General Tso Posted March 19, 2023 Share Posted March 19, 2023 Much has been made about how a team with a QB on a rookie contract can be a "cheat code" or allows you to put a competitive team around them. I wanted to examine this a little. The rookie wage scale started in 2011. Since then, rookie QBs made fractions of what a market rate QB would make. Since 2012 (sophomore year of a 2011 rookie QB), here are the teams that made a AFC/NFC championship game with a rookie QB contract according to the new CBA. I decided to pick the championship game as a bigger sample size compared to just Super Bowl. 2012 SF 2013 SF 2013 SEA 2014 SEA 2014 IND 2015 CAR (I was trying to research this, Carolina fans can correct me if Cam's cap hit was the 5th year option or if his extension already started) 2017 JAX 2017 PHI 2018 LAR 2018 KC 2019 KC 2020 KC 2020 BUF 2021 CIN 2021 KC 2022 PHI 2022 CIN So a couple observations here Tom F'ing Brady screws up the data here so much LOL 39% of the teams that made it to a championship game had a rookie QB contract. If we did Super Bowl only teams, the number goes up to 45% The teams that were on veteran QB contracts generally had HOF'ers (Brady, Manning, Rodgers etc). But there were also interesting outliers like the 2017 Vikings with Case Keenum. I think the title question is mostly for those teams that are on the fence and not sure what to do with their QB. This question gets brought up a lot in Detroit because Goff has 2 years left on his deal and the front office has to decide whether to extend him to a market rate contract or not. If you have a HOF QB on your roster, there's no question whether you extend him, but what if you don't? What if your QB is a veteran but not quite "elite"? What do you think, is this "The Way" or do you think non-HOF veteran QBs can "overcome" their cap hits and get you to the promise land? Is there not enough data to say one way or the other? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fresh Prince Posted March 19, 2023 Share Posted March 19, 2023 Brady is such an outlier because he also took team friendly deals when it came to QB contracts. Have your qb marry a Supermodel. That’s the real way 9 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wackywabbit Posted March 19, 2023 Share Posted March 19, 2023 32 minutes ago, Fresh Prince said: Brady is such an outlier because he also took team friendly deals when it came to QB contracts. Have your qb marry a Supermodel. That’s the real way Tom Brady averaged a $32.6M cap hit in his 3 years with the Bucs. We need to stop this narrative that he played for free because he cared so much about winning. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soko Posted March 19, 2023 Share Posted March 19, 2023 Has less to do with QBs overcoming anything and more to do with team building. SBs require some combo of smart drafting, value on FA signings, and luck. Having an expensive QB just narrows those margins. It means you just need to be that much better (luckier) with your drafts, you need to get that much more value on those FA signings, you need to be that much luckier avoiding the injury bug. There’s no single way of doing it. The caveat is that building teams that are so dominant in multiple facets are just impossible to keep together for very long. Re-loading those teams and making it sustainable is the hardest thing to do in football from a FO standpoint IMO. Harder than finding a franchise QB. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BetterCallSaul Posted March 19, 2023 Share Posted March 19, 2023 If you can swing it, 100%. With how much these QBs are making, you either have to be a top 2-3 QB or a rookie. The idea of paying very good QBs half your freakin salary needs to go away. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jakuvious Posted March 19, 2023 Share Posted March 19, 2023 IMO, if the idea is that the sole goal is to win the superbowl, the answer is you either want a QB on a rookie contract, or you need a hall of fame caliber QB. If you have anything in between(so, Kirk Cousins, Derek Carr, Daniel Jones, Dak Prescott, etc.), you have virtually no chance. If you're paying a mid-tier QB, you need to be near perfect at coaching and roster construction, and you need to hope you don't run into a team in the playoffs that is as good as you at coaching and roster building, but does have one of the cheaper and/or greater QBs. 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wackywabbit Posted March 19, 2023 Share Posted March 19, 2023 35 minutes ago, Jakuvious said: IMO, if the idea is that the sole goal is to win the superbowl, the answer is you either want a QB on a rookie contract, or you need a hall of fame caliber QB. If you have anything in between(so, Kirk Cousins, Derek Carr, Daniel Jones, Dak Prescott, etc.), you have virtually no chance. If you're paying a mid-tier QB, you need to be near perfect at coaching and roster construction, and you need to hope you don't run into a team in the playoffs that is as good as you at coaching and roster building, but does have one of the cheaper and/or greater QBs. I disagree with "virtually no chance". All of those QBs could be highly paid and win a SB in non-far-fetched scenarios. HOF caliber QBs could go their careers without a SB ring. Teams with tons of cap space, even 100M more with rollover years end up being totally irrelevant too, but no one talks about that. These variables with team construction is still just about shifting the percentages. I personally think the cap space hit of a QB is the most overrated ones in terms of the amount of discourse it occupies. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fresh Prince Posted March 19, 2023 Share Posted March 19, 2023 1 hour ago, wackywabbit said: Tom Brady averaged a $32.6M cap hit in his 3 years with the Bucs. We need to stop this narrative that he played for free because he cared so much about winning. I was talking more with the pats. He definitely chased the money with the bucs 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MWil23 Posted March 20, 2023 Share Posted March 20, 2023 I think the QB Rookie contract thing isn’t necessarily the answer so much as with the tiered rookie contracts as opposed to those old ridiculously expensive contracts guys like Bradford got would set you back 5 years if you missed whereas now you can basically just fold on a guy after a year or two. See: Rosen, Haskins, Zach Wilson. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kingseanjohn Posted March 20, 2023 Share Posted March 20, 2023 6 hours ago, wackywabbit said: Tom Brady averaged a $32.6M cap hit in his 3 years with the Bucs. We need to stop this narrative that he played for free because he cared so much about winning. He was just prepping for that divorce. Super Bowl win was a bonus. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raves Posted March 20, 2023 Share Posted March 20, 2023 The rookie QB contract is only the way if you overpay for the QB after his rookie deal. Mahomes just won, but he's also one of the right QBs that wasn't actually overpaid. If a mid QB wants to break the 40 mil range, you had better be damn sure the rest of your team at key expensive areas are on rookie contracts that can make up for it. Using the Saints as an example, they have a few expensive vets, including a paid QB, but they also have a lot of good players at positions that cost a lot of money on rookie deals still. They will have a 1-2 year window with the cap rising for the guys drafted this year that can hopefully step up and make a run before Carr's contract becomes a point of contention where it would hold them back rather than still giving them a chance to win with a mid-QB. Daniel Jones' contract for a "mid-QB" will be a hindrance plain and simple unless he continues to take a step, which let's hope the coach is good enough to make that happen as otherwise they are screwed till they can move on from him. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raves Posted March 20, 2023 Share Posted March 20, 2023 11 hours ago, MWil23 said: I think the QB Rookie contract thing isn’t necessarily the answer so much as with the tiered rookie contracts as opposed to those old ridiculously expensive contracts guys like Bradford got would set you back 5 years if you missed whereas now you can basically just fold on a guy after a year or two. See: Rosen, Haskins, Zach Wilson. I think this is a big one. You can recover quicker from a failed high draft pick QB than before. The real issue is if you paid a premium for moving up for that QB, which then it extends the issue because you not only missed on the pick, but you while sucking you don't have the chance to actually rectify it as you don't have your high pick to try again. Man I really hope the Panthers blow this pick and take AR rather than Stroud/Young. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Posted March 20, 2023 Share Posted March 20, 2023 It's not "the way" but it is probably the most accessible way. Superstar QBs are unicorns. And if you don't have those, you need a really, really strong roster. And it's a lot easier to get a really strong roster when you essentially have 20 million extra to spend because you have a cheap QB. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scar988 Posted March 20, 2023 Share Posted March 20, 2023 Once the cap starts reaching $250-275M, it won't matter about rookie deal QBs or not. Because that $50M/year QB is still leaving you over $200M/year to build a team with. If you can't build a competitive team with $200M, your scouting department sucks. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Posted March 20, 2023 Share Posted March 20, 2023 16 minutes ago, scar988 said: Once the cap starts reaching $250-275M, it won't matter about rookie deal QBs or not. Because that $50M/year QB is still leaving you over $200M/year to build a team with. If you can't build a competitive team with $200M, your scouting department sucks. You do realize that other players also get more expensive over time too, right? 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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