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Originally posted by Bolt4Knob
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Really, you wouldn't excuse TT even if Herbert is out? What's your reasoning - maybe you think a good GM would have a backup QB that's just as good as Herbert.
THE YEAR OF THE FLIP! -
That might be a bit harsh but after 11 years - I would think it would be time for a change in that role. AJ Smith was much more successful and was firedOriginally posted by chargeroo View PostComment
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AJ was successful for a few years but slid down as time went by. He was a "my way or the highway" guy and he shot himself in the foot because of that. In the old CMB I had a second account where I called myself "AJ Smiff" and I had fun saying ridiculous things mocking AJ. Good for some laughs.Originally posted by Bolt4Knob View PostTHE YEAR OF THE FLIP!Comment
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AJ's choices got him fired. He was Butler's asst and after JB's passing, AJ executed their plan. The longer he was without his mentor, the worse he became.Originally posted by Bolt4Knob View PostComment
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AJ was MUCH more successful. No comparison. He was just so brash, arrogant and intransigent that it seemed he’d been declining here for 2 decades. With Invisible Tom, ts almost as if we still aren’t sure he’s even working here. Hard to fire a guy that doesn’t work here, after all.Originally posted by chargeroo View Post“Less is more? NO NO NO - MORE is MORE!”Comment
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With the way quarterback contracts have evolved in recent years, there’s been a question floating around NFL circles:
Will this evolution ever spark something of a revolution?
The price of these deals has skyrocketed over the past half decade, with each franchise cornerstone finding a new way to reshape the market. Along the way — and with no success to date — some quarterbacks have even broached the idea of a contract that would be tied to a percentage of the salary cap.
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High-ranking executives and agents of starting quarterbacks polled by The Athletic over the past couple of months believe it’s a long shot to ever happen.
“I almost have to laugh,” said an agent, who was granted anonymity for this story so he could speak openly. “I have no confidence. It’s going to take a quarterback on the open market with no restrictions and a desperate team, and how often does that happen?”
So you’re saying there’s a chance?
There is certainly a compelling case to be made for the execution of such a contract, but it will require a perfect confluence of factors for the first deal to ever happen. Even with those factors in place, though, the idea of a cap-percentage contract sounds unlikely because teams are reluctant to upset the apple cart.
“No team, no owner, no GM wants to set the precedent,” an executive said. “There’s peer pressure.”
The salary cap has dramatically risen in recent years due to media contracts, and it’ll continue to soar with gambling revenue. Quarterbacks, who are often marketed as the face of their franchises, have benefited more than any other position.
It was only five years ago that then-Falcons QB Matt Ryan set a benchmark in the NFL by becoming the first $30 million-a-year quarterback. (Jonathan Bachman / Getty Images)
Consider, Matt Ryan became the first player in league history to average $30 million annually when he signed a new deal with the Falcons in 2018. Now, there are 14 quarterbacks with such a deal, including three who have eclipsed the $50 million benchmark and eight more north of $40 million per year.
Joe Burrow and Justin Herbert will almost certainly sign record-setting deals now that they’re eligible, and their outcomes figure to set the stage for Trevor Lawrence to trump them as early as 2024.
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And on and on it’ll go — unless the pattern breaks. Teams generally believe a quarterback’s contract should consume about 13-15 percent of their salary cap, but the new wave of deals could tip that scale.
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That wasn’t an issue last season for Patrick Mahomes, who led the Chiefs to a Super Bowl title while taking up 17.2 percent of their cap, and it might not be a problem for the Bengals (Burrow), Chargers (Herbert) or Jaguars (Lawrence). But how much will be too much for a lesser quarterback who needs a better supporting cast?
“I think there are a lot of mediocre quarterbacks who are getting paid a lot of money,” a second executive said. “Obviously, the salary cap is going to continue to grow, and league revenue is going to continue to increase. But I think you’re actually going to see (front offices) realize it’s the ultimate team sport.”
That’s why the idea of a cap-percentage contract could benefit the team while also protecting the player from signing a deal that becomes outdated when the league generates extra revenue in future years.
It just doesn’t seem likely.
“I think what it comes down to is owners want cost certainty,” the first executive said. “And if you allow a contract to be a percentage of the cap, that doesn’t happen, because the cap is going to go up. Even though you can kind of predict it, it’s not black and white. I don’t think any owner would think that would be a good deal. There could be a quarterback who is coming up here in the next year or two, and maybe that is a good deal. But I think it’s a leap of faith for owners to go down that road.
“Obviously, the quarterback has the most important and highest contract on the team if you have a good one. Now, how do you plan cap-wise, cash-wise as a team, as a GM, as a cap guy to build the rest of your team around that number, which is a moving target? So it’s just a blurry gray line on your spreadsheet that isn’t a hard number.”
The agent agreed.
“The first thing you’ve got to understand from a team perspective is they really like fixed costs,” the agent said. “As they plan and budget out their future, when their top earner has fixed costs, it allows them to plan accordingly. It’s the unknown that is the hardest on clubs. Because how do you prepare when you don’t know what your best player and most expensive player is going to make?”
If the Bengals handed quarterback Joe Burrow a contract tied to the salary cap, might wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase demand the same? (Ian Johnson / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
It could be more of an unwelcome inconvenience than anything truly obstructive. The Bengals, for example, have to budget Burrow’s extension while also considering the likelihood Ja’Marr Chase resets the wide receiver market in a year or two. A cap-percentage contract for Burrow wouldn’t prohibit a future deal with Chase, but it could create a hurdle.
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Another scenario: What’s to stop Chase from wanting his own cap-percentage contract? The slope can get slippery in a hurry.
“The GM is going to have a line out the door if you have a good team,” the executive said. “The agents will say, ‘Well, you gave it to the quarterback. Why won’t you give it to my guy?’ (As the GM), you can always say, ‘I’m doing it at quarterback, and that’s the only position I’ll ever do it for.’ That’s the one position where you can kind of push back with the agent and be like, ‘Quarterbacks are different.’ But what if you’re the Rams and you’ve got Aaron Donald in his prime? Or now you draft this guy No. 10 overall, and then in three years you’ve got Lawrence Taylor on your hands, and you’re trying to make him happy. Sometimes, you put your foot in your mouth with things like that.”
There are other complications, too. For example, when a player signs a guaranteed contract, the owner is required to put the future guaranteed money into an escrow account. How much would ownership place in escrow when the future cap figures are just projected numbers? Or when a team needs to restructure the contract for cap relief, will that become a trickier endeavor with a cap-percentage deal? How would the injury protection work?
Again, these are examples that are more of a nuisance than a roadblock. The lawyers could handle the contractual language if the teams really wanted to execute such a deal.
“We’ve seen some really complicated contracts in our day, so I don’t think that’s prohibitive at all,” the agent said.
The precedent, or lack thereof, is still the primary factor.
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Last year, Deshaun Watson corralled a fully guaranteed five-year, $230 million contract as part of his trade agreement with the Browns, but it didn’t rewrite the position’s economic landscape. Matthew Stafford, Kyler Murray, Russell Wilson, Lamar Jackson and Jalen Hurts have all since signed huge deals, but their guaranteed money was between 66-81 percent of their contracts.
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“Clubs don’t like setting precedents,” the agent said. “They don’t want to do something unique and out of the box. Some do, but most don’t. I think it’s a very tough sell to go there, even though I think it gives them the best of all worlds. You’re not going to cut your quarterback, so it allows you to keep him under contract without him complaining, honestly. But it also is fixed cost in a sense. If 15 percent of your cap is going to your quarterback every year, you really can budget it and not worry.
“Honestly, it’s a way for a quarterback to maybe take a little less but have the security that he’s going to make top dollar for X-amount of years. It’s the best of both worlds. The quarterback can take a few dollars less if he knows the next six years, his salary is going to rise commensurate with the cap. I can convince the hardest-nosed guy at the negotiating table, if you’re getting 15 percent every year, yeah, you might be a little low this year in context with the other guys, but you’re going to be caught up with the market every single year. And by the way, if we do have gambling money really effect the cap and we’re at $300 million in another three years, you’re at 15 percent of that.”
Still, such an outcome would require a perfect chain of events. It’d take a quarterback at the top of his game who would be willing to play through two franchise tags in order to hit free agency with the ability to call his shots in negotiations. It’d also require, by the executives’ opinions, a cash-rich owner in dire need of an upgrade at quarterback.
But it’s fair to wonder whether someone in Burrow’s or Herbert’s position would be willing to push it that far. They’re eligible for extensions right now, so they’re potentially on the verge of contracts that could include upward of $200 million guaranteed, including signing bonuses likely north of $50 million, based on the structures of recent quarterback contracts.
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It’s a lot to ask of anyone in the midst of a rookie contract to turn down that much money in the interest of essentially going year to year. It appeared to be heading in that direction with Jackson — until he accepted the Ravens’ five-year, $260 million offer.
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Then again, if Jackson did play it out all the way into free agency, who’s to say he (or anyone) could have talked a team into a cap-percentage contract? Or even if he did, what if another team simply offered more money under the traditional structure?
“Any precedent in any contract, owners and GMs generally want to stay away from it,” the first executive said.
Even though there are a host of factors why a cap-percentage deal hasn’t happened or why it may not even be the best way for a quarterback to maximize his earning power, there’s a reason why the idea continues to come up. The cap keeps rising disproportionately, and that’s expected to keep happening.
And the further these quarterbacks get from signing their deals, the more outdated they know they become. Five years ago, the thought of a $40 million contract was almost immediately dismissed, and they’re now the norm for players in their prime. It’s why, even though Mahomes signed a 10-year, $450 million contract in 2020, his peers have since signed much shorter deals in order to keep pace with the market.
The financial landscape has changed so rapidly of late that it might behoove a team to think outside the box with a cap-percentage contract. It may only take one such deal for the market to evolve, but a series of complicated factors has made that much easier said than done.
(Photo illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; photos: Michael Owens, Nick Grace / Getty Images)
Chargers vs. EveryoneComment
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AJ's finest moment was drafting Eli, then trading him for Rivers and all those picks...it was all downhill after that...especially in his later years, AJ made some awful draft picks, AND extended dudes like Lazy Gaither and Jyles Tucker--guys who had a very small body of work who turned into epic fails...and there were many more...Originally posted by chargeroo View PostComment
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Letting Donnie Edwards walk and hoping Matt Wilhelm wouldn't become Matt Whiffhelm.Originally posted by Topcat View PostComment
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well Telesco probably has one more yearOriginally posted by Topcat View Post
can he put together a team like 2006 that really just kicked teams backsidesComment
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Ah, yes, before Launchwhiffy, there was the ORIGINAL whiffy, Whiffhelm...Originally posted by Velo View PostComment
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