The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - The evolution of quarterback contracts

Episode Date: December 7, 2024

The quarterback position is the most important in all of sports, and it comes with the trappings that such a designation commands. Including, of course, money. All 32 teams in the NFL revolve around their quarterback in a way that is unique among professional sports. It's not just about how good of a quarterback he is. The amount and length of his contract is just as important. The way teams handle that can often help determine who is playing in the Super Bowl at the end of the season. And, like so many things in the league, that approach is ever-evolving. Brad Spielberger of Grand Central Sports Management joins Robert Mays to break down the evolution of quarterback contracts on this episode of The Money Down, a four-part miniseries on the business of the NFL presented by The Athletic Football Show.Host: Robert MaysWith: Brad SpielbergerExecutive Producer: Michael BellerProducer: Chris FlannerySubscribe to The Athletic Football Show...AppleSpotifyYouTubeFollow Robert on Bluesky: @robertmays.bsky.socialFollow Robert on X: @robertmaysFollow Brad on X: @SpielbergerBradTheme song: HauntedWritten by Dylan Slocum, Trevor Dietrich, Ruben Duarte, Kyle McAulay, and Meredith VanWoert / Performed by Spanish Love SongsCourtesy of Pure Noise / By arrangement with Bank Robber Music, LLC Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert Mays. This is the third installment of our four-part series The Money Down, examining the business of the NFL. I don't think you could do a mini-series about the business of the NFL without taking a closer look at the most important position in the league and by extension the most important contracts in the league. Quarterback contracts have exploded over the past decade. Joe Burroughs' 2023 extension paid him on average 24 and a half percent of the salary cap in place the season he signed the deal. In 2014, Aaron Rogers led the league at 17.8%. Since the implementation of the rookie salary scale with the 2010 collective bargaining agreement,

quarterback contracts and rookie contract windows have been a huge talking point with NFL team building. Maximizing the cheap years of your young, talented quarterback is now seen as vital to team success, knowing that a potential $60 million contract and a 600 to 1,000% raise is coming only a couple years down the line. Today we talked to Brad Spielberger, former cap analyst at Pro Football Focus, and current director of football administration, a grand central sports management, about the landscape of huge quarterback contracts. And in some ways, we tried to interrogate the binary that's created around them. Our massive quarterback deals really the roster building impediment that we make them out to be,

and our rookie contract window is really as valuable as we present them to be. Along the way, as part of that discussion, we examined how and when Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes might try to push the quarterback markets to new height at some point in the next couple years. We talked about how an emergence of middle class quarterback contracts like the Gino Smith and Baker Mayfield deals may actually provide teams a new path moving forward and how they approach the position, and whether teams have gotten creative enough in working around their quarterback mega deals, then an inability to do so has actually left you behind the times. Let's get to our conversation with Brad.

Joining us now, it is the director of football administration at Grand Central Sports management, formerly a member of the football media. So, you know, he's very comfortable in this space. It's our old buddy, Brad Spielberger. Brett, how you doing, man? I'm doing great. Yeah, I haven't heard the former member of the sports media landscape ecosystem, but I suppose that's true. I'm doing well. How you doing it? How do you feel about that? Is there a little bit, is there a tinge of sadness, or are you enjoying the green grass on the other side here? There's definitely positives and minuses. I do think it's fun to have a more holistic approach, watch every single game, breakdown tape every single Monday morning. I probably

still watch too many games. I'm not grinding in the ALS 22 for 32 teams. I thought I ever was. But yeah, and the last piece, watching way more college football than I ever did, which is fun. But I think I'm an NFL guy at the end of the day. Obviously, no matter what you're doing, you have a very good handle on the landscape of NFL contracts and just where things are right now and the contours of everything. And that's why we wanted to have you back on to just do a little bit of a refresh on some other quarterback discussions that we've had over the last couple years. You know, as part of this series, I didn't think it would be reasonable to talk about the business of the NFL without talking about quarterback contracts and their place in how NFL teams think and just the landscape of what the

contracts at that position look like now compared to what they've looked like maybe over the last five or 10 years. So I want to start somewhere that's probably driven by recency bias just because I just watched both of these guys play yesterday. But as we think about the NFL quarterback contract landscape, I want to start at the top of the market and the timing of Mahomes and Allen playing against each other and putting another great game onto the field. Dax signs a $60 million a year contract before the season starts with just over $230

of his $240 million practically guaranteed. It's a very, very good quarterback contract. And we saw guys get paid earlier this offseason. Trevor Lawrence is the world. Jordan Love to, you know, guys who are in probably the second or third tier of players at the position. It has been a while, or at least a couple of years. years since the best quarterbacks in the league have gotten paid.

And I'm thinking about Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes specifically. And Josh Allen's deal, both Mahomes signed in 2020, Josh Allen signed in 2021. So it's been at least three years since those contracts were signed. And the market has changed a lot over those three years. You know, you have these guys that are vastly underpaid compared to their peers. 24% of the cap is what Josh Allen made when he signed his deal in 2021. 24% of the cap in 2025 will be about $65 million. a year. And that makes sense when you consider where DAC is right now.

So I'm curious, do you think at any point in the next year or so, we see Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes push for an increase based on the way we've seen the market go over the last couple seasons? I'd be fairly surprised if you don't, frankly, with both players. I think there was a lot more fanfare and discussion of when Mahomes had cash moved forward in 2023. I think it was September of 2023. Allen have $30 million moved forward into this year as well. I thought there was way less coverage about it.

But what that does now is he's owed like $14.5 million in cash for 2025, which he's obviously not going to play for nor should he. Or if he does, you know, all the agents like myself won't be too pleased about that. But yeah, so when you do those Band-Aid moves, what I think it does is buy you time. The bills were obviously in a bit of a, I'm not going to call it a rebuild, but a retooling, get younger, get cheaper. move things around and try to have a new, kind of the next phase of the Josh Allen era. And all he's done is being MVP candidate

with all these new weapons. Boy, it's like the stab at Khalil Shakir, was the only guy he'd ever throw an NFL pass two. That guy hasn't dropped a pass the entire season. You know, Alan, obviously kind of the game-winning run on fourth and two in that game you're talking about. So I'd be shocked if he does not sign a new contract. And then Mahomes as well, you know,

their group tried to argue he's making the most cash now between 2023 and 226. He got like 100,000 more than Lamar Jackson, I think it was at the time. But at the end of the day, he still is grossly underpaid. So yes, I think both guys, probably this offseason, if I had to guess, maybe one more for Mahomes, probably sign new contracts. And yeah, I think it will be in that mid-60s million per year range. That was what I was going to ask you.

How much of a markup do you think we can reasonably expect from the DAC Prescott contract? Because obviously, Dax walking into those negotiations with an obnoxious amount of leverage. which we've talked about a lot, we know that. But I'd still think that Josh Allen's probably doing okay for himself. And if I'm Josh Allen's people at CAA and I look at $60 million a year for Dac Prescott, who has not done nearly what Josh Allen has done in both the regular season and the playoffs recently, even if Dack is a good quarterback, I think 65 would be like, that seems like on the low end of what you could potentially argue for.

If they really wanted to like throw their weight around here, I feel like you could push that number up even a little. bit more if you wanted to. So you know, it's a fascinating element that you mentioned before with the APY or average per year as a percent of the salary cap. And you touched on Josh Allen being at 24 percent in 2021. So when those were happening, the 2021 cap obviously went down because of COVID. And I had been putting, I was putting asterisks on all those deals. Because I do track that's that. A lot of us do. But I was thinking maybe this isn't a real number. And the fascinating thing that happened was agents were still able to anchor, at least from the outside looking in, to those numbers.

Another example is Nick Bosa is right near T.J. Watt, if you look at APY as a percent of the cap, but again, Watt signed during that COVID year. So the fascinating thing with Mahomes and Allen is, first they push contracts way longer. Obviously, Mahomes was 10 years. Al was only 6, but the standard before them was 4. So going to 10, crazy. staying at six was clearly the bills anchoring to Patrick Mahomes, but then nobody else dealt with that. And in reality, it then went to five. There were a bunch of five-year deals.

And this past off season with Gough, Tua, Jordan Love, they went back down to four, back to where it was prior. I think it's in part to do with which agencies they work with. But all that to say, with both the longer-length contracts and with the COVID year, agents were able to say, I still want those same conditions in terms of like how much cash much money I'm getting, but I want it back to a four-year deal and I want it under the normal salary cap. So I think it's fair, you know, the point you make like, yeah, 65 to the guy, this is where it starts. But Josh Allen has done more, accomplished more than a deck

Prescott, arguably has more leverage. You know, you can make the case. Yeah, it could be, you could be trying to be the first $70 million a year quarterback in theory, whether or not that happens is a different conversation. This is just a logistical question, but as somebody who's doing this all the time, I'm curious. Let's say Josh Allen signs a new. four-year contract right now. Obviously, the benefits of signing a six-year deal is that it gives you a longer leash as a team. You can move some of that money around. You have certainty for longer. What sort of complications are we looking at for how the bills can build around that contract when you add a four-year deal onto the six-year one that already exists?

Yeah. So it's good you bring it up because we'll probably get into that a little bit later when you're trying to differentiate between these deals is there's this new, you know, on over-the-cap with Jason Fitzgerald, who I'm sure I've referenced every time I've been on the pod. But we, we we finally realized we needed to look at new guarantees, but whether it's new full guarantees and new total guarantees, and Stefan Diggs was kind of the impetus, frankly, because he kept studying extensions with a bunch of years left, and it would stack up super, super well,

but it would, he'd say, yeah, but a lot of the money was already kind of owed to him. He probably was going to make it. So it's so facto, long story short, like, I think the only really complication it adds from the team perspective is,

you know, the players probably not falling for, you know, deals anymore or you know some of these rolling guarantee structures which is where money kind of kicks in guarantees kick in down the road um we've now seen a bunch of players realize like i want the money kicking in earlier and earlier so holmes was getting it two years out allan had a couple where he earned it two years out but seems to push back on that and some of it like toa for example why his deal is a little bit weaker in my opinion some of those guarantees vest into that same year

um think of that nature so so it's more of a structural i think challenge for for the bills or any team you want to put in this hypothetical. But realistically, I mean, it's going to be a beneficial team side contract because there's always going to be at least five, if not more years. And they can forecast forward. They can move the money around like they've already done. The bills might be, you know, number one, the league in the last five years in getting players to move cash around, take pay cuts.

Like they do it four or five, six guys in off season, which I think speaks to the buy-in that they have in that bill. we'll talk about that a little bit later because I do think how teams are maneuvering around some of these deals and the impediments that they actually are to team building is something that we probably don't talk enough about like the actual practical limitations that these sorts of deals put on you as an organization. But I wanted to bring this back to what happened over this off season and early into the season because the last time we and you and I talked about this, there was a lot of projection going on. Trevor Lawrence had just signed his deal where it was about to, but we still didn't know what was going to happen with Jordan Love. We still didn't know what was going to happen with Tua. And we now have our answer. And that's that both of those guys got deals near the top of the market when you look at APY specifically.

Right. So Tua's fifth in AAV, even if the cap percentage is actually outside of the top 10. And this is not a Tua question. This is more of just a big picture thought. And now that you're on the player side of this, I'm curious what you're thinking is here. But do you think we're going to see a situation at some point over the next couple years where we have a quarterback that's, let's say my consent is probably outside of the top 10. You know, is not an elite quarterback, but is going to ask for elite quarterback money because

that's typically how this works. Are you surprised that more teams are not willing to exert all of the leverage and all of the levers that they have in negotiations and acquiesce to the player side of it as often as they seem to with these quarterback contracts? Yeah, it's funny. I promise this answer was not born of my new role compared to the previous one. I think when I was more on the research and data side of football and looking from a 30,000 foot view, I would pound the table for like, why are more teams not taking this risk? Why are they always paying a guy who is above average or good, but clearly not great and you don't get an actual, you know, kind of bang for your buck?

Like the market is not gradual. You're still going to pay essentially more of these probably worth. You're going to get no surplus value, even if in theory you don't, you know, you don't max it out, right? But I think the more you step back and take a look at it, it's just the reality of the different kind of influences at play. And then also, like, look at some of the examples, like a Jared Goff was kind of a perfect example. And look, do they have maybe the best offensive line in football? Probably. Does he have maybe a top two, top one play caller?

Does he have good weapons? Yada, yada, yes. But I think that the short answer is at the end of the day, even just being a clear starter, a clear top 15, top 20 quarterback. Throw in a Baker Mayfield, where you make the argument, if the conditions are good enough, the receivers will be happy, the line will be happy,

the coach will feel better, the city will, even if they don't think they're a contender, but they're a playoff fringe team. And then you start bringing kind of just the politics of like just earning money and like, it's larger than wins and losses. But I just think that we've had enough examples

in recent years now where like coaching matters so much and other factors at play that can elevate these guys you know, I just, I find it harder to blame the player or to say like the player is the reason they feel. There are of course examples. But I get why, I guess I'm saying, why some coaches like you fall in love with the early draft pick that hasn't worked out like a Sam Darnold. And you're like, every team is like, oh, I can fix that guy. We always make that joke on the media side.

Drop him in a Kevin O'Connell offense. He hasn't been perfect, but he's clearly a starting caliber quarterback. So maybe it's a reason to bias with that answer. But there seemed to be a lot of those in the last, you know, three, four years. If we're trying to create pie chart about why this happens, about why teams aren't willing to go the distance, about why they're not going to use multiple franchise tags on a guy, etc. How much of it is you think fear of the unknown and how much of it is relationship-centric where, you know what, we really don't need to piss people off. We really don't need to create this kind of bitterness around these discussions. We like the guy enough.

It's worth just keeping the vibes good around here. much as anything else. If you're trying to divvy that up, which would you say actually has more weight? It's a great question. I mean, I do think the vibe component and just the elevated floor that makes everyone feel a little bit safer and more comfortable, again, even if you don't, even, even if the owner himself doesn't really believe you're truly a Super Bowl contender, but he goes, look, we're going to be at least a 500 football team. It won't be a total cluster and we'll be able to be, you know, respectable. I think that does matter a lot for sure.

I mean, the relationship is interesting. Like, Kirk Cousins seems like one of the most light guys, you know, by coaches and obviously these guys quarks. He's an interesting fellow. But, like, Washington went that route. That's kind of the last team to do it. And then you get to free agency and he has multiple teams offering him fully guaranteed contracts.

And again, was Minnesota ever a contender with Kirk? Probably not. But they were a fringe playoff team every single year he was there. And he signed another great contract. the next team that did it. So I would say it's more about just maintaining that high floor that I think some owners realize like, yeah, we want the mutant Mahomes, the Josh Allen to kind of shoot the moon, but like the safer play is just very welcoming and inviting even if it doesn't actually offer as much upside potential as the alternative. You point out something very important here.

And I think something that's notable with these specific examples, what is the market going to look like if we do play hardball with you? If we take this all the way to the end, is there somebody who's going to be willing to pay you more than the hard line that we're drawing here? And I think for a guy like Kirk Cousins, the answer was probably yes. When he was hitting free agency, I remember talking to Rick Spilman in the moment when they signed Kirk to that deal and just the thought of how much he raised the floor and the ceiling for what that organization can be. They were coming off that 2017 year where they had Case Keenum. They were coming out of the Teddy Bridgewater period. And they had that money earmarked for a Teddy Bridgewater extension.

So they weren't necessarily stepping that far outside of themselves. and in their minds, Kirk was the type of quarterback that just does not hit free agency. The situation in Washington was so specific that it gave them an avenue to a guy they wouldn't typically be able to get. I don't think you're going to be able to say the same thing about Daniel Jones. If he were eventually to have gotten to the market, was he going to have any sort of offer that was in the same ballpark as the $40 million a year extension that the giants were offering him?

And I think that's where you can make a little bit of a misstep here. Are you negotiating against yourselves? or is there actually a robust interest in this guy on the open market because quarterbacks are scarce? And where you land on that question, which side of the line, I think is probably what should dictate the level of aggressiveness you have and how you sign that deal and how you approach it. No, I think it's a great point.

And I think you even see evidence in the Jones deal. And again, we're saying this now, obviously it did not work out. You just got benched this morning. We all see that. But that deal was a mid-market deal. Like getting a top sticks pick franchise quarterback. And look, he's obviously been. been really struggling this year.

His offensive line before that extension was probably the worst in the NFL. He had eight slot receivers. I don't think he'd get a receiver over five foot eight on the roster. Like, he wasn't working on the greatest. Isaiah Hodgson's erasure. Yes, you're right. My apologies. My apologies.

And so, and then at the end of the day, he basically signed a two-year deal, right? He's not playing in the third year. That's why they benched him to save some money on guarantees like we saw with Derek Carr and Russell Wilson. So what I'm trying to say is, I think you actually saw in that extension, even And they're perceived, and by them, the agent side, not the team side, their perceived lack of strength in a market where he was not going to get at Kirk Cousins, you know, three year fully guaranteed near the top, but not quite top. Like that was not where he was going to go.

And maybe that should have been a red flag, you know, to the giants, you know, internally. But, you know, at the same time, that middle market is so hard to get into. And we now have seen some positive, you know, examples with the Gino, with a baker, where I mean, call or less so, but they were decent last year. Yeah, I'll tell you, there are teams I've talked to high-ranking execs at teams that are kind of obsessed with the idea of getting one of those middle market guys, like probably San Donald's example this year. They're obsessed with getting there and saying like they don't have enough leverage to push for top-top, but they're pretty darn good and we can get them for that next rung. I think there's a bit of an obsession there across the league, at least some people I've spoken with. I love this so much.

This is the last thing that we're going to hit, so I'm going to save that conversation. because I think that it's been one of the stories of the season so far this year on a couple different levels. So I am excited to get to that. We're going to continue this conversation with Brad, but before we do, let's take a quick break. I want to talk a little bit more about these big, big quarterback contracts that get signed and maybe why teams aren't as afraid to sign them as we might think from the outside.

And part of the reason I think that we don't see teams willing to kind of draw that hard line and say, I'm fine walking away from the table here, is that sometimes I think we can overrate the downside of signing one of these contracts. And I'm curious what you think about this. Because I look at some of the more notable, notorious ones from the last five years that in hindsight look like mistakes. Think about the Carson Wentsteel. Even the Jared Gough contract that the Rams signed.

Obviously, they wanted to get out from under that. You look at the Deshawn Watson contract, the Russell Wilson contract. How many of these were actually the sort of disaster that they were made out to be in terms of what they did to the teams that signed them? Just a couple examples here, right? So the Eagles eat Carson Wentz's deal in 2021. It's, I think, $33 million in dead money, which is like 16% of the salary cap at that point. It's a huge number.

The next season, the Eagles played in the Super Bowl. In 2021, the Rams ate 14% of the cap with Jared Gough's dead money. They won the Super Bowl that season. The Deshawn Watson contract is one of the worst deals and one of the worst moves we've seen in NFL history. What does the Deshawn Watson contract actually prevent? vented the Browns from doing in terms of how they spend money. They're in on everybody. Every free agent, every trade, the Browns are involved in those discussions.

The Broncos are eating $53 million of dead money in Russ's deal this year. They are cruising to the playoffs. I know that that's not a good thing, and I know that it makes things slightly harder. Have we overstated how much of a team building impediment missing out on one of these contracts really is? So I would say there's two things here, two elements that I think are funny, and that we need to fold into the analysis. So the first thing you mentioned were Wentz and golf. If you're a team doing it, you probably should tell yourself, okay, if it doesn't work out, we probably could still convince some dumb team to give us a first round pick for this guy, right?

That is a good point. You know, the golf field is kind of complicated, but you get Matthew Stafford, you win a Super Bowl after moving on. Wentz, you obviously get a first round pick from the Colts or Commanders, whichever one was first. I already Oh, it was the cults. It was very much the cults. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, and so that is part of the kind of overall analysis and value. The second piece, though, you mentioned that is where it also just matters which owner we're talking about. Like, we just mentioned three of the richest owners, maybe the three richest owners in the sport in Jeffrey Lurie, Stan Cronkey, and then you mentioned Denver with the Penner's now. So, like, they obviously also can maneuver around it in the Browns and Haslam, where I think that is another thing that's kind of happening. with some of those, I'm not going to say there was collusion. Maybe I should on the agent's side,

but you're now seeing that the more cash-rich owners, they're not pretending they had constraints anymore. I'm not going to call the salary cap fake. I said it wasn't for a long time, and it isn't, but you can manipulate it to such an extreme degree where, look, the Saints now, obviously, it's a cluster. They're going to miss the playoffs for four years in a row. They're not going to make the playoffs next year either. Someone will clip that if they do. But at the end of the day, if you hit on draft capital, if you get lucky in some other areas, you can kind of get around it.

And look at the ramp. They just continue to supplement this roster with late draft capital, young picks, and they're able to kind of get around it. What it really does, though, is your margin for error becomes much slimmer. The last thing I would say is, I think team like the Eagles,

I don't know this for a fact, but I think they might even think of, okay, if this goes disastrously with the Wents thing, would we prefer a disaster to a middle tier, and look what happened with them getting Devante Smith, who now is a cornerstone of their franchise. They obviously, you know,

they threw a game against the commanders to get that 10th pick. They trade down, could have Michael Parsons. They take Devonte Smith instead. But a long story short, I think some smart teams might think disaster is better than middle of the road. So let's just operate on the extremes at all time.

Let's always be either great or terrible, never want to be in the purgatory. That comes from having bulletproof job security if you're the general manager and I'm an NFL team, which is very helpful on the Eagle side of this. The team that immediately comes to mind

for me when I'm thinking about this is are the Browns in that same situation? Are the Browns fine with this season completely going off the rails? Because obviously Andrew Barry comes from Philadelphia. They're a team that thinks about assets and about resources in very different ways than some other NFL teams do.

Are they in a similar spot? Because I do think there's a lot of validity to what you're saying and the benefits that come along with. that. You'd rather have that dip where you get the top six-ish pick in a shitty year and then be able to come roaring back than be that team that's nine and eight, eight and nine every single year over and over and over again. Yeah, the Browns are interesting one. I mean, obviously it went as absolutely poorly as it possibly could have A. And like you said, I mean, they've led the NFL

on cash spending three years in a row. I think this year they're like second or third. But if you look at the aggregate, they print the most cash for the last three years by a fairly decent margin or two that the Rands have pulled back. Eagles kind of retool a little bit too. So and then obviously he was probably the worst quarterback of the last 20 years. So like it was so, so bad. It was almost unforeseeably bad. And you have, you know, Marri Cooper probably kind of forced his way out.

But like you said, you still trade for a Jerry Judy. Over the last three weeks has like 400 yards and a couple touched out. Like long story short, like you said, it doesn't hamstring you as much as you might think. And if you bottom out, maybe you can get back fairly quickly.

They'd probably love a stronger draft class of quarterback this year. But they are interesting because both those guys got extended. And if I'm the owner in Cleveland, like, I would be looking at, okay, a Cedric, like, young guy's getting better because it proves at least they can scout and they can coach on a granular individual level. And you have seen, you know, Martin Emerson's awesome. Cedric Tillman, I mentioned that Dwan Jones has been good, you know, yada, yada, yada. Well, you need to see a lot of that to get over how ugly, you know, everything else is. And I think that's a very good point. That's a very good distinction between what's happening with Watson and what was happening with teams like the Eagles and teams like, and the Rams are a different example because they had traded away.

so many of their first-round draft picks. But when you don't have picks in addition to the contract that you signed, that's going to potentially be the problem for the Browns, is that they have fewer rookie contracts on their books than any team in the NFL. So if you're not offsetting that massive price tag for the quarterback who's probably not even being playing for you, that even increases the degree of difficulty a little bit more than some of these other teams that have had to work around these contracts. I want to extend this conversation to the huge quarterback contracts that do work out.

Because I think that so often, and I'm guilty of this, we kind of have like a B-C-A-D kind of moment with NFL teams. You're either before quarterback extension or you're after quarterback extension. And if you sign one of these big ones, what it does to your team building capabilities, your window, all of those things, you know, we really weight that pretty heavily. So I'm curious, in your opinion, how much is a contract like the Josh Allen one, like the Mahomes one, like the J-O-N-Herts extension that was signed? How much are these things actually hamstringing the teams that are trying to build a roster around them? Yeah, I think it more, it forces you to then approach other things differently.

And if you don't, then you can get into deeper trouble. I always, when I was after the Saints, because every offseason, obviously in my role as like a quote-unquote cap guy. Like, are they in cap hell? Are they in trouble? Yada yada. I always railed against their draft approach more than I did their salary cap approach. Where they're trading up every single year. they're drafting four guys.

And the 2017 draft turned out to be the biggest blessing and the biggest curse of all time. Because it's pound for pound, maybe the best draft class of all time. If you know what I'm talking about, it was Marshawn Latimore, Ryan Ramchick, you know,

go look at Marcus Williams. Every, every player is good. Like the entire, Trey Hendrickson, every player is good. Then go look at their draft picks from, I think it's like 2019 to last year.

And there's like two, there's like two good players on a list. And so you have no good cheap players. With no picks. You're trading where a few. future first for Marcus Davenport, you're compounding the problem. Correct, right. And you obviously, the Chris Oliva, he is a good player, but you end up spending like four

top 50 picks for him and Trevor Penning. Penning's like starting now, but was he worth, no. So that's what made it so much more challenging where, you know, the meme with FM picks is so funny because less need, I haven't looked at it since this past year. I'm in my new role, but the Rams had like the second or third most draft picks in the NFL from 2017 to 2023. Like they, it was, they didn't have firsts, but they were, they were getting 12 guys a year. The Eagles do the exact same thing.

You know, a lot of these teams were talking about. So what it forces you to do is get creative in other ways. You know, the Chiefs don't necessarily trade down a bunch and do stuff like that, but they're never having these tiny classes. And the last thing is what I think all those teams are good at. And again, it does go to stability of coach and GM. But is getting the most of each player and finding roles for guys that may be. have a very unique specific role to where you can stay cheap and not go out and try to add, you know, all these free agents or make these big trades because you have, you know,

really good, I mean, look at LaGerry Steen as an example, like in Kansas City. They don't chase those players. They clearly know we can spend day three capital on, on safeties, corners, offball linebackers, et cetera, and we're probably not going to extend any of them. And we're going to keep going back to that well. And it's confirmation bias, easier said than dumb. But I do think it's long answer short, a holistic approach to if we're going to be in that, you know, that AD bucket after diabolically large extension, we need to change everything else we do in concert with that. And all those teams you mentioned have.

And I think that's part of this. And when I look at the bills specifically and I think about how the bills kind of had to tighten the belt a little bit this year financially. the bigger issue with the bills this year and having to do that, I think, was probably the Von Miller contract and the Steph Diggs move than it was the Josh Allen thing. Because the bills after signing Josh Allen's extension in 2021 before this season were top six in cash spending every single year. And part of that is because they had to convert Josh Allen's salary, but they were always willing to spend more money and pour back into the roster.

The Josh Allen contract was never preventing the bills actionably from adding talent to the team that they wanted to be. The Chiefs are a little bit different because they don't throw cash around like that in the same way that the bills do. But there were years where the Chiefs wanted to be a little bit more aggressive and they were willing to convert that Patrick Mahomes money and just say, eh, we'll do it every other year. We got the money in the couch cushions to do that.

It helps when you're winning Super Bowls. The Eagles, they are in on everyone at all times. Nothing about the J-1-Herts deal has prevented the Eagles from adding talent. It's a cash thing, but it's also the way they structure that contract. So I'm curious, these teams that have signed these big deals, do you think that there are actually fewer teams that aren't willing to pull these levers and aren't willing to be creative with some of the money than there are teams that are willing to do that right now? Like, what do you think that those two pools of teams actually look like? It's funny. I think what it really boils down to is for each of the 32 owners, there's probably a sliding scale of how good do I think my quarterback is.

and then where they fall on that spectrum is how aggressive they're willing to be, right? Where it's like, if I have them a home door, Josh Allen, even, I mean, I know we're going to go to Mike Brown, the Bengals, and you don't pay Trey Hendon's, you don't pay T. Higgins. Like, he may be the exception, but I think almost every other owner would say,

if I had a Josh Burrow, or Joe Burrow, like, I'm going balls to the wall. I'm trying to build this thing. I'll pay Jamar Chase a year early to get that out of the way. I'll do all those things. I really think the list of teams that wouldn't do that is pretty small. You and I are obviously Chicago guys and they get picked on sometimes

for not spending cash. When they had, you know, 2018 happens. They were, I think, second or third in cash spending in 2019. They said, and respectfully, they didn't even have a good quarterback. They thought they did. But, but, you know, so it's like I think that's really where it comes down to is some of these owners say, I

know it's pretty much quarterback or bust in this league, especially now. But if I have that guy, I'll change my entire tune. And then, but in the interim, the Eagles of the the world will say, I'm going to continue also in the years when I don't have that guy, I'm going to try to still be good. Whereas the other is like, I don't care.

I'm making money. I'm printing cash. Until the next quarterback comes along, I'll just, we'll go six and ten and the fans will show up. And I wanted to bring up the Bengals as part of this discussion because they do feel like the exception right now. I mean, you have a guy where most teams that they had Joe Burrow, they'd be zeroing out Joe Burrow every single year and just pouring the money back into the team in the first couple years of that extension.

We know the Bengals aren't going to do that. And I don't want to frame this as some, oh, the Bengals are so cheap discussions. Things have changed for Cincinnati over the last few years. They've been more aggressive in free agency. They obviously have taken a slightly different approach because they have a Joe Burrow. But we know they're not willing to do some of these things. And I think the thing that's worth pointing out here is it just makes the margin for error so much smaller. You can make mistakes.

You can have the Bryce Huff contract on your books with him being a rotational piece if you're the Eagles. And it doesn't matter because of all the things you're willing to paper over because of the cash that you spend. But if you're the Bengals and you've got a few straight draft classes where you take Miles Murphy with the first round pick, you take Dax Hill, you have all these guys in the first three rounds that don't end up becoming contributors for you, it matters so much more because you're not willing to do the things financially that teams like the Eagles, teams like the Browns, teams like the bills have consistently been willing to do, the teams you're competing against. over the last few years. And here's the last piece, is that if you're not going to operate in that early extension window, one other thing that helps the Eagles

stomach of Bryce Huff is they've extended every guy so, so early, even in Devante Smith, in the same off season, paying him 25 million year over a three-year deal, and then now we have receivers

making 10 million more per year than that six months later. But they do it for everybody, right? Every single player on their roster, even Leonard Dickerson at Guard, signs the contract like hours before free agency. And I remember being like, oh, it's a strong deal. And I was like, oh, no, it isn't.

Like, here really is it. Yeah. They're going to save about a money. Right. And they do that with literally every guy on the roster. The bills are great at it. A lot of teams are good at it. The Bengals now going back to them.

Ray Hendrickson is not playing for the money he's owed in 2025. And Jamar Chase now is going to ask for more money than Justin Jefferson by a comfortable margin. And he's going to get it or he should get it because he's earned it and deserves it. Where I think you probably could have anchored him fairly close to what Jefferson got last off season. And I don't want to have, you know, like I don't want to say I always felt that way. I don't know the full extent of the conversation there. I did hear some things about that negotiation that led me to believe,

all right, maybe Sinci, like, maybe I get it from their perspective a little bit. But long answer short, overall, you probably want to be early. Because now if you don't, they definitely can't pay both of those guys. And that might be, they're not going to. But those are the offensive player of the year and defensive player of the year candidates on your roster that are not both going into, you know, contract years effectively. and you kind of, you shorten your window again. This isn't meant to dump on the Bengals. I'm using the Bengals more as an example of the fact that they are an outlier in this discussion.

And most teams, even with that monster quarterback contract, are able to survive it and able to build around it. Because when you have that guy and you know that guy is good, you don't mind restructuring. You don't mind pushing that money forward. It becomes less of an issue. So I do think that, like you said, I think a good portion of the league is set up to endure these sorts of contracts. and to build around them in ways that aren't that big of a barrier. If that's the case, do you think we are overrating how important it is to get on a rookie quarterback timeline if most teams aren't actually going to have that big of an issue building

around some of these larger quarterback contracts? Probably because I think to an extent, I think it goes back to again our conversation of like shooting the moon versus kind of falling more in the middle where there are some teams that maybe need that benefit. Like the Bengals probably only make Super Bowls with an elite rookie contract quarterback, which they did, obviously, with Joe Burrow. And Dandy Dalton. He wasn't elite,

but he was very cheap when they were able to build the rest of that team around him early in the new CBA. Right. And they made the playoffs like every year. They obviously didn't win a lot of playoff games, but they seemingly made it every season. So I think it goes more to that, whereas you're right. Yeah, like the end of the day,

I mean, look at the Lions again. Like, they said, okay, we know Jared Gough of his top 15 and so we're still going to bring him in. He was obviously cheaper in the earlier parts of that contract for them in Detroit. What he did is, okay, now we can get a true scouting look. How good is this Amunrasse

Brown kid? How good is this Sam LaPorte kid? Like, you know, can our in an offensive line hold up from interior pressure because golf struggles against, you know, like it enables you to kind of get a better understanding of the rest of your offensive roster and defense as well. Like they're not in horrible, you know, field position all game.

They're not playing 40 minutes a game. I think what you learned the last couple years now, especially with the fact that teams feel forced to start these rookie guys right away, which I'm not getting into that larger conversation. I'm sure you've had it with better guests than myself for that topic. But it's like you look at Anthony Richardson and everyone's saying like, how can they bench him? Joe Flacko was a thousand years old.

I get all that. You have a rookie contract. You have three rookie contract receivers in Alec Pierce, Josh Downs, and A. D. Mitchell that you need to figure out what they are. And you, we're not arraignment the left tackle. And you need to figure out what he is. And you have a quarterback that, again, I'm not being anti-Anthian Richardson, but, you know, he's just, he's so inexperienced. He does need the reps.

But we do forget the rest of the roster. And, like, it just, the teams don't forget it. And the players certainly don't forget it. I mean, we sometimes on the outside forget it a little bit. We're going to keep things rolling here with Brad. But before we do, let's take one more quick break. As we think about that contrast between either giving an extension to a quarterback and having it be an expensive extension or you're on the rookie. quarterback timeline. I think, and I've been guilty of this, we've framed it as those are your two

options. You can go Route A or you can go Route B. And I think that we're seeing a little bit of a shift there. First, I think it's worth acknowledging just how the quarterback market has shifted over the course of the CBA. I was looking at some of the numbers historically today, and I was surprised by a couple of the moments in the inflection points that I probably forgot over the last few years. in 2017 or so, which is about halfway between when the rookie salary scale was introduced and where we are right now, the top quarterbacks were making like 16, 17% of the cap, talking about Aaron Rogers, Matt Ryan, et cetera, guys at that level. That number jumps in 2020.

That's the moment where we have this huge jump, and that's the Mahomes deal. And he gets over 20% of the cap for the first time, and I think it was almost 23%. So that is a seismic change. And now that's the number we're negotiating. off of. Most of the top quarterbacks in the league, Joe Burrow, Josh Allen, on their extensions, are in that like 22 to 24% range. So even that world is still fairly new. We have not been living there for that long, but that's where we are now. There's also a group right below that now that is making like 16 or 17%. That used to be reserved for the elite elite guys. Now I'm calling this

tier sticker price mid 30 quarterbacks who can get us over the hump of things break right. I know that's not a catchy title, but I think that's the right way to think about this. So the guys in there are like Kirk Cousins, Derek Carr, Matthew Stafford, to an extent. And those contracts have sort of existed over the last decade. Alex Smith was in that range when he was with the Washington, Carson Palmer, when he got to Arizona. That tier has kind of crystallized. But I actually think that there is another tier I'm more interested in. And you alluded to this a little bit earlier.

Have we actually found, for the first time in a long time, a middle of the middle class with quarterback contracts. You look at the deals that Baker signed, that Gino signed. We're talking like 11 to 13% of the salary cap. Those deals existed 10 or so years ago. Colin Kaepernick was on one of those deals. Andy Dalton was on one of those deals. Ryan Tannahill, it's a little bit of a markup, but that's what we're talking about here.

Do you think that we've had a return to those middle class quarterback contracts and what do you think that actually means for how organizations, are going to build that room and think about the resources devoted to it. I think so. And I think the fascinating thing is the team's trying to be basically the team that helps the guy earn that contract, but not the team that ultimately signs it. And there's different buckets, right? Like, you know, I mean, Baker obviously was both, right?

The bucks were both the team where he earned it and also now he's a team. And honestly, I know they've lost last couple weeks, but all his weapons are hurt, even now Worf's hurt. And he's played a good ball. Like, I think he's clearly construction there was correct. There's nothing wrong with how they tried to build this thing. They got unlucky. Exactly.

Exactly. So, you know, and Gino, a great deal as well. And I think what happens is kind of go back to politics and all of that. Like, I had Gino's contract projected well higher than what he ultimately got. Like, I was pretty comfortably off in those projections I used to do because I was just thinking, again, he's clearly a top 15, top 20 quarterback. But I think teams are able to say, look, you're, you know, no, you don't have that luster that recently drafted shine on you anymore. Sure. You've been on a couple teams, you've been a backup, you've accepted being a backup.

And so it's still going to be a bridge deal. And again, the results haven't been great there, but his offensive line play has been, frankly, disastrous for most of the time he's been there. I would argue my projection was closer. He was actually worth what he signed for. But I think we are back there. And Donald's going to be a good barometer to me where I think you are going to have teams say, okay, look, he's played great, but he had Kevin O'Connell. He had two awesome tackles in Brian O'Neill and Christian Derasaw. He had the best writer's trooper on the planet and Justin Jefferson.

Now, Hawkinson, there will be more realistic with themselves where they don't look at it and say, that guy's fixed now, he's great. You drop him into our situation and he's going to continue to be awesome. They say, no, he's now a clearly starting caliber player. He's a floor raiser. He helps us do a lot of different things, but we're not going to go crazy and offer, you know, Sam Donald, a four-year fully guaranteed contract and kind of like, even though he's a former top three pick and scouts, all seem to love him coming out of college.

So yes, I think we have had that tier develop. It only takes one team to errone it. But yes, and I think it's a great, great thing for the league. I really, really do. Yeah, I think you know, maybe even talked about a little bit, but because, again, of the rookies getting thrown

in the fire immediately, a lot of those guys didn't get chances to start, or the bridge went from being a season to four games. And like Dalton's, you mentioned, those type of guys, a flacco, for example, like they were,

I'm trying to think of the good examples but like a Chad Pennington, I don't know, I'm just trying to throw out some names now. I think those are guys worth bringing up. The guy I actually think about is Matt Schaub. Like when Matt Schaub got his contract with the Texans and what they were willing to pay,

we should have more of those in the league. And the guy I come back to on the other side of this in a period where we didn't have that middle class, and it's ironic because he once owned a middle class quarterback contract, the deal that the Titans signed with Ryan Tannahill, that did not need to be a $33 million a year deal for where Ryan Tanoho was in his career. He's closer to the deals that Baker and Gino just signed than he is to guys at the top of the market. But at the time, there was really no data point for teams to be like, no, no, no, you should take this deal that's 12% of the salary cap.

I know they don't exist. I know that it's either 15% or 5%, but trust us on this. This is what actually makes sense. And the fact that we have a couple examples of this, I think is very cool and encouraging. And I think that they're, like you said, teams are a little bit obsessed with this. There's a value to be had here. And I think the fact that Baker and Gino signed these deals after losing that shine and that luster, there's something to glob onto there if you're an NFL team.

Because if you look at not only the contracts they sign, but what they've been paid for the entirety of their tenure with these teams, there is something here. If you look at Baker and Gough, right? So Gough is also part of this kind of second chance quarterback market that we've seen. seen develop over the last few years. Over their forced four years with those teams, when you include the extensions, both of those guys are going to make about $24 million a year to play quarterback. Compare that to the top of the market.

It's pretty good, right? Gino is at $19 million over those four years because it was dirt cheap in year one and then you signed the extension. So that exists firmly in the middle of the rookie quarterback contract and the elite quarterback contracts. But these guys are producing at a higher level than you're going to get. from a rookie. So if you compare that $24 million for a baker or a goth to the $10 million you're getting with Caleb Williams or the $9 million you're getting with the Jaden Daniels, the average

quarterback contract, I think you're probably getting the right amount of value in that $15 million a year gap. And that has never really existed before. So if we can find some of these second chance guys that are hitting a different sort of prime at 27, 28, where they're not the elite players in the league, but they can still give you an avenue to a top 10 offense if you build the right things around them and you have resources to build the right things around them. That's an intriguing team building model that we really have not seen over the last decade, but I do think is starting to emerge. I think so too.

And I think you're going to see a counterculture and a shift. And I think what will be different with those teams too is with kind of the more data and analytics, quote, unquote, that are brought into teams. and it might piss the player off and so relationship management is part of it. But let's say hypothetically, in two years, Baker is what, can be 31 years old. If I'm Tampa, let's say I'm down here.

Let's say Mike Dembs retires, Godwin, injury, and you're picking top 10. Historically, that team probably is like, all right, let's get a player for Baker and let's keep, no, drafted quarterback. But still, in your mind, say, Baker still has two years left. He's going to be the starter for those two years.

Like, just, it's not only buying into the middle market, it's also getting back to having actual bridge quarterbacks and having guys that can develop underneath them and can work with them. And I think you might see those guys be less threatened or less angry about it if they also know that like, look, this isn't like, you know, an immediate kind of, you know, call for your job.

And yes, fans are complicated. It's not easy. I'm kind of saying this is probably a very ideal outlook. But the contract itself also enables you to do some of those things to sustain success more. And then just, I have to say this, because it came to my mind. But there's probably an argument you can make, too.

If you want to have a rookie quarterback, you probably should be signing a coach like a Sean Payton with Bow Nix for a bazillion dollars. You know the bucks and Baker Mayfield. This isn't against Dave Canales, who's now a head coach, Liam Cullen, who's been around the Rams in Kentucky. But, like, Baker doesn't need as much coddling or as much, like,

you don't have to spend Buku money to build this, you know, dynamo coaching. You say, no, get good, qualified, competent people because the quarterback is smart and gets it and knows what he's doing. So you kind of could argue there was like some tradeoff in those areas as well. Yeah, you just don't have to invest the same amount of support and infrastructure and resources in those first three or four years of development. Like these guys have already gotten through that stage. I think that's worth acknowledging.

And I also think that this entire conversation has caused me to rethink and revisit some of the takes that we had about the Falcons in the draft specifically, where it's like, all right, if these first couple years of the rookie quarterback contract really aren't quite as valuable as we're making them out to be. Is the most important thing here actually setting yourself up for extended long-term success, even if there's an opportunity cost involved in that process? And I think I've softened on this a little bit where I'm like, yeah, like the most important thing is just having a good quarterback every year.

That is the most important thing. And if you have to take a slightly unconventional route to get there, don't worry about it because in actuality, we're probably overrating how much of a detriment the expensive ones are, and we're probably overrating on both ends, how valuable the rookie ones are and how much of a detriment the expensive ones are. And if that ends up being true,

all that really matters is making sure you have a good quarterback at the end of the day, no matter what you're allocating to the position. I think you're spot on. I think you and I were in the same boat there. I would own it as well. I would say, too, I think we did both kind of soften our stance and say we're always going to be team, just get quarterback, because that's what matters.

matters most. But then we're like, yeah, but the specific situation where Pennix is older, and so like it's different, you know, who cares? Like, throw out all the context. I would give him 28 years old. I just get a guy that can be there for a stretch of years that can be a, you know, a good starter. Like, we did. I think we measured a little bit, but even, even then we probably were still wrong because like you're saying, it kind of forced you to reevaluate. And look, too, I mean, Cousins was coming off injury. If he gets hurt, you just have a starting quarterback. And then again, it goes back to like, like, Darnal Mooney now is a revelation. And And what if Kirk gets hurt?

And then they're playing Desmond Ritter. And we have no idea what Donald Mooney is. Or is Drake London good? Is Kyle Pitt? Like it's just, you know, I'm kind of making the same argument again. But yeah, it just rises the level and the floor for everyone. So yeah, we're taking that L. But it's probably, I wonder if teams do it that way as well,

or if we're just kind of changing our stance over time and they're still viewing it as kind of not worth the risk or not worth the lack of upside of giving a Kirk Cousins, an elite playmaker or what have you. Yeah, and I think that there's definitely a middle ground to be found here. I don't think you should necessarily be spending $40 million a year on the 14th best quarterback piece in his mid-30s. I think the way that I frame that where it's like these mid-30s guys that you're paying the sticker price for,

everything has to go right outside of that for this to work out for you. You still have less margin for error if you're doing that than if you're drafting the rookie, or if you're drafting a rookie quarterback. We know that, but I still feel like we're overstating how much more margin for error there is and how much of a benefit there is to go in that route. And I just think that being open to that and just kind of being like, all right, maybe we shouldn't be bucketing things as intensely as we are. That's the only thing I think is worth revisiting here,

is that maybe it's worth just thinking about how fluid some of these situations actually are. Before we get out of here, I'm just curious on this topic specifically and just the landscape at the position, Is there anything else that is on your mind that you think people should be thinking about as we conceive of quarterback contracts in 2024? I think for me, we've kind of touched on it. But this year to me, and we're talking to these kind of large sweeping narratives, like I always knew coaching mattered. It sounds dumb to say that. But I think this is a year where it is so glaring and obvious, just the what you can get out of players if you have a good coaching staff, both from a development standpoint, but also just from a deploying them,

with their strengths and getting the most out of them. Like I'll go back to the Bo Nix, Sean Payton example. That was the perfect coach to have that quarterback. He put Bo Nix on, he goes first overall to Chicago and plays with that team. They probably don't have a win yet this season. Like, let's be on. And now just to you and I just be in our misery for a second here. But like, you're a bear's fan.

I think people should know that as you're making that point. Yeah, there was a bear's poster behind me somewhere. Yes. That didn't get thrown to the wall 24 hours ago. So, yeah. Like, it's just, it again, and we're talking contracts and salary cap and all that, but competing outside of that, but still in ways that influenced that at the same time, just matters so, so, so, so much. And so it just, yeah, just speaks to, again, players probably don't fail as often as we think. I think they are failed more often than we realize.

And again, I know I'm now in these new shoes, but I think it did crystallize quite a bit and has become more and more apparent, the more of kind of taking a step back. And look, yeah, players make mistakes or they fail too. They're not, they're not blameless in any scenario, any situation. But yeah, I'm kind of falling for that. Like, oh, I can fix them. Like, I'm kind of becoming one of those guys. I'm just like, don't give up on him just yet. Like, he hasn't had a real shot.

The way that we've talked about it on this show is that, to me, it feels like a binary these days. Do you have a staff that is a positive multiplier for your players? Or do you have a staff that's a negative multiplier for your players? Not offense specifically. That becomes the most important thing because I just think that the importance, of course, back play, we should consider it in those discussions. If you don't have one of the positives, you have no shot.

Like, you just, you have no chance. And this is not margin for error stuff like we were talking about the other conversation. You have no chance. And I just think that you have to make sure you're putting yourself in a position to be one of those staffs that is going to be the positive multiplier on your offensive personnel and on your quarterback. Because if you are not, then you might as well just write off the season. everything about your infrastructure, the rest of it ceases to matter.

Yeah, it's the corollary to the quarterback thing. It's like you also need the head coach. Like, you really, really do. Not to be average or make the playoffs, but to reach that ultimate echelon, it's kind of, yeah, look at the list of quarterbacks that won Super Bowls and head coaches. And then both are probably a list of, you know, elite, elite guys. Or, you know, your Shanahan's of the world that it's like, they're getting there because of him as much as anything else. Yeah, no, you're right.

It's just as important. And it just changes the landscape for everything and everyone on that team. All right. Brad Spielberger, thank you very much for the time, sir. Always great to catch up with you. We will do it again very soon. Sounds great. Thank you.

Hi, guys. That's all we got for today. Thank you so much to Brad Spielberg for his time. Sincerely appreciated it. If you've missed the first two episodes of the money down, the first show we did was examining the falloff in the cornerback contract market with Dominique Foxworth while also talking about where that position sits. in larger football culture compared to previous eras.

Our second episode was me and our senior media analyst here at the athletic, Andrew Marchand, talking about the present and future of NFL broadcasting, what we've seen from Tom Brady so far in his career, how the NFL continues to wade into streaming and everything in between. We'll have our final episode of this mini-series coming a little bit later this month. We're going to be looking at the NFL's expansion into Brazil over the past year or so, the game in Brazil, how it's trying to grow its audience in that country, and what it sees in terms of Brazil's foothold in the future of the NFL international footprint.

Very excited for you guys to see that show. We're doing something a little bit different with that. So looking forward to releasing that here in the next few weeks for now. That's all we've got. Appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to you very soon.