a tough stretch. Yeah, that's not a dig on Schneider. I think he's, I think he's phenomenal, clearly, but, but like, that just shows how hard that job is. Oh, the golf contract, this was the other kind of specific data point I wanted to ask you about.

So Burrow got the $55 million option bonus in year two. Golf got a $73 million signing bonus. He is $80 million in cash coming his way this year. Good for Jared Goff, by the way. Why do you think the Lions did that? Why do you think that was the structure that they went with for that deal specifically? Yeah, they deviated a bunch as well, you know, and they were smart to be early on all three guys. you know, in Amunrah and Sewell and Goff.

And that's kind of more I was speaking to with a burrow where like if they were going to guarantee less money hypothetically, what those teams do, you know, Packers, Steelers, and Bengals are the main ones. But you have to give a massive signing bonus because if you're not going to guarantee a bunch of money, the player is going to say, okay, well, if I have less protection later, then I need something now to feel as though I have assurance and honestly just a benefit because I'm conceding in that manner. So that's kind of a little bit of it.

The Lions still, you know, they still aren't trying to give a ton of cash out, even though they just gave these three ginormous contracts out. You know, they have some option bonus. The other two, though, were not that cash heavy early on. That was shocking to me is to see Goff make $80 million in cash. When I was looking at cash spending rankings, I assumed the Lions would be in the top five after handing out all three of those deals. But the signing bonuses for Aman Ra and Panezul specifically were not that big.

So they actually aren't throwing as much cash around as you might think, considering the set of extensions they signed this year. Exactly, exactly. And that goes to staggering a little bit, but I also do think, I mean, with Amaraut, it's also a little bit of backloading in the deal. But yeah, it goes to exactly we've kind of talked about where they made all of those decisions. And it's why they also, what, Amon-Ross St. Brown and Sewell was in like 48 hours. And then golf was like a week later. So, like, they knew where all those things stood. It was a reason that one of their main football admin guys just got poached to Washington.

They're phenomenal. I mean, their front office really is one of the better ones in the league. I felt the way for a couple of years. And I'm not just Brad Holmes, but Mike Disner, a bunch of guys over there are doing very, very good work. And it's evident in everything they've done the last couple years. So with some of these structures, we talked about the Lawrence one, where you can keep some of these cap hits relatively palatable over the first three, four, five years. It's really not that much of a barrier to building. The same thing goes with Jaywin Hertz.

We talked about the similarities between those two deals. With Lawrence, you got 75 million coming down. down the road as a cap hit, I think, in 2027 or 2028. With Hertz, it's 96 million in dead money after, when you think about all the voids and the proration when after the last year of his contract. So that's just going to be sitting there on the cap when he's not even there. So if you're these teams and you know that these absolutely nuclear financial bombs are waiting for you down the road, how are you conceiving of the year where that is going to take

place. So you probably again have two paths where either the player continues to play up to that level, and this would kind of be quarterback only consideration. And so you say, okay, we're going to extend him. So we're not going to have this massive, you know, that dead cap number is a bunch of years all accelerating up into that year. But if they extended hypothetically a Jalen Hertz or Trevor Lawrence, they could keep those paration amounts still spread out, you know, into those void years. The void years would become real years and they would find an extended contract. And it would would stay pushed out. So that's the option A, which obviously is the ideal path or, you know, option B,

and I'll speak to just Philly here in particular, this is what Philly does. They have made the determination in their building that we view the inflation of a cap dollar, essentially $1 on a $255 million cap, which is what it's going to be this upcoming season, is worth more than $1. Let's say hypothetically Jalen Hertz, what a $2029 you said? It'll be a $400 million cap, right? So, like, that's how they view it. They say, all right, we'll take that hit later because the dollars mean more to us now.

I mean, Jason Kelsey, Fletcher Cox, like Al-John Jeffrey and Malik Jackson, like, they've been taking 20 plus million dollar cap hits on retirees for a while now because they just said it meant more to us when they were playing than it means to us now. Yeah, so $96 million, even if that looks insane, if he's no longer on the roster and the cap is $400 million, you can survive paying your quarterback 25% of the cap. So even $96 million looks insane now, but five, six years from now, there's a chance that you can at least get through that season even if you have to eat it. Yeah, and you do the post-June one, so you'd split it out over two years. That's kind of the last piece there. But yeah, I mean, the crazy thing is that the Broncos are doing that now. That I don't advise. I can't recommend that approach now.

But yeah, you know, down the road. And look, they are going to get away with it. They kind of spent a little bit, but yeah, never ideal. But it's the cost of trying to win more now. If I was a fan of those teams, I would say, yeah, it's cool to analyze, cool to talk about, yes, it's kind of there's risks associated. If I was a fan, I'd rather see that than we're talking about, hey, my quarterback has a massive cap hit when he's 27.

I say, why are we not trying to push that out and, like, just maximize our window as much as possible right now? And you can do that, right? By restructuring it, you can theoretically do that, but some of these teams are doing it at the outset of the deal instead of doing it in real time. And I think that's been one of the biggest shifts that we've seen. The last thing I wanted to ask about some of the deals we've seen so far before getting to the ones that are going to be coming here over the next month. No trade clauses are just a thing now.

All of these deals, Jared Goff, Trevor Lawrence, this used to be when you had the most leverage possible, is that maybe you could negotiate a no trade clause. Dak did it. I think Kirk Cousins did it. You know, these guys that are negotiating these three-year deals and have really squeezed every ounce of leverage they can out of these negotiations. chance. That's not how I would consider the Trevor Lawrence deal. This is two years before he was going to hit free agency and he's getting one. So what do you make out of this just being a normal thing that's included with pretty much every single quarterback contract at this point? I'm kind of shocked by it, to be honest. I thought we were going to see a shift in those in contracts because of Deshaun Watson, where essentially the mechanism that truly made it to where Deshaun Watson could effectively be a free agent and then have teams bidding for his services on. on a quote unquote open market was because he had the leverage of saying, I can block a trade.

So if I don't want to go to your team, AKA if you don't offer him the extension I'm looking for, I won't make it happen. If the Cleveland Browns, I would imagine he told Cleveland, you know, not him directly, but hey,

I'll come there if you sign me to this extension for this, you know, fully guaranteed five-year deal, massive money. If you don't do that, I'm just going to, and you still submit the trade package that Houston says yes to. I'll just say,

nope, they're not on my list. No thank you. So when that happened, I really thought teams were going to go back to fighting really, really hard to not allow no trade clauses in contracts. I'm with you. I mean, good on the agents for just making it kind of like you said, basically just the accepted notion that every quarterback gets one because they do wield power at that position. Do you think it's because it's more a problem for teams trying to trade for them in that situation than it is for the team handing out the original contract? Do you think that's why the signing team maybe isn't quite as afraid of it.

That's a good point. Yeah, it's a good way to look at it. I do think there's some merit to that for sure. Yeah, I was just shocked at how consistent it's become because what Jared Gough specifically, it's like the Rams could get out of that and it wasn't really a big deal because they could trade them. The Eagles could get out of the Carson Wentz deal and it wasn't that big of a deal because they could trade them. But if that's no longer a consideration for some of these, then some of the flexibility and

some of the exit ramps from these quarterback contracts have just disappeared. It's interesting though, because like you said, it does put more of a burden on the acquiring team. However, I would then view at the next level and say, but if that's the case, then those teams are going to come to us and say, okay, because we have to give your guy more money, we're going to offer you less trade capital as a tradeoff, right? So, like, there's kind of multiple steps down as you walk through it. But no, I think you're on it, though. Yeah, I mean, I think you, we, let's go back nine months and think about where the Cowboys could have been if DAC didn't have a no trade clause in some of the avenues that might have been available. to them. But if you're one of those teams trading for him and you know that he has to sign off on anything and you have to give him $60 million a year, I'm not giving you two ones knowing that

I have to give him that sort of contract at the end of the road. And so it's just such an interesting, complicating factor. All right, let's get to the deals that have not been signed. Judy Batista and Tom Palcero this week talking about the Tua deal. I think both framed it as $55 million is now the floor for the contract that Tua is going to expect. I think Adam Schaefter today, mentioned that Jordan Love is going to want more than the contract that Trevor Lawrence got. So the Lawrence deal is going to be a barometer for the ones that are potentially coming here over the next month. What do you think the Lawrence deal means for both Tua and Jordan Love moving forward here? I think it does serve as a bit of a floor. I mean, those guys obviously were the year prior.

You know, Tua was the fifth overall pick. Lawrence was obviously first and Love was what, 26th after a trade-up. But it's not as simplified as the next guy always gets more. Like, it's not quite that to level, but what has Trevor Lawrence accomplished that those guys happen, right? I mean, I guess he did win a playoff game. Two hasn't won a playoff game, but he's made it a couple times. Love won his first playoff game in convincing fashion. You know, I mean, demolish a Dallas Cowboys defense that was terrorizing a lot of teams. So I just don't see why if for both, okay, so for Tua, of course the injuries and all that, they're going to push back on that, but he just finished a healthy season. And then for love, I always hear fans say, well, like,

he hasn't played that much. That's not his. problem. That's not his fault. He didn't ask to go to a team that had an entrenched starter that like that like so he would say, I promise his agent, I would say, okay, so we should have demanded a trade on draft night. Like what do you like, right? So that is the downside that comes to thinking that way. And for as everyone's going to give the Packers all this credit for having the foresight to go get a guy like Jordan Love. And yes, it gives you an answer at the most important position in sports for hopefully the next decade. It also gave you 17 games of a

sample size before you probably had to make a decision on this because you don't want him going into the last year of his deal without any sort of clarity on what his future contract is going to look like. And that's the tradeoff. These decisions don't happen in a vacuum. Like if in order to sit a guy for three years, this is what you now have to do. Now you have three months to make a decision financially that's going to shape the next decade of your franchise potentially. And they they accomplish it and it kind of wasn't a big storyline. But I mean, all deserves all the credit in the world for how they worked through the fifth year option for love, too. It was genius. It was absolutely genius. Yeah. And that's what they had zero evidence in front of

them, right? I mean, they truly, of course, you're in practice, but like how much can you really know? And they were able to split it out. And obviously, there were some benefits to love as well. I think he did end up earning a little bit of extra money and incentives. But it's the perfect win-win, right? It's a win-win because he gets more money in the meantime and we get more flexibility because we've split out the contract. And I think that's sort of being proactive, being thoughtful, being creative. Like, where really do we see those situations

where it's clearly a benefit for both the team and the player? And I think that was the perfect example. Perfect. And if he didn't do it, we're talking about a Daniel Jones where either you have to tag him, like we're going to write up for the season or give him. If he didn't, imagine they don't do that. He's making $60 million a year right now. Like, he's already there.

So you think it's pretty much, not as simple, but if you're looking at it, you're boiling it down. You think that both of those guys likely get a markup in terms of the broad stroke numbers on the deal that Lawrence got last week. Yeah, I bring it back full circle to the start of our conversation. They probably won't get the 24.5% of the cap in terms of, you know, their average annual value will not be that out of the total cap.

So it won't be quote unquote market resetting. There are some agents that'll tell you like that's what that means is to actually beat that number. But it'll be above 55 in my eyes. I don't really see how you could justify not, you know, not doing that. Again, I'm not saying they're better than Joe Burrow or whatever. Joe Burrow also missed the year with the torn ACL on his first couple of years of his rookie deal, right? Like, see, everyone talks about Tua's, you know, durability.

Joe Burroughs missed a lot of football games. I don't want this to become a conversation about the veracity of a contract for Tua $55 million a year or for Jordan Love. Like we've had those discussions in various forums on this show for a long time, and I don't want to put you in that spot. But there's a different set of considerations, right? I think the Jordan Love versus Tua thing is fascinating because the extended offensive success that the Dolphins have had with Tua would lead, I think, Tua's people to say,

I deserve this. Like if I can be the quarterback of the number one offense in the league or the number two offense in the league for two straight seasons, and this is what Trevor Lawrence has accomplished as a top five pick, I deserve to make more money than him. But if I'm Jordan loves people,

I'm taking it to a look at what my guy can do. Look at the skill set and what he provides the offense, a young offense. The dolphins are a finely tuned machine. The Packers were a bunch of 22-year-old kids, and I know that Matt Lafleur is very good at his job, but what each quarterback can do in lifting the pieces around him is a very different consideration in my eyes and whether or not I would be willing to give them this sort of deal. But with these guys, it's almost inconsequential to the conversations that are going to happen

with their respective franchises. And that to me is the great point that if I was in Green Bay, I have a little bit more comfort is that we look at all the names we talk about this entire episode and the guys they played with who, they traded for them or the team drafted them. Last year, Dantavian Wicks and, you know, the young tight ends, like Christian Watson missed a bunch of times. He had Romeo Dobbs and, and Jaden Reed, like all good players, sure.

But yeah, a young quarterback could play no football playing with a bunch of, like you said, 22-year-olds, fresh out of college, can barely drink a beer. as all of his past catching options and his tackles. His tackles are recent late round draft picks. Matt LaFleur obviously is a phenomenal coach. There were some tough times. No question about it early on in that season for Jordan Love. But yeah, that's what I would come back to and just be like

the ceiling frankly is even higher. Because what if he did, you know, if he had a Devante Adams, like how good could this kid have been? But yeah, it's never an easy decision when you give up that much money. But I would feel pretty good if I was in Green Bay. It's a fascinating summer for quarterback deals, quarterback extensions for the shape of the quarterback market. And I'm very glad we have people like you to help us understand it a little bit more.

Brad Spielberger, sincerely appreciate the time, sir. Congratulations on the new gig. Very happy that you can still carve out a couple moments for us here. Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me back. All right, guys, that's all we have for today. Thank you so much to Brad for his time. We will be back a little bit later this week with our next installment of our lingering

question series going division by division, trying to answer some of the stuff that we didn't feel was answered by the end of the 2023 season. We were doing the NFC West later this week. I mean, this is probably in the conversation to be the most interesting division in football. Like what's happening with Arizona right now, obviously with the Rams and the Niners being what they are every single year, all the changes in Seattle. Very, very excited to dig into that one.

That is what we have on tap on Friday. For now, that's all we got. Sincerely appreciate you listening. We'll talk to you guys soon. This was the Athletic Football Show. Thank you.