WSJ article on QB salaries

[rangerous]

The article discusses how much QB salaries are and lists the top ten.  It looks like Dak might be seeing close to 60 million.  The odd thing is that the salaries as a percentage of the salary cap are staying roughly the same, around 21%.  This is quite a bit of money but the salary cap has also grown quite a bit in the past few years.  Still it's hard to justify so much of a team's resources going into a single player.  Looking at these listed players just which ones are really responsible for making their teams go?

 

The NFL Quarterback Market Has Gone
Haywire—and It’s About to Get Even Crazier
With more money to spend, in�lation has hit NFL teams. And the
quarterbacks who are cashing in might surprise you.
By Andrew Beaton Follow
Updated Aug. 20, 2024 10�13 am ET
When Patrick Mahomes signed a new contract worth up to half a billion dollars in 2020, it
blew every other deal across the National Football League clean out of the water. It was a
mind-boggling agreement that also made perfect sense: the Kansas City Chiefs’
quarterback had become the unquestioned superstar at the most important position in the
sport.
What’s strange is that Mahomes’s status remains unrivaled—he has won his second and
third Super Bowls to prove it. But he’s no longer the highest paid player. In fact, he’s not
especially close.
That’s because becoming the best-paid player in the NFL isn’t simply about being the best
player. It’s about timing and leverage. It’s those two factors that are driving the most
inflationary quarterback market in recent history. And it’s also why the quarterback who’s
positioned to shatter the market’s ceiling is someone that casual football fans might not
suspect.
The passer who has played his way into the type of dream scenario that could soon make
him the NFL’s first $60 million a year player is none other than the Dallas Cowboys’ Dak
Prescott.
Unlike his peers who have set the bar at $55 million annually, Prescott is just a year away
from free agency, which would allow him to realize his full value on the open market. And
Dallas doesn’t have the option of forcing him to stay on a one-year deal under the franchise

tag, which teams use to prevent top players from leaving.
That means the Cowboys and owner-general manager Jerry Jones have two options. They
can pay Prescott an extraordinary sum of money. Or they can wait for another billionaire
owner desperate to find a quarterback to do just that next offseason.
“I’m not putting that much thought into hoping it gets done now, hoping it gets done in a
couple of weeks,” Prescott said recently. “I just know conversations are on the right way.”
The odd part of Prescott trending toward a record payday is that nobody would argue he’s
the class of his position. Over the course of his eight seasons in the league, the 31-year-old
has won just two playoff games and lost five.
But he’s also clearly better than most quarterbacks, having won 64% of his regular season
starts and achieving five postseason berths. His value is only on the upswing right now,
coming off a season in which he led the NFL with 36 touchdown passes and finished second
in the voting for Most Valuable Player.
Prescott is also armed with proof that it doesn’t take being the best quarterback to become
Quarterback In�lation
The price for keeping quarterbacks keeps getting more expensive
Jordan Love &
Trevor Lawrence
$55 million per year Joe Burrow
Justin Herbert Tua Tagovailoa
Lamar Jackson Jared Go�
Jalen Hurts
50
Kyler Murray
45 Kirk CousinsDeshaun Watson
Patrick Mahomes
Josh Allen
40
Dak Prescott Matt Sta�ord
35
2020 2021 2022 2023 2024
Source: Over the Cap
Rosie Ettenheim/WSJ

the highest-earner. His fellow quarterbacks have already made that point loud and clear.
This offseason alone, the Jacksonville Jaguars’ Trevor Lawrence and the Green Bay
Packers’ Jordan Love inked extensions worth $55 million a year, and they have professional
résumés far thinner than Prescott’s. Those deals matched what the Cincinnati Bengals’ Joe
Burrow signed up for in 2023.
Lawrence and Love weren’t alone in securing windfalls in recent months. The Detroit Lions
extended Jared Goff while the Miami Dolphins did the same with Tua Tagovailoa, making a
grand total of eight players in the NFL—all quarterbacks—who make over $50 million
annually, according to contract-tracking website overthecap.com. Like Prescott, no one in
that group has won a Super Bowl.
And it isn’t especially difficult to understand what’s driving the market. Teams are
spending more because they simply have more to offer.
Back in 2022, when Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray re-upped on a deal worth
$46.1 million annually, that figure represented 22.1% of that season’s salary cap. Since then,
the cap has gone up to $255.4 million this year—a sum so huge that $55 million, the current
high, accounts for just 21.5%. So while the high-end quarterbacks are earning more now, it’s
a similar slice of the pie. The cap is also expected to continue climbing every year.
Prescott has one additional lever none of those players had: the threat of imminent free
agency. In the rare instances when above-average quarterbacks have actually reached that
point, they tend to make out handsomely. Kirk Cousins, in 2018, left Washington for a
Lions quarterback Jared Go�, left, and Packers quarterback Jordan Love recently signed extensions.

Appeared in the August 21, 2024, print edition as 'The QB Market Has Gone Haywire'.
groundbreaking, fully guaranteed contract with the Minnesota Vikings. This offseason, he
again signed a rich deal with the Atlanta Falcons even though he’s 36 years old and coming
off a torn Achilles.
With another strong season, Prescott could set off a bidding war unlike anything the NFL
has ever seen. That’s unless the Cowboys pay him a fortune before then.
“I enjoy being a Cowboy 1,000%,” Prescott said recently. “But this is a business.”
Write to Andrew Beaton at andrew.beaton@wsj.com
 

 

[Darnold's Forehead]

“This is a business.”

[Bronx]

We need a cheaper alternative...

[PFSIKH]

Quote

The NFL Quarterback Market Has Gone Haywire—and It’s About to Get Even Crazier

I do not think it is too crazy to pay the QB that much.  It is the premium position.  

It is paying Justin Jefferson 13.70% of the cap with Sam Darnold throwing the ball.   Great player.  No doubt.  I wonder is CB starts strending into the neighborhood.

I forget the stat, but it has been since the 90s when a league leading WR last won a Superbowl.

[rtnelson]

All of the big mega deals end up not looking so mega after a few years.  People kinda scoffed at Mahomes deal even though they knew he was great.  Now his deal is considered very team friendly.

[funaz]

21% of the salary cap for one player seems rediculous.

Then you look at record of the teams with a “cheap” qb and realize that 21% is basically table stakes for a competitive team


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[Jimmy 2 Times]

2 hours ago, rtnelson said:

All of the big mega deals end up not looking so mega after a few years.  People kinda scoffed at Mahomes deal even though they knew he was great.  Now his deal is considered very team friendly.

Signing Mahomes to a ten year deal was pretty genius. 

Hopefully he starts to slow or break down to give everyone else a chance.