When Big QB Contracts Backfire: Are Teams Paying the Price?

This is an interesting topic, and there has been discussion in our NY Jets message board about QB contracts. NYC Dan brings up a good point: When is enough enough regarding the pay at the QB position? Some bad decisions have been made, as Dan outlines below. Check the thread to see what other fans are saying about this issue.

Will this be the season where GMs finally realize that paying QBs a quarter of their salary cap is bad business?

Here is a list of all the $200M guys in the last few years that one could argue were bad outcomes (so far):

• Tua: Gets paid – plays 1 game and gets career threatening concussion that was clearly only a matter of time.  $167M guaranteed.
• Love: Gets paid after 8 good games.  Get injured in week 1.  Out 3-6 weeks at least.
• Dak:  Gets paid.  Plays poorly week 1.  Lays egg week 2.  Not even going to wait until the playoffs to be mediocre this year.
• Lawrence:  Gets paid.  Plays below average at best first two weeks.  Jags 0-2.
• Burrow:  Gets paid.  misses 7 games in 2023.  CIN misses playoffs.  Starts 2024 0-2.
• Jackson: Gets paid.  Has great season.  Melts in 2nd playoff game.  It happens.  Starts 2024 0-2.
• Deshaun Watson:  Needs no commentary
• Kyler Murray:  Gets paid after so many warning signs.  Goes 3-8 and injues out.  Next season misses first 9 games, goes 3-5.
• Honorable Mention: Daniel Jones:  Only $160M but why would they pay him that?!

The ones that seem to have been good value were Mahomes (duh!), Allen, Herbert (great QB, but awful team and coaching staff until now), Hurts (great team around him but they still sucked in the playoff game last season), and Goff.   Love might still work out.

Mahomes was a no-brainer.  That kind of guy only comes around once or twice a decade.  I understood Herbert, Allen, and Hurts.  But most of the teams above are looking at 3-4 years of NFL purgatory with a weakened roster at the other end of it.  Somehow, no matter how much evidence piles up, teams just keep upping the QB money.  MIA is cooked (not sad about it).  CLE, DAL, JAX, CIN, ARI are probably all doomed to hoping to squeak out one playoff win every season.  So many of these guys cash monster deals based on less than one season of good play and then *BAMF* they turn into Ryan Tannehill or they get injured and miss parts of multiple seasons.  The risk just doesn’t seem worth it.

On the other hand, you see a few teams making serious runs with Baker Mayfield and now maybe Sam Darnold or Derek Carr (it’s still early).

So every year you see teams squaring off with their QBs and feeling like they have no choice but to overpay.  I wonder how many BAL fans wish they went a different way with that cap money.  Or DAL fans.  Or certainly NYG and CLE fans (now joined by MIA fans).

The cost/risk of QB deals going bad seems too high right now.  Feels like something has to change but I the league seems to be content to just shuffle along as long as the KC Swifts keep on winning (with a little help from their striped friends).