The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - CBS Joel Corry Talks C.J. Stroud & Will Anderson Jr Contracts

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

CBS Joel Corry Talks C.J. Stroud & Will Anderson Jr Contracts

Joel Corey is the CBS sports NFL contracts and salary cap experts. You can find him on Twitter at Corey Joel. That is C-O-R-R-R-Y. Joel, appreciate the time. As always, long time, no talk. Yeah, thanks for having me back. All right, we do appreciate it. All right, so let's go ahead and get right into it.

Well, actually, I was talking with my co-host before this. We were trying to figure out. Okay, so can you explain both C.J. Stroud and Will Anderson are up for a fifth year option. So the Texans, I believe, have until May 2nd. And then after that, it's just a no-go that both of those guys could be free agents, which they're probably not going to let happen, of course. Yeah, well, the rookie contracts are for four years.

First round picks have a fifth-year option. After the third season, you have up until May 2nd to go yes or no for the fifth-year option. The no-brainer is Will Anderson. They will pick up the fifth year option. C.J. Stroud, I know the last two games were horrendous, but his body of work over the three years. And the price of the fifth year options suggest they will pick that up. So they will not be free agents after the 2026 season if they both end up continuing to plan on their rookie deals.

All right. Let's start with Will Anderson. Then we'll get to the fun one with C.J. Stroud. It seems pretty obvious. I mean, first team all pro, 12 sacks, career high. Not only that, the opposite of C.J. Stroud, in that Stroud wasn't very good in the playoffs. Will Anderson was completely dominant in the playoffs. So we expect some sort of mega deal to be happening. And I had your article that I was reading, as I said, you expect him to maybe kind of, in a way, reset the market as far as edge rushers?

And how hard are the Texans going to push for trying to get something done before that May 2nd deadline? Well, he's a guy that should be your top priority last year with Derek Stingley, Jr. They got that thing done so early. It was in March. They hadn't even exercised the fifth year option. So if I'm Will Anderson, I'm like, hey, this is the precedent. You set with all pro defensive players who are first team all pros in their third year. I want the same type of treatment in terms of timing and what you did,

up to the marketplace, corners for Stingley, obviously edge rushers for Anderson with me. So, yeah, he's going to try to reset the non-quarterback market. I expect there to be some pushback from the Texans, given how much that escalated last year. This time last year, the highest paid edge rusher was Nick Bosa at $34 million per year. Now it's Michael Parsons at 46.5 million per year. Wow. That's almost a 37% increase.

That's practically unheard of. So they may want to slot them in kind of like the Texans did. Not the Texans, the Lions did with Aidan Hutchinson, who came in at 45 million per year, did not top Michael Parsons. And that deal was done in the middle of 2025 season. Do you kind of look at this, Joel, and they have DeNeil Hunter still very, much in the middle of his prime and playing fantastic for him, but obviously he's at a high dollar value. But this will be basically the last year of his deal.

I know they added a couple of void years. But do you kind of look at it as a capologist says, okay, the Will Anderson big money starts up as soon as the Neil Hunter money comes off the books, kind of? Yeah, because the way you're going to structure it, the cap number is not going to take a huge jump for a couple of years. But Hunter's interesting now that you brought him up. He's going to be 32 during the middle of next season. He's not showing any signs of slowing down.

If you let him play out this year's deal, then he's walking. Because to franchise him in 2027, it's going to be a little over $37.5 million and that won't happen. That kind of drives our point home about how this, you don't want to say, use the word waste, but it was an elite all-time Texans defense, and you just couldn't get anything out of, of the offense and then that leads us to C.J. Stroud. Of course, the headliner. The offensive line was bad. The running game was bad. You had Nico Collins hurt in that Patriots game

as well, so it wasn't all C.J. Stroud. But when you turn the ball over four times in the first half, before we get kind of out of the ins and outs as far as options of contracts, where do you think the Texans weigh that, Joel, as far as the body of work to where he, by many

metric, QBR, a quarterback rating, touchdown percentage, interception percentage, and the regular season. He had a bit of a bounce back season from a sophomore slump, but then those playoffs happened. Yeah, part of the problem is he had his best year when he was a rookie and you were thinking he's on an upward trajectory and he hasn't had a year like his rookie year since. And then you compound the problem by having back to back two of the worst playoff games I've seen for a quarterback in recent history.

it kind of rivaled what Sam Donald did the last week of the regular season last year and the playoff game against the Rams last year, which he's definitely bounced back from. But yeah, you don't want to be going into the offseason, potentially trying to get a new contract off of that ending. Yeah, so what are the options in for the Texas right now? As far as the fifth year option, they can do that?

Do you think there is any possibility they do some sort of extension where he's not getting paid, 50, 60 million? million dollars a year. David Muligeta is his agent, and we know he's a guy that's been very good at getting quarterbacks paid. Well, basically whatever position he has generally, but good luck with that because Mulletta

presented to Sean Watson, who's the last time of Texas did a big quarterback deal. 39 million per year at the time made Watson the second highest paid player in the NFL. Granted, Watson was coming off a much better year 2019 as a third year player than Watson is now.

But nonetheless, Mulligetta is thinking, hey, let's look at the totality of the circumstances, not be prisoners of the moment, have recency bias. For my three years, body of work is better than Trevor Lawrence's three years when they got paid. This is what Mulligata will probably be thinking or saying, if they do talk contract extension. And Trevor Lawrence, after a third year where they're,

Jaguars imploded down the stretch missed the playoffs. He didn't play at the same level he did in the second year. He made him in a tie with Joe Burrow as the highest paid player in $25 million per year. Then shortly thereafter, Dave Mulligeta took Jordan Love, who had one good second half of a season, his first year of a starter, played one in the playoffs, ties those two guys at $55 million per year before Dak Prescott tops every year. everybody. So he's not going to be looking at anything besides one of these top of the market deals. Is the key, Joel, with a C.J. Stroud as young as he is still, like, if we're talking

in long-term contract extension, is the key higher AAV at like a four-year deal as opposed to a five or six-year deal? Like, I'm just kind of looking at some of the current contracts out there. And Jordan Love at 25, like you just mentioned, 55 million a year, but four years, I wonder, you know, it feels like more teams are leaning towards that four-year deal as opposed to those five or six-year deals. Well, typically teams want to lock up their best players for as long as possible. And Love was a changing of the guard because you had, when Trevor Lawrence did his deal, you were coming off a bunch of five-year deals. Jalen Hertz, five-year extension. Lamar Jackson, five-year deal as a franchise player.

then you had Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert, got their deals done after the third year, both five-year extensions. So that environment was five years. So if Trevor Lawrence wanted a four, all the data pointed to a five. Then you had Tua get a four-year deal, Jared Goff get a four-year deal, which allowed Jordan Love to go four. So this is a case if I'm the Texans,

I would kind of be looking at it from the standpoint. standpoint that, yeah, if we wait and C.J. Stroud has a career year, yeah, we're going to pay more. But Kyla Murray be my cautionary tale. His agent pushed to get a deal after three years, and he's probably not going to be with the Cardinals next year. The Rams had buyer's remorse with Jared golf did his after three years. He took him to a Super Bowl. He's got them. He was the quarterback when they weren't a Super Bowl. And Philly cut bait with Carson Wentz pretty quickly after doing his rookie contract after three years. So because of how things have gone south sometimes, I might be inclined to wait. Anderson's my top priority. If I have to pay more in the long

run to be sure that CJ is the guy, then I would have more peace of mind doing that. Talk with Joel Corey. One of the best when it comes to talking NFL contracts and salary cap. I've been doing a long time, of course, CBS. It is interesting though, Joel, one of the big copics that came up here in Houston after Stroud's less than stellar postseason is, okay, should we pivot? And you look at what a Sam Donald's doing right now. Obviously, he was

a hired assassin with Minnesota. Last year was very good, and now he takes the Seahawks to the Super Bowl. It is interesting that concept of when you have your quarterback, you feel like maybe we've got to pay this guy just to keep him because we don't like the alternative, but to your point, Kyler Murray, the cautionary tale. I mean,

Trevor Lawrence had the nice resurgent year this year, but prior to this year, I think people were wandering ass. Should they have paid him? And then Atua down in Miami, you look at that situation. It just becomes, man, it feels like the norm now is, even if you have questions about this guy, you pay him because you just don't know

it's better than the alternative, which is the unknown. The Nail and the head, fairly unknown has been driving a lot of quarterback decisions, and I'll use one going back a few years. At the time, $18 million per year, believe or not, it was a lot for quarterback.

I forget exactly what year it was, but Jay Cutler got an extension. Yeah. And it's like, you really want to give Jay Cutler that type of money? And that's what happened. So, yeah, that factors in the equation. But CJ Stroud's really young. So you don't, there's nothing that says you have to do a quarterback extension

at the earliest possible instance. You can wait. Lamar Jackson ended up being the rare quarterback who plays through the fifth year option. Andrew Luck back when he was considered a franchise quarterback, didn't get a deal, which made the highest paid player until going into the fifth year option. So you don't have to do the deal today. You can exercise some caution. Let's say Stroud is starting to play on the fourth year of the rookie contract,

starts lighting it up early in the year. You may revisit it then if you don't want to do it right now with the numbers that I suspect David Mulligata. will be asking for. You know, we've also seen a situation where guys have gotten let go. You mentioned Sam Darnold. I mean, Baker Mayfield, we have. Jared Gough was traded, but he wasn't thought of as an elite guy. People were leaving him for dead like he was a throw-in.

Yeah. It was just a matter of time before he was done in Detroit. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So it's not like they thought that he was going to be. So, I mean, it's interesting the dichotomy where you don't want to end up in that situation where you cut bait with C.J. Stroud, and he thrives somewhere else. but also at the time when those guys came, they weren't making $60 million, so it kind of makes it easier to build around that guy.

Yeah, but you also have to think of the fact that the cap has gone up since those guys signed. So relative to cap inflation, I know the quarterback market has gone haywire, but still sometimes that gets lost in the equation. You have the fifth-year option. It's going to be extremely reasonable cost for a starting quarterback. it's not going to be an elevated amount because that Pro Bowl from Strauss' rookie year doesn't factor into increasing the cost. He was not an original ballot pro bowler. So it's going to be basically the average of the third through 20 of highest paid quarterbacks.

And I'm simplifying it a bit for the option cost. And it's going to be the exact number depends on where the cap is set because it's expressed percentage of the cap. but it's going to be roughly 25, 26 million for Stroud. That's a reasonable number for a quarterback as a salary. All right. He is Joel Corey, a great expert on NFL contracts and the salary cap for CBS Sports. Joel, thanks for the time. It's been too long.

I'm sure we'll bother you pretty soon with the C.J. Stroud's situation as it continues to develop it. And just go ahead, let the folks know what you got going on the website and where they can find your stuff. Okay. you can find it at cbsports.com i've got um an article out right now on 15 notable veterans who could either be traded or released and then i do an annual contract awards um and that will come out tomorrow all right thanks a lot joel appreciate the time we'll talk to you down the road all right thanks for having you guys