Who Is Worth 40M a Year Today?

[AkronsWitness]

6 hours ago, wackywabbit said:

The Browns have 40M in cap space right now. How do you guys suggest they convert that into a championship?

When they auction off the Lombardi at the end of the season for cap space dollars, they are clearly going to get it right?

If there are a bunch of veterans that are willing to sign 1 year deals Im sure they would be obvious suitors. The problem is the Browns cant afford to be shelling out big multi year dollars to a bunch of FAs

 

Edited May 27, 2020 by AkronsWitness

[DannyB]

6 minutes ago, diamondbull424 said:

There’s no need to be overly dramatic for a minority counter-opinion?

And pass up the opportunity to make a shart metaphor? Not on your life.

8 minutes ago, diamondbull424 said:

But they’ve drastically increased their value the last decade

I guess...I mean they undoubtedly have, but has it translated into SB wins? Hell, how often has it translated into a SB appearance??

9 minutes ago, diamondbull424 said:

My apologies, my point is that the free market determines value is my point

But it's not a free market. It's a highly controlled and regulated market. I'm not smart enough in economics to wax poetic about how exactly the salary cap, and market size, and scarcity, and structure of the contracts, and so on and so forth actually effect how salaries play out, but...it's NOT a free market.

13 minutes ago, diamondbull424 said:

My point is that in a situation where teams have had an opportunity to play hardball and reject overpaying, they haven’t generally done so

I think sometimes teams make dumb decisions, and there's also the reality that sometimes team front offices feel the need to make decisions to stay on the right side of public opinion, rather than what perhaps the best football choice is.

15 minutes ago, diamondbull424 said:

My viewpoint, similar to a fantasy football auction draft is... I may not want to spend $40-60 on a top tier running back but it’s market value and I refuse to settle for fodder backs, same here with the QB position. You either have one or you’re hoping you could find him in the draft... but you can say the same about almost any other position come draft day.

I feel like a fantasy football auction draft is just SOO different compared to the actual league. It seems like a fine analogy at first, but I think it's just so too different to make much of the comparison fair at all.

[diamondbull424]

20 minutes ago, DannyB said:

I feel like a fantasy football auction draft is just SOO different compared to the actual league. It seems like a fine analogy at first, but I think it's just so too different to make much of the comparison fair at all.

I mean there’s no direct comparison to a franchise draft in anything we’ve ever seen. It would be a FAR different scenario to the regular NFL experience too. Thus cap breakdowns of QBs who have won a SB wouldn’t be a fair comparison either.

But fantasy auction would be MORE comparable to this scenario than the current league structure even. But even with league precedent, you’ve had guys like Sam Bradford make a living out of getting highly paid for less than stellar performance.

Sure you can chalk it up to “bad decision” but ALL of the best front offices have made this decision when they’ve come to that well to drink. No one is necessarily absolved. So if the question is simply “who is worth $40m” the answer is however many teams are willing to pay that amount... and nothing in team histories suggest to me that they wouldn’t utilize different cap strategies to go all in, penny pinch at other positions, etc. vs letting the QB get away. Especially if you’ve got a team like my Ravens who have fielded some amazing units with their mix of great defense, great run games, and special teams, great organization, etc but never had a competent QB having instead the likes of Kyle Boller, Trent Dilfer, Elvis Garbage, etc.

It makes sense why they would pay what was probably the (give or take) 12-15th best QB in the league the most money ever for a QB at that time... because Flacco was at least competent and wouldn’t hold the team back unlike his predecessors. With Flacco at QB they likely win again in 2006, let alone a chance at a Lamar Jackson top 5 QB.

So before I digress too far, if the “best” franchises are willing to “overpay” then surely teams within their division will follow suit. It’ll be an arms race for QB talent before likely pooling into an arms race for the best LT, IDL, edge, or corner talent. Then every other position would be left settling for the proverbial scraps unless they’re true difference makers that go beyond positional value.

43 minutes ago, DannyB said:

But it's not a free market. It's a highly controlled and regulated market. I'm not smart enough in economics to wax poetic about how exactly the salary cap, and market size, and scarcity, and structure of the contracts, and so on and so forth actually effect how salaries play out, but...it's NOT a free market.

Okay then it’s a mixed market. In this scenario teams all have $200m allotted to spend and they can decide who to spend it on. Conversely the NFL player has the ability to negotiate as much money as he can make based off of his perceived demand and the supply of similarly rated talents or similarly valued positions. QBs would undoubtedly have the highest market demand for their talents. But beyond that the parallels are the same as humans having x dollars vs y dollars for discretionary income. The NFL isn’t dictating who each team can sign or how much they can sign for, thus it’s an open concept and free. The presence of a cap at best makes it a mixed market with minimal oversight. 

[Jakuvious]

3 hours ago, DannyB said:

@Jakuvious But here's the thing, as more teams are spending a higher percentage on QBs, at some point that will necessarily eat away at how much is spent on other positions, relative to the cap. There's gotta come a time where nabbing more of those guys at depressed prices is better than spending THAT much for like...the 12th best QB.

Absolutely. I think you'd wind up seeing a rather large fall off, in this scenario. You get the last QB teams are willing to compete heavily to bid for, then there's a big drop as teams look to spend elsewhere, then the next tier sees similar competition but at a lower price point, and then you'd likely have another drop, and so on. It's hard to tell, given that it's a hypothetical scenario, and we don't know NFL team's overall perceptions of different QBs, where those tiers would land. But I think you'd definitely see more players hit a mark like $40M in a free for all bid war kind of situation. And then the mid-tier and low-tier vets would likely suffer in exchange, as money has been spent before teams get down to them.

But this is part of the problem with the thread. There's kind of two discussions going on. The OP's scenario, with a free for all $200M cap scenario, and people discussing whether or not players in the current system are worth $40M. They're ultimately two different things.

[Jakuvious]

11 hours ago, Shanedorf said:

NFL should just adopt a Max Contract for QBs and once they hit that Max Contract, that's it
The QBs have significant earning power outside of the salary cap, more than any other player/position- so its not like they'd be an aggrieved party here.   Agree on some percentage of the cap = max compensation.

It takes the competitive nature out of these contract negotiations: 
"I'm better than that guy ! "
It also helps other teams: When one dumb team re-sets the QB market, the other teams all have to play along and be compared to that deal
With a Max Contract, that issue goes away

A Max Contract helps the team build around that QB, while allowing the QB and the agent to puff out their chest and say they got Max.
It could potentially eliminate hold outs and it would allow teams to use the tags on non-QB players

Personally, I would love a max contract for QBs. But the same reason I love it is why it shouldn't happen. It's CRAZY favorable towards the teams with the better QBs. What winds up happening, is you get a tier of QBs that all wind up getting the max contract. So maybe the 18 QBs making over $20M in the current system are able to negotiate max deals. Or the 8 guys making $30M per year or more. Regardless of the cut off, that means teams with lesser QBs wind up paying the same as teams with better QBs. So in the latter, where you have 8 guys making that much, you may have the Chiefs paying Patrick Mahomes the same thing that the Falcons, Cowboys, and Rams are paying Ryan, Dak, and Goff, respectively. If you're the Chiefs, that's a HUGE win. You're paying a better guy the same as other teams are paying their lesser guys. A definite competitive advantage. And the more guys that wind up making max, the better for them it is. So if it's the former, and 18 guys make that threshold, you have Mahomes making the same thing as Bridgewater or Alex Smith.

I think the NBA has a few things in place to counter this. Higher caps for more tenured players, adjustments for MVPs, all-NBA, etc. But inevitably you're just going to have several guys demand the max and it'll be a value advantage still for the best guys that get that max deal, as opposed to the lesser guys that do. If the max winds up being like, $25M, a guy who would've made $35M isn't just going to suddenly say okay, I guess that translates to like $20M, now, and accept even less. They're going to demand the max.

[DannyB]

43 minutes ago, diamondbull424 said:

With Flacco at QB they likely win again in 2006, let alone a chance at a Lamar Jackson top 5 QB.

2006? Is that a typo?

 

44 minutes ago, diamondbull424 said:

It’ll be an arms race for QB talent before likely pooling into an arms race for the best LT, IDL, edge, or corner talent. Then every other position would be left settling for the proverbial scraps unless they’re true difference makers that go beyond positional value.

Until depth comes into play. Start going too top-heavy with your contracts and ignoring the rest of your roster, your season is over with one or two injuries.

 

48 minutes ago, diamondbull424 said:

The NFL isn’t dictating who each team can sign or how much they can sign for, thus it’s an open concept and free. The presence of a cap at best makes it a mixed market with minimal oversight. 

Well here's where the OP's scenario gets a little confusing. Is he saying that 40 million dollars is kind of like a max contract in the NBA? Like, that's the upper limit of what.a team is allowed to spend on a player? Or is he saying teams are spending all they want, however much they want, and you have to decide who you're willing to spend at LEAST 40 million on?

[JAF-N72EX]

13 hours ago, JaguarCrazy2832 said:

If all players were currently FAs and you started from scratch with todays projected cap(roughly 200M) who would be worth a contract of 4 years, 160M(130M guaranteed) assuming guarantees are:

Year 1 & 2: Fully guaranteed

Year 3: 30M

Year 4: 20M 

With the cap increasing year over year it helps but 40M a year is still a huge chunk of money for 1 player(presumably a QB)

Thoughts?

Weird question. If all players were free agents or just QB's?

It seems like you are only making this question dependent on whether or not the QB is making 40 Mil a year and if you can build around them while ignoring other factors. Because It also depends on WHICH QB is making that much, AND how much other players on the team on this fictional team are making, AND also how all of those contracts are constructed. 

If everyone is a free agent then this changes the hypothetical scenario drastically without knowing which teams get what players at what price.

[JAF-N72EX]

(Because I believe I know where this question was driven from) 

If the Chiefs pay Mahomes 40/year then hell yeah it's worth it. Because not only have you already got your money back from rookie pay scale by having consecutive winning seasons and a trophy to show for it, but this is also giving you the best chance to get another trophy and be competitive for another 4 years and not many teams can say that. 

 

[JAF-N72EX]

8 hours ago, wackywabbit said:

"Since the 2011 CBA introduced the rookie wage scale, only twice has a QB on a wage-scale rookie contract won the SB. That's 2/9. Far more than 2/9 of starting QBs were on a 2011 or later rookie contract during that interval. Ergo, having a QB on a wage-scale rookie contract is bad."** Edited to clarify post-CBA rookie contracts

Get back to me when the Patriots anomaly can be completely removed from the conversation. Edit: how many teams have been held back from winning the SB because of the Patriots?

Edited May 27, 2020 by JustAnotherFan

[DannyB]

38 minutes ago, JustAnotherFan said:

Get back to me when the Patriots anomaly can be completely removed from the conversation. Edit: how many teams have been held back from winning the SB because of the Patriots?

Yeah, that's a HUGE factor for me. Any sort of trends or team-building philosophies have been completely thrown off by the last 15-20 years. It may very well be that you need a $40 million quarterback.

[Kirill]

14 hours ago, SpacemanSpiff said:

No one

Have you been living under a rock the past two years?

[wackywabbit]

3 hours ago, JustAnotherFan said:

Get back to me when the Patriots anomaly can be completely removed from the conversation. Edit: how many teams have been held back from winning the SB because of the Patriots?

That... that was exactly what the point of my post. You literally took the sarcastic example of why using SB winners as the all-or-nothing model for success is dumb out of the post mocking that.

11 hours ago, wackywabbit said:

I really do not care about ANY "no team/only X team(s) has/have won a super bowl with ___" fact. That's incredibly narrow sampling. Also the league changes too fast for that group to accumulate any meaningful size and still be relevant.  So save those facts for people who already agree with your thought process.

It's a flat out worse measure than correlating with wins in general. And guess what correlated with wins? Having a top 10 QB. Guess what doesn't? 40M cap space.

"Since the 2011 CBA introduced the rookie wage scale, only twice has a QB on a wage-scale rookie contract won the SB. That's 2/9. Far more than 2/9 of starting QBs were on a 2011 or later rookie contract during that interval. Ergo, having a QB on a wage-scale rookie contract is bad."** Edited to clarify post-CBA rookie contracts

 

[Elky]

Mahomes is the single most overrated player the league.

[Kirill]

2 hours ago, Elky said:

Mahomes is the single most overrated player the league.

And yet if Dee Ford doesn't line up five yards offsides the kid would've dethroned the GOAT and been a champion in his first year. But that loss humbled him and he worked hard at leadership in the off-season and now he's also the best leader of all time for his age.

No idea how you're gathering that he's overrated. That's like saying Michael Jordan is overrated. Up until Mahomes went bezerk in the playoffs nearly everyone on here had the Ravens as the heavy SB favorites in the AFC. But then a blatantly obvious reality set in: we have HIM. And the other teams don't. That 3rd and 15 play in the SB? Mahomes made the play call. Kid is lightyears ahead of where anyone else has ever been at his age.

 

Edited May 27, 2020 by Kirill

[lancerman]

7 hours ago, JustAnotherFan said:

Get back to me when the Patriots anomaly can be completely removed from the conversation. Edit: how many teams have been held back from winning the SB because of the Patriots?

Patriots had a QB taking discounts and he didn’t win on his most lucrative seasons. So.....