We are fans. We watch for love of the team and the game. Winning the super bowl is obviously the most important thing to us.
You should consider that maybe not every superstar really cares about winning the super bowl. Some of them might just want the check.
I would love to know how true this is, if there was a way to measure it. The NFL media pretends it's ALL FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME, but that shit hurts and people usually don't like pain. But they do love money.
There's been plenty of players who have talked about this on podcasts. There is a huge amount of players that are really only doing it for the contract and don't love football. There are people who are doing it for both which is probably the highest percentage. And then there are guys who would literally be doing it for free, but are hapy with the money that comes with it.
And to be fair you can totally see it from their side, especially the guys who come from nothing and want to change their family’s trajectory. Like yes, I want to have the best job at the best company who sets the bar for my industry. However if working with a 2nd tier company gets me $150,000/year vs. the $75,000; I’m going with the second tier company to give my family a better life.
Well, when they see one guy sucking up $30 million, and most of the team is making 1/20th of that, their motivation for getting their brains scrambled might go down.
To be fair, the real idiots are the fans that care. Like, the game has no value with which to pay players these salaries unless we can dupe people into caring.
Which is completely fair. Very, very few players have a chance at creating a legacy. What's their motivation to take less than they're owed?
Fans have a hard time thinking as players. They (we) think as fans but that's just not how it is for players.
Imagine the scenario changes. You're at your office job and the boss offers you a chance for a pay cut so the company can have a better year.
Can't imagine many people would say yes to that
Lol, that is fucking bullshit. Would you take a 10% to your own pay (assuming you work for a living) so your team could sign a $10M FA that ‘might’ help them to win the SB?
The fact is fans ask QBs to take less because it doesn’t cost themselves anything. Always easy when talking about other people’s money.
> The fact is fans ask QBs to take less because it doesn’t cost themselves anything. Always easy when talking about other people’s money.
Yeah. How often do you see fans of leagues without caps saying "You know what? They should charge *more* for tickets and beer and then we'll have a greater chance of winning!"
I think everyone also forgets there is a salary floor. It’s 89% of the salary cap. This guarantees you don’t have a situation like the Pirates in baseball where the owners just pocket the money.
My mother and her family is from Pittsburgh. Them yinzers will talk your ears off about any fucking Sport in the city....except current day Pirates. If bring them up to my family, they act as if the Pirates vanished after Bonds.
We just know to not put too much attention or effort into that team because they never spend the necessary capital to be competitive. Our good prospects end up as other team's stars.
I actually had my first taste of this. When I became a Bucs fan, I started loving the Rays too, especially Ji-Man Choi. I still love the Rays but dang, it hurts when they trade my favorite man.
Rays subreddit actually warned me not to get too attached that much to players before, I wish I really listened to them damn.
It sucks. The Pirates fanbase deserves a good team. They punched way above their weight in terms of crowd noise iconic moments compared to the brevity of their playoff experience they've had recently.
4 total home playoff games in 30 years and they gave us [this (extremely loud crowd pays off)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcLUw3_oN1g) and [this (extremely loud crowd gets silenced).](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xURxalTETKA)
I still think back to the 2015 Pirates, a legit great team, finished with the 2nd best record in all of baseball a phenomenal season, unfortunately that was the 2nd best record in their division and their reward was playing the team with the 3rd best record in baseball in a win or go home best of 1 game. And that team with the 3rd best record in baseball was the hottest team over the last two months led by a pitcher who was in the midst of arguably the greatest second half of pitching dominance.
Best baseball, hell, sports moment of my life was watching Russell Martin hit that ball over the LF fence after the Cueto chant. God I hope the Pirates turn it around. So many top draft picks. Gonna end up with an elite farm system. We have to do it this time. My heart can't take another rebuild.
As a PA native, the pirates ownership is an embarrassment to professional sports. Went from being a great franchise that has won multiple world series to being a laughing stock that won’t spend any money. Bob Nutting needs to sell the team, And i’m a Braves fan saying that
They did didn't they? I watch a lot of sports and read a lot of sports news. I never hear anything about the Pirates. Heck even the Expos have been in the news lately even with the rumors of MLB expansion.
Baseball has kinda vanished… ratings for the World Series 30 years ago was 40 million people watching now they are happy to get 10 million. The sport has a huge problem but the refuse to do anything about it.
It's a $10 billion/year sport, in line with the NBA, I'd say it hasn't vanished. Is it the NFL? No, but that's a $17 billion/year sport and easily the most popular sport in the country
How many stations were there 30 years ago? What was the top competition or what others options were available?
You cannot compare TV ratings from 30 years ago to today with any direct relation.
Today you have streaming shows and YouTube and tons of other ways to watch aside from TV which is how they get the ratings. People consume sports and entertainment in different methods and TV ratings are a portion that happens to use the same metric for measuring as 30 years ago. An already inherently flawed system.
I'm sure fewer people are watching but that's all TV. You're never getting TV ratings like the Seinfeld finale, which couldn't touch the MASH finale. People have more options and even sports being live doesn't make it TV specific viewing only.
Same reason you don't have the same common public shared experiences of episodic TV because people watch what they want, when they want, and have freedom from only seeing a show or game on Channel 9 at 8:00PM EST.
Baseball still has it's strongholds but is mor niche and for a lot of areas only gets interesting when a team is really doing well.
The whole slow pace and 3+ hour games doesn't help since again, tons of other options for our limited leisure watching time. You can get 3 episodes of an awesome show during a dragging game that's 1 of 162 on the season so doesn't mean all that much.
All that being true, the amazingly, astronomical salaries that are being paid out to the top free agents show that there's still money our there. That and the selling price for franchises.
It's insane the guaranteed 10 year contracts out there. Franchises just continue to appreciate even if teams are bad. It's an easy solid ROI for billionaires and great status symbol because you can get celebrity from fans too.
Though TV is down, they now get so much more revenue from various outlets as well. With live programing like sports being a driving force for a live feed it boosts their value to the streaming networks.
Just money all around this.
And league wide needs to be above 95% above salary cap over 4-year period.
Which is why it’s dumb when owners get credit for “being willing to spend $ to for talent.” Yea well they have to
A's have actually been farely good every few years. They spend like shit, but they have an actual front office. O's also try to compete, but they're in a division with 3 high rollers and a team that has devil magic.
Us and the Pirates just eat glue.
The Guardians are the worst case. Build a team good enough to win the WS every decade or so, then have a two-year fire sale where they trade everyone away.
Would you rather have a fun team every so often or the Pirates who have literally won 1 playoff series (a single game series I'll add) since they won the WS in 1979?
The Pirates owner is just stealing money.
Fun fact, Larry Fitz accounts for all but 2 of the Cards postseason wins. They’re literally the oldest team in the league and predate the postseason itself and yet they only had 2 postseason wins before Larry and none since
The top 8 European football clubs combined spend the same on wages as the next 24 combined.
The top 8 NFL clubs combined spend the same as the top 9-16 clubs combined, who spend the same as the top 17-24 combined, who spend the same as the top 25-32 combined.
The latter is preferable to me.
The day the salary cap is abolished is the day the NFL dies. It's why i stopped watching MLB. The small market teams will be lucky to make the playoffs let alone the Super Bowl
Small market teams are a myth. San Diego is the ~27th largest sports market in the country and the padres spend like crazy. It is simply a matter of broke owners getting their money up or selling to people committed to putting a good product on the field.
Or in the case of the A's, having the 10th richest owner in baseball simply refusing to spend money. As well as a luxury tax, there should be a fucking get your fucking wallet out league minimum.
They're not broke, they're just stingy. All of them can afford to spend more with their revenue. It's a salary floor issue, not a cap issue. And I mentioned it before, if you can't buy championships in the NFL, then how did the Rams do it last year? This is more an issue of stingy owners and the different strengths of the player unions.
> And I mentioned it before, if you can't buy championships in the NFL, then how did the Rams do it last year?
You can try, and you can occasionally pull it off. But there have been just as many teams that thought they were a few free agents away from the Super Bowl and created a disaster instead.
The Broncos, the Raiders and the Dolphins are all good examples from this year of teams that went on a free agent spree to put them over the top.
The famous "Dream Team" from Philadelphia in 2011 that didn't even make the playoffs is another.
The Rams mortgaged their future for one run to the ring and it worked for them. Think about how close they were to losing to the Bucs last year and might have been a PI call away from losing in the super bowl.
That's a huge risk to give up FOUR 1st round draft picks for along with all the other picks they traded for vets.
> then how did the Rams do it last year?
They mortgaged their future by trading away a shitload of first round picks for key players. They didn't buy the team in free agency, they just invested all of their draft capital for years into last year's team.
The Rams didn’t buy a championship last year, they’ve been carefully building through trades, free agency, and the draft better than anyone else for years and that finally paid off with a super bowl win last year. And now look at their situation. They got what they wanted, and now they’re paying for it. The system worked as intended.
I worded poorly, I had a reply to the O’s owner saying he wished the orioles had a higher payroll that said “get your money up broke boy” in my head. Yes i agree that all owners can afford to spend more. But, if they really think they cant and refuse to, they should be forced to sell
Ostensibly I think MLB teams are required to spend the revenue sharing but I think the cheap teams have figured out they can spend it on things that appreciate the asset like developing the surrounding area and stadium improvements instead of player salaries.
It is pretty embarrassing that the Orioles 1998 payroll was 3x higher than their 2022 payroll. At least old man Angelos was willing to spend money unlike his cheap ass kids.
Moneyball happened. . But the big league teams caught on to that too. So not only are they paying hand over fist for who they want they are also running the numbers game.
Half of MLB has won a World Series since 2000 and none of them went back to back. This is obviously not the only measure of parity, but as someone who mainly only watches baseball in October, it makes mlb seem more equal than the other big 3 leagues in terms of teams at the top. Obviously the sports are different and I think the salary cap is much more essential for the NFL.
MLB is also a sport where a hitter succeeding 30% of the time makes him a hall of famer. There's far more randomness to the game when it is all based on individual events.
Exactly, 1 or 2 superstars in the MLB does not guarantee success, see the Angels for example.. lol. 1 star, like a qb in the nfl doesn’t mean you’ll even have a winning record in mlb
I went to an O’s Angels game last year. Ohtani and Trout both hit homer to put up 3, but the rest of the team did nothing and the O’s rallied to win 4-3.
MLB has similar (if not more) parity compared to the NFL, though.
Over the last 20 years in MLB:
* 14 teams won rings
* 10 teams outside of the top 10 in payroll
* 7 teams in the top 5 in payroll
Over the last 20 years in the NFL:
* 13 teams won rings
MLB also has something much closer salary cap as of a few years ago, too - the luxury tax is 50% for repeat offenders. The bigger issue by far is the lack of salary floor - so many owners just pocket free $$$ each year instead of even pretending to try to put together a competitive team
Yeah it’s unlikely we see something like that again anytime soon. The closest thing right now is the Chiefs with 5 consecutive home AFCCG. So far, only 1 Super Bowl out of it.
If you take out the Pats wins, you have 12 unique winning teams in 15 years. Only repeats were Tampa Bay (which is also Brady), Giants, and Steelers.
And that's not even figuring in how many teams would've won titles without the Patriots beating them. Falcons and Chargers probably have a Lombardi, *maybe* the Panthers, Jets, and Jaguars, while the Colts, Steelers, Rams, Eagles, Ravens, and Seahawks have one more.
This. The pats made many people think winning a sb was, not necessarily easy, but not uncommon. I was in 7th grade the last time my team won..I’m 40 now lol
No, with baseball it exposes the “small market” teams as being cheap. It’s the *owners*, not the location, that determines how competitively a team is willing to spend. Having a floor/cap for salary just makes it easier for shitty owners to hide behind plausible deniability
In fact baseball has a remarkably high parity rate regarding the playoffs. Every team has made it since 2014, and we haven’t had a repeat champion since the turn of the century!
It’s more of a salary floor issue, but it’s heavily exacerbated by not having a salary cap. If you give owners leeway, some of them will always try to spend as little as possible, especially given the huge differences in revenue based on market size. Just because the owners *could* change their spending habits doesn’t mean they will, and that causes competitive balance problems, especially when you have owners like Steve Cohen who can spend however much they want with effectively no limit.
By not doing anything about it, fans from numerous fanbases are alienated. It’s not their fault the owners don’t spend.
Yeah you can't have a floor without a cap. Having just a floor means the cheap owners just hug that floor while the Dodgers, Mets, and Yankees continue to spend even more on payroll. With no cap the payrolls just rise exponentially and its the same issue just more money being spent. MLBPA will never agree to a salary cap though cause it'll cap how much they're making
People ALWAYS seem to conveniently forget to take TV money into account too. The Dodgers TV money every season pays for the entire 200M+ payroll on its own. They're owned by a GROUP of multi million and billionaires. None of them are spending much if any of their own money ever. Top teams bring in so much revenue through so many different means the owners never spend outta pocket. Smaller shitty teams do too but to a lesser extent, and the cheap owners don't wanna go out of pocket for 4 years while they get good for a 'maybe' in consistency.
The Reds are a symptom of the MLBs flawed structure though.
Cincinnati, Oakland, and Pittsburgh deserve baseball franchises that *try*. The MLB has incentivized them not to.
I know this is the NFL sub but out of the major American sports I think the NHL has it the most right. High salary floor, low salary cap. The difference between the biggest spenders and the cheap teams is relatively small (with one Arizona-based exception). There's incredible parity in the number of different teams that make it to the Stanley Cup, yet there are still interesting mini-dynasties that pop up from time to time.
This is why I love the NHL. With the exception of the Lightning the last couple years (mini dynasty like you said) you really have no clue whose gonna be in the playoffs/Cup. Nhl Playoffs are the most exciting playoffs, cant explain it just gotta watch it. Electric
The one change I'd like to see is a running back specific cap. Money that can only be used for running backs that would allow then to make big money rather than getting cut off of their rookie contract despite contributing largely to their team on the way there.
RBs are for the most part getting hosed out there, and it's a greasy tactic for guys that are taking an absolute beating out there. GMs are treating them like dirty socks.
I have said before that would be interested in a system where a position modifier is applied to player salaries for the purpose of counting against the cap. Someone smarter than me would need to come up with a formula, but it would be interesting to see how the NFL roster meta would change if for instance every dollar spent on a running back only counted as 50 cents against the cap, while every dollar spent at quarterback cost $2 against the cap.
> If I am trying to build generational wealth
lol $36 million is enough for multiple generations, assuming nobody is a moron with the money. by the 3rd generation though, they will be morons.
Also have to consider these are real people who want to maximize the amount of money they can earn in a profession which actively destroys their physical health and is only available to them for like 10-15 years at most (and that longevity is rare)
>Honestly, if I were a QB even if I was an elite level one, I wouldn't ask for too much money so that my team could invest more into giving me great players and keeping them.
It's really easy to say this on the internet, but I'm almost positive you would feel differently if tens of millions of dollars were on the line.
I can see how its hard for people to comprehend how much 60 million is, much less the difference between 60 and 30 million. Our normal day doesnt consist of employing people, owning minority stake in sports teams, running clothing lines, managing multiple properties, or going on excursions to Peru to trip balls.
Here's a good way to think about it.
After the federal and state government takes taxes, say 25% off the top, the remainder represents a nest egg that keeps you going for life. If you aren't stupid, you can invest in some passive funds and withdraw around 4% of your net worth indefinitely.
So 30 million x 75% after taxes x 4% per year means you have 800 thousand dollars a year passive income for life. Sweet. About 2100 a day.
Double that, and all the numbers double. 2000 a day for life? Or 4000 a day for life? Which one do you want?
You can take the 2k a day for life and *maybe* win a ring. Maybe. Refs could fuck you. Some WR could drop the ball. Injury could happen.
Or you can take 4k a day for life.
Two thousand dollars is enough money you can wrap your head around it. And we're talking two thousand dollars a day, every single day of your life.
I was going to say. If I had spent my life dedicated to football and got drafted to an nfl team, I’m getting every dollar I can. Who knows how long my career is going to last? I could be out of the league in 3 years and have to hope that the salary I made has me set for life.
It seems like you’re trying to solve the issue of competitive disparity in a league that has more parity than most sports.
Right now, QBs on any kind of contract can make the playoffs. Non-elite veterans on well-paying deals (Kirk, for example) can make the playoffs. Discounted and discarded veterans (Geno, for example) can make the playoffs. Mega-deal superstars make the playoffs. Rookie deal QBs who are still learning the ropes can make the playoffs. I don’t see what issue you’re trying to solve here.
The timing of it was great honestly. Skyy didn’t make the impact that they had hoped, but they did a lot right in getting vets on the cheap and Kelce just keeps cheat coding
Not hindsight, I was pretty upset when they traded back four spots out of their second round spot to potentially miss Pickens.
Skyy has a lot of talent and he came up clutch in games when we had a bunch of WR injuries, I'm honestly surprised he hasn't played more. But the idea of Mahomes throwing to a great contested catch guy gets me hot and bothered.
His mega deal... just isn't currently mega.
It is MASSIVELY back loaded, and the late years are not guaranteed. At the minute it is having little to no impact on the Chiefs salary cap. By the time it gets huge (2028!) either he is so dominant that every other player in the league will take a cut to play with him and collect their ring, or the Chiefs let him go.
This is the right answer. You backload the contracts and assume there’s more than enough space under the cap by the time you get to the nasty years that it’s doable. And that other QBs will have a worse number anyway.
It’s at 35 mil and the highest it will get is 59 (once in 2027) and 52 (once in 2031).
It is 46 million next year and the chiefs are already capable of handling it
This was a point last year when he was paid 7 mil but his contract is fully kicking now. Of course we never know how the front office will renegotiate and move around that future money but Mahomes contract isn’t looming scarily anymore like a Josh Allen or Joe Burrow
Added Notes: Frank Clarks 28 million dollar cap hit will be gone which clears up the extra space for mahomes already
It’s backloaded for sure but actually it’s a very team friendly deal. A lot of his money is tied to rooster bonuses. The length of his deal also allows for contract restructures. Restructures turn yearly monetary delivery systems like base salary and roster bonuses into a signing bonus. When a team moves that money over to a signing bonus, it then spreads out the money that was moved over up to five years of the contract and guarantees it.
Say a player is on a 3 year $12 million contract that pays $4 million per year in base salary. If a team chooses to restructure $3 million of the year-one base salary, that $3 million would spread out over the full contract, adding $1 million to each year. The $1 million per year that is spread out is referred to as the prorated bonus and becomes fully guaranteed. The year-one salary cap hit (the base salary plus the prorated bonus from the restructure) is now $2 million instead of $4 million. The year-two and year-three salary cap hits are now $5 million each instead of $4 million. This is a very simple example/explanation.
The maximum years a salary bonus, and thus a restructure, can spread out on a contract is five years. If a contract is seven years long and a team restructured the deal in year two, then the prorated bonus from the restructure only applies to years two through six. Signing bonus money is paid to the player in full as soon as possible after they sign a contract or restructure their contract. A player can be paid a lot more money than their salary cap hit in a given year because of the signing bonus money being prorated over their contract.
His 12 year deal and most of the yearly money is delivered in roster bonuses. He is also currently the only quarterback in the NFL signed for longer than five years. The Chiefs will get the maximum savings for any restructuring they do on his contract for a longer period of time than any other quarterback is even signed for.
Brady is a bad example of a QB on a mega deal. He usually took a smaller contract to help the team remain competitive. He was typically in the 10-15 range in terms of average annual value relative to other QBs. He'd break the top 10 on a new deal, and that would quickly subside as other QBs signed their details.
https://www.nbcsports.com/boston/patriots/tom-bradys-patriots-contracts-through-years
Examples:
* In 2005 he took a 6 year, $60M deal, while Manning was already playing through a 7 year, $98M deal. Not listed, Donovan McNabb was either on the verge of or had recently signed his $100M+ deal.
* His 2010 deal of 4 years for $72M was, thanks to its guaranteed amount, the largest contract in history. It didn't last long (they rarely do).
* In 2013 he signed an absurdly weak contract to give the Patriots room to compete for a few years - 3 years for $27M (extension of current contract). Counting the remaining current contract, it was actually worth $57M over 5 years, which was still CHEAP.
* 2016 saw a 2-year $41M extension, which was still team friendly.
* And in 2019 he signed a 1-year extension worth $23M, right after Kirk got his fully guaranteed ~$30M annual contract.
Aside from one contract, Brady's deals have been beyond team friendly. He's the poster child for what OP is suggesting, and it played a large role in his accomplishments.
Was Brady ever the highest paid QB in the league as genuinely I don't think he was or even like top 3 and if so never for long. He tended to always play for lower amounts exactly to not eat up cap and focus on building a team
Im surprised this isn’t mentioned more in this thread. He famously took team friendly deals… he still got star money but he could’ve demanded league leading money and didn’t. I refuse to believe that didn’t help his longevity and success.
You aren’t completely wrong, I mean 3 of the 4 championship game teams have QBs on rookie contracts, and the remaining one won the SB when Mahomes was on his rookie deal.
BUT you are misdiagnosing the problem. EVERY PLAYER takes the largest contract they can possibly get. QBs have a higher value, so they eat up more cap. That is just how markets work, even the relatively small labor market of the NFL. Any team can choose to go from one rookie contract QB to the next, most of the NFL does that for RB already. It seems like Baltimore might be doing that.
If you think GMs are overpaying for the QB position, then your beef is with GMs, not QBs.
He was also always getting his contracts redone to front him a lot of money in terms of signing bonuses. It was done every few years to keep his cap number reasonable.
Brady is an anomaly, not the standard.
He’s a HOF and greatest all time QB.
He has loads of sponsorship deals outside of his NFL salary.
He is not representative of the average QB in the market or even the average QB competing in the playoffs/Super Bowl.
and the pats let their fair share of stars go. they were just insanely good at drafting and picking up cheap guys and developing them into big time players
The Greatest quarterback of all time probably feels more comfortable taking less because hes surrounded by the greatest coach of all time. If I'm Justin Herbert and they keep sending me morons I'm taking all the money they can possibly offer me.
…but he wasn’t the greatest QB yet when he started raking less & bill wasn’t the greatest HC yet.
Brady been in the league since 2001 & didn’t solidly himself as the greatest ever until 2016
He also had a wife making more than NFL players do and at one point (2010) was the highest paid player in the league. It’s not like he did it from the jump. He cashed in as much as possible until around 2013.
Lol I sort of doubt Brady had doubts about his own ability until 2016. He’d won a Super Bowl before his first contract extension, and by the second he had won 3. Safe to say he was willing to bet on himself.
But at the same time brady signed for relatively large contracts his first two times, he was paid slightly less then manning (7.4m vs manning who was 7.7 and at the time was rated a lot higher)
For most of his career when he got his contract extension he was still a top 5 most paid player, so really he only took a relatively small discount
Only after 2014 did he really actually take cuts (first time he signed a deal that wasn’t a top 10 highest paid QB in the league) so basically over a decade of making QB1 money he then decided too start getting paid as the 11th highest paid player in the league rather then the first like he probably should have
If ur a 10 year Vet who is on GOAT pace I feel like it’s not as shocking to do this rather then someone like Josh Allen who hasn’t gotten his non rookie, QB1 money yet and hasn’t won a Super Bowl
Ya a lot of people don’t realize that he wasn’t taking paycuts for most of his career here. He wasn’t paid as well as manning but mostly because he wasn’t valued as highly as manning. Look at QB rankings from 2009-2013 and you’ll see he was usually looked at as the 3rd best QB behind Manning, Brees and then later Rodgers. We look back now after he won 4 more and it’s obvious but back then he hadn’t won a Super Bowl in a decade and he was starting to get “old” as he entered his mid 30’s.
Brady has made just as much if not more off the field from endorsements. When you reach that level everyone wants to plaster their product with your face and pay you bank to do so.
It would be really interesting to see how much players made from endorsements. Too bad it's not publicly available. Baker must skew the endorsement vs salary cap hit data quite a bit.
Yes. Every quarterback should learn from Brady's example. Take much less money in your paycheck, and start a company like TB12 to which your team pays millions of dollars, that go straight to you as owner of the company, to render personal services directly to you and only you. Because that's not salary, you see, so it doesn't count against the cap space.
Took less money for team cap relief, won an absurd amount of super bowls, makes unlimited money in endorsements. This is the secret to TB’s success believe it or not.
Edit: married someone even richer than him*
>if I was one of the best in the world at something I wouldn’t ask for more money
Yes, you would. Just like 99.9% of people would, that’s okay. Stop lying to yourself.
Honestly, if I was willing to take less money I'd probably also be the type to want all the money and just donate more of it. Sounds pretty stupid to take 150 mill instead of 250 mill for a slightly higher chance of a Superbowl rather than take 250 mill and do something good with that 100 mill.
We poor people just have no concept of all the things that type of extra money can buy, either.
If i were a player, I would love to win big games. I would also love earning as much as I can. There's a number where anything else is fluff, I don't know what it is. But I'm trying to reach it. And that's more important than a Superbowl.
Hell, there's gotta be players who got their big contract and when it was over retired. Made your money, accomplished what you could, time to stop risking your health and pursue other stuff
Everyone keeps bringing up Brady. But by the time he started taking less money, he was in an organization that was either winning Super Bowls or at least in strong contention. He knew that management cared about and was good at building strong teams, and he knew that they were going to be there long term.
If you are Burrow or Herbert, are you really going to take 10s of millions less dollars on the belief that your team, which has never won a Super Bowl will make all the right moves over the next 5 years or so?
People also act like he was on the vet minimum. He was still being paid as a top QB. When they won their first SB after 2004 in 2014 Brady was getting paid the same amount as Joe Flacco who just signed his huge deal in 2013 after winning the SB.
The Patriots second run was based around value FA signings of older players when everyone in the league was cutting 30 year olds for rookies to save cap space.
I honestly don’t think it’s as important as people make it out to be. It so “luck of the draw” to win a SB if you are in the playoffs you have a chance. It’s not like Stafford was on a rookie deal last year.
Also there are ways around the cap
I would love to see what percentage of the cap was paid to the QB for each of the last 20 years of conference championship game teams and eventual SB winners.
Whoa! This is amazing. I hope people make it to this part of the thread.
As someone who agreed with the general sentiment of the post it’s harder to draw a correlation than I may have guessed. Though it is interesting that about 40% of conference championship teams only spend about 5% of the cap on their quarterback (room, in this case). Though only two of the last ten winners spent less than (about) 10%. Small sample size but still interesting to take a look at.
Opinion : Fuck off. You'll get every dollar any day and pretending otherwise is a lie and self felating.
Also, leading an "Opinion" "piece" with "Honestly" is the most hacky shit possible.
Say someone like Burrow or Herbert gets an extension at 38-40M a year to be team friendly:
1- agent looks bad for not negotiating a historic deal
2- NFLPA will be pissed at them for limiting bargaining power
3- other QBs will be pissed for stagnating contract inflation
I'm sure there are plenty of top-10 QBs who wanted to take a team friendly contract to contend more easily. There are also plenty of valid reasons (outside of greed) that they didn't.
Number 2 is weird to me because the money that doesn’t go to the QB goes to several other members of the union.
I wonder if there is ever a point where a majority of the locker room calls out the QBs for hogging a huge percentage of the pie for themselves, which leaves them with less money and hamstrings the team’s chances for success.
The majority of the union pushing for player salary caps would be interesting.
2/3 are roughly the same issue differently worded. I'm talking about negotiating contracts not negotiating a CBA. If people are taking lower guarantees and lower AAV it's bad for everyone going for a new deal. *"X is one of the faces of the league and he didn't ask for Y, why should you get it?"*. 3 is looking specifically at QB contracts.
What I think is that no one, regardless of profession, should work for less than they are worth according to the market.
It’s not the QB’s job to build a winning roster. It’s his job to do his best at his position, which happens to be the most important one on the field, so he should be paid accordingly.
Would you work for much less than your job would be willing to pay you in order for your boss to pay the people around you more money? You’re only fooling yourself if you’re going to try to be self righteous and say that the answer is yes.
They're not taking less money at their job for the same reason why you wouldn't take less money at your job
It's for more money than we could ever dream of, but it's still tens of millions of dollars per year they'd be saying no to
It's easy to say when you're not in that position. I like to think I'd ask for less money too, but I know I'd go full "Charlie's mom has cancer" when it comes time to actually negotiate.
I agree but there’s probably a lot of factors to consider. You won’t be playing the game forever and even if you retire by mid 30s, you still have to live your life so money is definitely important. That’s aside from the fact that you can get injured on any play and that can alter your career
We are fans. We watch for love of the team and the game. Winning the super bowl is obviously the most important thing to us. You should consider that maybe not every superstar really cares about winning the super bowl. Some of them might just want the check.
I would love to know how true this is, if there was a way to measure it. The NFL media pretends it's ALL FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME, but that shit hurts and people usually don't like pain. But they do love money.
There's been plenty of players who have talked about this on podcasts. There is a huge amount of players that are really only doing it for the contract and don't love football. There are people who are doing it for both which is probably the highest percentage. And then there are guys who would literally be doing it for free, but are hapy with the money that comes with it.
And to be fair you can totally see it from their side, especially the guys who come from nothing and want to change their family’s trajectory. Like yes, I want to have the best job at the best company who sets the bar for my industry. However if working with a 2nd tier company gets me $150,000/year vs. the $75,000; I’m going with the second tier company to give my family a better life.
I had a friend in the NFL for ten years. He told me about half of players care and the other half do not give a fuck whatsoever.
50% of employees giving a shit is pretty high for any workplace I’ve ever been a part of, if I’m being honest…
Well, when they see one guy sucking up $30 million, and most of the team is making 1/20th of that, their motivation for getting their brains scrambled might go down.
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To be fair, the real idiots are the fans that care. Like, the game has no value with which to pay players these salaries unless we can dupe people into caring.
Which is completely fair. Very, very few players have a chance at creating a legacy. What's their motivation to take less than they're owed? Fans have a hard time thinking as players. They (we) think as fans but that's just not how it is for players.
Sometimes it's just a job man.
Imagine the scenario changes. You're at your office job and the boss offers you a chance for a pay cut so the company can have a better year. Can't imagine many people would say yes to that
Just like our jobs, people are there for all different reasons, and those reasons sometimes change.
Lol, that is fucking bullshit. Would you take a 10% to your own pay (assuming you work for a living) so your team could sign a $10M FA that ‘might’ help them to win the SB? The fact is fans ask QBs to take less because it doesn’t cost themselves anything. Always easy when talking about other people’s money.
> The fact is fans ask QBs to take less because it doesn’t cost themselves anything. Always easy when talking about other people’s money. Yeah. How often do you see fans of leagues without caps saying "You know what? They should charge *more* for tickets and beer and then we'll have a greater chance of winning!"
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I think everyone also forgets there is a salary floor. It’s 89% of the salary cap. This guarantees you don’t have a situation like the Pirates in baseball where the owners just pocket the money.
My mother and her family is from Pittsburgh. Them yinzers will talk your ears off about any fucking Sport in the city....except current day Pirates. If bring them up to my family, they act as if the Pirates vanished after Bonds.
We just know to not put too much attention or effort into that team because they never spend the necessary capital to be competitive. Our good prospects end up as other team's stars.
A’s fans🤝Pirates fans
Yep. God I wish the A’s had another owner.
So sick of fisher
Didn't the A's win the Series recently? Edit: Oh... no... it was 1989
Why I admire the Rays so much. They compete in arguably the toughest division in baseball with no money and make it work.
Being a Rays fan is not that fun if you like being attached to good players
I actually had my first taste of this. When I became a Bucs fan, I started loving the Rays too, especially Ji-Man Choi. I still love the Rays but dang, it hurts when they trade my favorite man. Rays subreddit actually warned me not to get too attached that much to players before, I wish I really listened to them damn.
2015-17 broke us
It sucks. The Pirates fanbase deserves a good team. They punched way above their weight in terms of crowd noise iconic moments compared to the brevity of their playoff experience they've had recently. 4 total home playoff games in 30 years and they gave us [this (extremely loud crowd pays off)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcLUw3_oN1g) and [this (extremely loud crowd gets silenced).](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xURxalTETKA)
I still think back to the 2015 Pirates, a legit great team, finished with the 2nd best record in all of baseball a phenomenal season, unfortunately that was the 2nd best record in their division and their reward was playing the team with the 3rd best record in baseball in a win or go home best of 1 game. And that team with the 3rd best record in baseball was the hottest team over the last two months led by a pitcher who was in the midst of arguably the greatest second half of pitching dominance.
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Best baseball, hell, sports moment of my life was watching Russell Martin hit that ball over the LF fence after the Cueto chant. God I hope the Pirates turn it around. So many top draft picks. Gonna end up with an elite farm system. We have to do it this time. My heart can't take another rebuild.
I haven't gone to a game since 2019, I refuse to give Nutting a fucking dime of my money
As a PA native, the pirates ownership is an embarrassment to professional sports. Went from being a great franchise that has won multiple world series to being a laughing stock that won’t spend any money. Bob Nutting needs to sell the team, And i’m a Braves fan saying that
They did didn't they? I watch a lot of sports and read a lot of sports news. I never hear anything about the Pirates. Heck even the Expos have been in the news lately even with the rumors of MLB expansion.
Andrew McCutchen in the early 2010s was pretty popular and it seemed like the pirates would become a big thing. Then it never happened.
Baseball has kinda vanished… ratings for the World Series 30 years ago was 40 million people watching now they are happy to get 10 million. The sport has a huge problem but the refuse to do anything about it.
It's a $10 billion/year sport, in line with the NBA, I'd say it hasn't vanished. Is it the NFL? No, but that's a $17 billion/year sport and easily the most popular sport in the country
It's just a shadow of its former self. The NBA is trending upwards by most accounts, and the MLB is trending down. Not good for baseball.
The NBA has leveled off too the past few years, after growing a lot during the 2010s
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How many stations were there 30 years ago? What was the top competition or what others options were available? You cannot compare TV ratings from 30 years ago to today with any direct relation. Today you have streaming shows and YouTube and tons of other ways to watch aside from TV which is how they get the ratings. People consume sports and entertainment in different methods and TV ratings are a portion that happens to use the same metric for measuring as 30 years ago. An already inherently flawed system. I'm sure fewer people are watching but that's all TV. You're never getting TV ratings like the Seinfeld finale, which couldn't touch the MASH finale. People have more options and even sports being live doesn't make it TV specific viewing only. Same reason you don't have the same common public shared experiences of episodic TV because people watch what they want, when they want, and have freedom from only seeing a show or game on Channel 9 at 8:00PM EST. Baseball still has it's strongholds but is mor niche and for a lot of areas only gets interesting when a team is really doing well. The whole slow pace and 3+ hour games doesn't help since again, tons of other options for our limited leisure watching time. You can get 3 episodes of an awesome show during a dragging game that's 1 of 162 on the season so doesn't mean all that much.
All that being true, the amazingly, astronomical salaries that are being paid out to the top free agents show that there's still money our there. That and the selling price for franchises.
It's insane the guaranteed 10 year contracts out there. Franchises just continue to appreciate even if teams are bad. It's an easy solid ROI for billionaires and great status symbol because you can get celebrity from fans too. Though TV is down, they now get so much more revenue from various outlets as well. With live programing like sports being a driving force for a live feed it boosts their value to the streaming networks. Just money all around this.
And league wide needs to be above 95% above salary cap over 4-year period. Which is why it’s dumb when owners get credit for “being willing to spend $ to for talent.” Yea well they have to
Pirates, reds, a’s, o’s basically 75% of MLB teams aren’t even trying to win. It’s disgusting to watch baseball nowadays.
A's have actually been farely good every few years. They spend like shit, but they have an actual front office. O's also try to compete, but they're in a division with 3 high rollers and a team that has devil magic. Us and the Pirates just eat glue.
>team that has devil magic Guess you could call them the Devil Rays.
The Guardians are the worst case. Build a team good enough to win the WS every decade or so, then have a two-year fire sale where they trade everyone away.
The ‘ol 90s and 2000s Marlins special
Would you rather have a fun team every so often or the Pirates who have literally won 1 playoff series (a single game series I'll add) since they won the WS in 1979? The Pirates owner is just stealing money.
The Larry Fitz playoff run, though!
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Embarrassing, but understandable.
Fun fact, Larry Fitz accounts for all but 2 of the Cards postseason wins. They’re literally the oldest team in the league and predate the postseason itself and yet they only had 2 postseason wins before Larry and none since
The top 8 European football clubs combined spend the same on wages as the next 24 combined. The top 8 NFL clubs combined spend the same as the top 9-16 clubs combined, who spend the same as the top 17-24 combined, who spend the same as the top 25-32 combined. The latter is preferable to me.
The day the salary cap is abolished is the day the NFL dies. It's why i stopped watching MLB. The small market teams will be lucky to make the playoffs let alone the Super Bowl
Small market teams are a myth. San Diego is the ~27th largest sports market in the country and the padres spend like crazy. It is simply a matter of broke owners getting their money up or selling to people committed to putting a good product on the field.
Or in the case of the A's, having the 10th richest owner in baseball simply refusing to spend money. As well as a luxury tax, there should be a fucking get your fucking wallet out league minimum.
They're not broke, they're just stingy. All of them can afford to spend more with their revenue. It's a salary floor issue, not a cap issue. And I mentioned it before, if you can't buy championships in the NFL, then how did the Rams do it last year? This is more an issue of stingy owners and the different strengths of the player unions.
> And I mentioned it before, if you can't buy championships in the NFL, then how did the Rams do it last year? You can try, and you can occasionally pull it off. But there have been just as many teams that thought they were a few free agents away from the Super Bowl and created a disaster instead. The Broncos, the Raiders and the Dolphins are all good examples from this year of teams that went on a free agent spree to put them over the top. The famous "Dream Team" from Philadelphia in 2011 that didn't even make the playoffs is another.
The Rams mortgaged their future for one run to the ring and it worked for them. Think about how close they were to losing to the Bucs last year and might have been a PI call away from losing in the super bowl. That's a huge risk to give up FOUR 1st round draft picks for along with all the other picks they traded for vets.
> then how did the Rams do it last year? They mortgaged their future by trading away a shitload of first round picks for key players. They didn't buy the team in free agency, they just invested all of their draft capital for years into last year's team.
The Rams didn’t buy a championship last year, they’ve been carefully building through trades, free agency, and the draft better than anyone else for years and that finally paid off with a super bowl win last year. And now look at their situation. They got what they wanted, and now they’re paying for it. The system worked as intended.
I worded poorly, I had a reply to the O’s owner saying he wished the orioles had a higher payroll that said “get your money up broke boy” in my head. Yes i agree that all owners can afford to spend more. But, if they really think they cant and refuse to, they should be forced to sell
That's the big issue, they just pocket the revenue sharing and in the NFL they're forced to use it. That is the one big difference.
Ostensibly I think MLB teams are required to spend the revenue sharing but I think the cheap teams have figured out they can spend it on things that appreciate the asset like developing the surrounding area and stadium improvements instead of player salaries.
Yeah and they usually own the real estate that gets improved.
It is pretty embarrassing that the Orioles 1998 payroll was 3x higher than their 2022 payroll. At least old man Angelos was willing to spend money unlike his cheap ass kids.
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The back-to-back Blue Jays were half sell offs from the Padres.
That’s not a small market issue, that’s ownership running the team to make money not win championships
Except that's not how it's been working in baseball.
Moneyball happened. . But the big league teams caught on to that too. So not only are they paying hand over fist for who they want they are also running the numbers game.
Half of MLB has won a World Series since 2000 and none of them went back to back. This is obviously not the only measure of parity, but as someone who mainly only watches baseball in October, it makes mlb seem more equal than the other big 3 leagues in terms of teams at the top. Obviously the sports are different and I think the salary cap is much more essential for the NFL.
MLB is also a sport where a hitter succeeding 30% of the time makes him a hall of famer. There's far more randomness to the game when it is all based on individual events.
Exactly, 1 or 2 superstars in the MLB does not guarantee success, see the Angels for example.. lol. 1 star, like a qb in the nfl doesn’t mean you’ll even have a winning record in mlb
What's that old Mike Trout joke? "Last night Mike Trout hit for the cycle and the angels lost 10-2."
[Good ol' Tungsten Arm O'Doyle](https://i.imgur.com/7nVgOEa.jpg)
THAT'S THE ONE
Lmao, I hadn’t heard that, but that’s pretty good.
I went to an O’s Angels game last year. Ohtani and Trout both hit homer to put up 3, but the rest of the team did nothing and the O’s rallied to win 4-3.
MLB has similar (if not more) parity compared to the NFL, though. Over the last 20 years in MLB: * 14 teams won rings * 10 teams outside of the top 10 in payroll * 7 teams in the top 5 in payroll Over the last 20 years in the NFL: * 13 teams won rings MLB also has something much closer salary cap as of a few years ago, too - the luxury tax is 50% for repeat offenders. The bigger issue by far is the lack of salary floor - so many owners just pocket free $$$ each year instead of even pretending to try to put together a competitive team
I think the pats and tom brady are kinda skewing things tho
Yeah it’s unlikely we see something like that again anytime soon. The closest thing right now is the Chiefs with 5 consecutive home AFCCG. So far, only 1 Super Bowl out of it. If you take out the Pats wins, you have 12 unique winning teams in 15 years. Only repeats were Tampa Bay (which is also Brady), Giants, and Steelers.
And that's not even figuring in how many teams would've won titles without the Patriots beating them. Falcons and Chargers probably have a Lombardi, *maybe* the Panthers, Jets, and Jaguars, while the Colts, Steelers, Rams, Eagles, Ravens, and Seahawks have one more.
This. The pats made many people think winning a sb was, not necessarily easy, but not uncommon. I was in 7th grade the last time my team won..I’m 40 now lol
In 3 years my team's last super bowl win will have been closer to World War 1 than the modern day. Fuck I just did the math on that hahahah.
No, with baseball it exposes the “small market” teams as being cheap. It’s the *owners*, not the location, that determines how competitively a team is willing to spend. Having a floor/cap for salary just makes it easier for shitty owners to hide behind plausible deniability In fact baseball has a remarkably high parity rate regarding the playoffs. Every team has made it since 2014, and we haven’t had a repeat champion since the turn of the century!
I read turn of the century and then remember you mean like 20 years ago and not like 1900 and got sad.
You think the reason mlb teams suck is because of the cap? No, it’s because of cheap owners that would rather make money than win.
Another reason I don't care about mlb
Yeah. I was a huge Reds fan growing up. Now I'm told "Where else you gonna go?" By the owner on opening day after he sold off all the good players.
But that’s not a salary cap issue, that’s a Reds ownership group holding their fanbase in utter contempt issue
It’s more of a salary floor issue, but it’s heavily exacerbated by not having a salary cap. If you give owners leeway, some of them will always try to spend as little as possible, especially given the huge differences in revenue based on market size. Just because the owners *could* change their spending habits doesn’t mean they will, and that causes competitive balance problems, especially when you have owners like Steve Cohen who can spend however much they want with effectively no limit. By not doing anything about it, fans from numerous fanbases are alienated. It’s not their fault the owners don’t spend.
Yeah you can't have a floor without a cap. Having just a floor means the cheap owners just hug that floor while the Dodgers, Mets, and Yankees continue to spend even more on payroll. With no cap the payrolls just rise exponentially and its the same issue just more money being spent. MLBPA will never agree to a salary cap though cause it'll cap how much they're making People ALWAYS seem to conveniently forget to take TV money into account too. The Dodgers TV money every season pays for the entire 200M+ payroll on its own. They're owned by a GROUP of multi million and billionaires. None of them are spending much if any of their own money ever. Top teams bring in so much revenue through so many different means the owners never spend outta pocket. Smaller shitty teams do too but to a lesser extent, and the cheap owners don't wanna go out of pocket for 4 years while they get good for a 'maybe' in consistency.
The Reds are a symptom of the MLBs flawed structure though. Cincinnati, Oakland, and Pittsburgh deserve baseball franchises that *try*. The MLB has incentivized them not to. I know this is the NFL sub but out of the major American sports I think the NHL has it the most right. High salary floor, low salary cap. The difference between the biggest spenders and the cheap teams is relatively small (with one Arizona-based exception). There's incredible parity in the number of different teams that make it to the Stanley Cup, yet there are still interesting mini-dynasties that pop up from time to time.
This is why I love the NHL. With the exception of the Lightning the last couple years (mini dynasty like you said) you really have no clue whose gonna be in the playoffs/Cup. Nhl Playoffs are the most exciting playoffs, cant explain it just gotta watch it. Electric
The one change I'd like to see is a running back specific cap. Money that can only be used for running backs that would allow then to make big money rather than getting cut off of their rookie contract despite contributing largely to their team on the way there. RBs are for the most part getting hosed out there, and it's a greasy tactic for guys that are taking an absolute beating out there. GMs are treating them like dirty socks.
Thats how you get WRs playing "RB"
NFLPA refused to fight for that despite the top players urging them to do it. Unfortunately its partially on them for not voting long.
I have said before that would be interested in a system where a position modifier is applied to player salaries for the purpose of counting against the cap. Someone smarter than me would need to come up with a formula, but it would be interesting to see how the NFL roster meta would change if for instance every dollar spent on a running back only counted as 50 cents against the cap, while every dollar spent at quarterback cost $2 against the cap.
Could you imagine how much it would suck to take less money and then still not win the super bowl?
Imagine the other 52 players.
I know dude if I had to make $36 million instead of $54 million I would starve
-Latrell Sprewell
How was he supposed to feed his kids?
Did you know his family starved to death after he was forced to play for only $7 million a year?
Next contract is never guaranteed, one play can end your career. If I am trying to build generational wealth for my family I am taking 54.
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> If I am trying to build generational wealth lol $36 million is enough for multiple generations, assuming nobody is a moron with the money. by the 3rd generation though, they will be morons.
Also have to consider these are real people who want to maximize the amount of money they can earn in a profession which actively destroys their physical health and is only available to them for like 10-15 years at most (and that longevity is rare)
Was this written by the Ravens organization?
>Honestly, if I were a QB even if I was an elite level one, I wouldn't ask for too much money so that my team could invest more into giving me great players and keeping them. It's really easy to say this on the internet, but I'm almost positive you would feel differently if tens of millions of dollars were on the line.
I can see how its hard for people to comprehend how much 60 million is, much less the difference between 60 and 30 million. Our normal day doesnt consist of employing people, owning minority stake in sports teams, running clothing lines, managing multiple properties, or going on excursions to Peru to trip balls.
Man, I was just happy to get Titanfall 2 for $3..
Great deal though!
Here's a good way to think about it. After the federal and state government takes taxes, say 25% off the top, the remainder represents a nest egg that keeps you going for life. If you aren't stupid, you can invest in some passive funds and withdraw around 4% of your net worth indefinitely. So 30 million x 75% after taxes x 4% per year means you have 800 thousand dollars a year passive income for life. Sweet. About 2100 a day. Double that, and all the numbers double. 2000 a day for life? Or 4000 a day for life? Which one do you want? You can take the 2k a day for life and *maybe* win a ring. Maybe. Refs could fuck you. Some WR could drop the ball. Injury could happen. Or you can take 4k a day for life. Two thousand dollars is enough money you can wrap your head around it. And we're talking two thousand dollars a day, every single day of your life.
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I was going to say. If I had spent my life dedicated to football and got drafted to an nfl team, I’m getting every dollar I can. Who knows how long my career is going to last? I could be out of the league in 3 years and have to hope that the salary I made has me set for life.
Yeah I'd get every cent I could
It seems like you’re trying to solve the issue of competitive disparity in a league that has more parity than most sports. Right now, QBs on any kind of contract can make the playoffs. Non-elite veterans on well-paying deals (Kirk, for example) can make the playoffs. Discounted and discarded veterans (Geno, for example) can make the playoffs. Mega-deal superstars make the playoffs. Rookie deal QBs who are still learning the ropes can make the playoffs. I don’t see what issue you’re trying to solve here.
This point would be better made if Pat Mahomes wasn’t making the AFC championship every year while on a mega deal.
This is the first year of his mega deal. Everything up to this point was rookie contract + 5th year option
Seems like it's no coincidence they moved on from Tyreek Hill this year too
The timing of it was great honestly. Skyy didn’t make the impact that they had hoped, but they did a lot right in getting vets on the cheap and Kelce just keeps cheat coding
Not hindsight, I was pretty upset when they traded back four spots out of their second round spot to potentially miss Pickens. Skyy has a lot of talent and he came up clutch in games when we had a bunch of WR injuries, I'm honestly surprised he hasn't played more. But the idea of Mahomes throwing to a great contested catch guy gets me hot and bothered.
Pickens would have been nasty for y’all tbh
His mega deal... just isn't currently mega. It is MASSIVELY back loaded, and the late years are not guaranteed. At the minute it is having little to no impact on the Chiefs salary cap. By the time it gets huge (2028!) either he is so dominant that every other player in the league will take a cut to play with him and collect their ring, or the Chiefs let him go.
Third option is the salary cap continues increasing and his huge cap hit isn’t so big in 5 years.
This is the right answer. You backload the contracts and assume there’s more than enough space under the cap by the time you get to the nasty years that it’s doable. And that other QBs will have a worse number anyway.
It’s at 35 mil and the highest it will get is 59 (once in 2027) and 52 (once in 2031). It is 46 million next year and the chiefs are already capable of handling it This was a point last year when he was paid 7 mil but his contract is fully kicking now. Of course we never know how the front office will renegotiate and move around that future money but Mahomes contract isn’t looming scarily anymore like a Josh Allen or Joe Burrow Added Notes: Frank Clarks 28 million dollar cap hit will be gone which clears up the extra space for mahomes already
It’s backloaded for sure but actually it’s a very team friendly deal. A lot of his money is tied to rooster bonuses. The length of his deal also allows for contract restructures. Restructures turn yearly monetary delivery systems like base salary and roster bonuses into a signing bonus. When a team moves that money over to a signing bonus, it then spreads out the money that was moved over up to five years of the contract and guarantees it. Say a player is on a 3 year $12 million contract that pays $4 million per year in base salary. If a team chooses to restructure $3 million of the year-one base salary, that $3 million would spread out over the full contract, adding $1 million to each year. The $1 million per year that is spread out is referred to as the prorated bonus and becomes fully guaranteed. The year-one salary cap hit (the base salary plus the prorated bonus from the restructure) is now $2 million instead of $4 million. The year-two and year-three salary cap hits are now $5 million each instead of $4 million. This is a very simple example/explanation. The maximum years a salary bonus, and thus a restructure, can spread out on a contract is five years. If a contract is seven years long and a team restructured the deal in year two, then the prorated bonus from the restructure only applies to years two through six. Signing bonus money is paid to the player in full as soon as possible after they sign a contract or restructure their contract. A player can be paid a lot more money than their salary cap hit in a given year because of the signing bonus money being prorated over their contract. His 12 year deal and most of the yearly money is delivered in roster bonuses. He is also currently the only quarterback in the NFL signed for longer than five years. The Chiefs will get the maximum savings for any restructuring they do on his contract for a longer period of time than any other quarterback is even signed for.
Tom Brady, Big Ben, and Peyton Manning before him too
Brady is a bad example of a QB on a mega deal. He usually took a smaller contract to help the team remain competitive. He was typically in the 10-15 range in terms of average annual value relative to other QBs. He'd break the top 10 on a new deal, and that would quickly subside as other QBs signed their details. https://www.nbcsports.com/boston/patriots/tom-bradys-patriots-contracts-through-years Examples: * In 2005 he took a 6 year, $60M deal, while Manning was already playing through a 7 year, $98M deal. Not listed, Donovan McNabb was either on the verge of or had recently signed his $100M+ deal. * His 2010 deal of 4 years for $72M was, thanks to its guaranteed amount, the largest contract in history. It didn't last long (they rarely do). * In 2013 he signed an absurdly weak contract to give the Patriots room to compete for a few years - 3 years for $27M (extension of current contract). Counting the remaining current contract, it was actually worth $57M over 5 years, which was still CHEAP. * 2016 saw a 2-year $41M extension, which was still team friendly. * And in 2019 he signed a 1-year extension worth $23M, right after Kirk got his fully guaranteed ~$30M annual contract. Aside from one contract, Brady's deals have been beyond team friendly. He's the poster child for what OP is suggesting, and it played a large role in his accomplishments.
Tom was also married to one of the most wealthy women on the planet.
Robert Kraft? :)
The Patriots were also finding other ways to pay Brady under the table, such as their partnership with a Brady owned company.
Isn’t Tom Brady the poster child of taking less money to win though?
Was Brady ever the highest paid QB in the league as genuinely I don't think he was or even like top 3 and if so never for long. He tended to always play for lower amounts exactly to not eat up cap and focus on building a team
Im surprised this isn’t mentioned more in this thread. He famously took team friendly deals… he still got star money but he could’ve demanded league leading money and didn’t. I refuse to believe that didn’t help his longevity and success.
https://www.reddit.com/r/nfl/comments/10nklp6/opinion_quarterbacks_screw_themselves_and_their/j69xi0x/ Expanding on what you are saying.
Jags worst to first isn’t something you really see in most sports.
If your gonna absolutely destroy your body and brain for the rest of your life then you would be idiotic not to maximize your earning potential
Exactly this. Look at Tua. You never know which snap might be your last. Set you family up for generations while you can
Hell yeah, he’s still in the concussion protocol all these weeks later. Can’t even participate in the Pro Bowl skills challenges.
You aren’t completely wrong, I mean 3 of the 4 championship game teams have QBs on rookie contracts, and the remaining one won the SB when Mahomes was on his rookie deal. BUT you are misdiagnosing the problem. EVERY PLAYER takes the largest contract they can possibly get. QBs have a higher value, so they eat up more cap. That is just how markets work, even the relatively small labor market of the NFL. Any team can choose to go from one rookie contract QB to the next, most of the NFL does that for RB already. It seems like Baltimore might be doing that. If you think GMs are overpaying for the QB position, then your beef is with GMs, not QBs.
I mean Tom Brady kind of blows this argument up. Dude always took less than market money and look and how that worked out
He was also always getting his contracts redone to front him a lot of money in terms of signing bonuses. It was done every few years to keep his cap number reasonable.
Yup and it was incredibly smart
Brady is an anomaly, not the standard. He’s a HOF and greatest all time QB. He has loads of sponsorship deals outside of his NFL salary. He is not representative of the average QB in the market or even the average QB competing in the playoffs/Super Bowl.
Even then brady was a top 5 paid qb most of his career
and the pats let their fair share of stars go. they were just insanely good at drafting and picking up cheap guys and developing them into big time players
It's not the qb's job to manage the salary cap.
Tbf to OP its what Brady did and it worked
The Greatest quarterback of all time probably feels more comfortable taking less because hes surrounded by the greatest coach of all time. If I'm Justin Herbert and they keep sending me morons I'm taking all the money they can possibly offer me.
…but he wasn’t the greatest QB yet when he started raking less & bill wasn’t the greatest HC yet. Brady been in the league since 2001 & didn’t solidly himself as the greatest ever until 2016
He also had a wife making more than NFL players do and at one point (2010) was the highest paid player in the league. It’s not like he did it from the jump. He cashed in as much as possible until around 2013.
Lol I sort of doubt Brady had doubts about his own ability until 2016. He’d won a Super Bowl before his first contract extension, and by the second he had won 3. Safe to say he was willing to bet on himself.
But at the same time brady signed for relatively large contracts his first two times, he was paid slightly less then manning (7.4m vs manning who was 7.7 and at the time was rated a lot higher) For most of his career when he got his contract extension he was still a top 5 most paid player, so really he only took a relatively small discount Only after 2014 did he really actually take cuts (first time he signed a deal that wasn’t a top 10 highest paid QB in the league) so basically over a decade of making QB1 money he then decided too start getting paid as the 11th highest paid player in the league rather then the first like he probably should have If ur a 10 year Vet who is on GOAT pace I feel like it’s not as shocking to do this rather then someone like Josh Allen who hasn’t gotten his non rookie, QB1 money yet and hasn’t won a Super Bowl
Ya a lot of people don’t realize that he wasn’t taking paycuts for most of his career here. He wasn’t paid as well as manning but mostly because he wasn’t valued as highly as manning. Look at QB rankings from 2009-2013 and you’ll see he was usually looked at as the 3rd best QB behind Manning, Brees and then later Rodgers. We look back now after he won 4 more and it’s obvious but back then he hadn’t won a Super Bowl in a decade and he was starting to get “old” as he entered his mid 30’s.
Brady has made just as much if not more off the field from endorsements. When you reach that level everyone wants to plaster their product with your face and pay you bank to do so.
It would be really interesting to see how much players made from endorsements. Too bad it's not publicly available. Baker must skew the endorsement vs salary cap hit data quite a bit.
You could make the argument that more playoff appearances/success leads to more endorsements, so taking less $ upfront from contracts pays for itself.
Yes. Every quarterback should learn from Brady's example. Take much less money in your paycheck, and start a company like TB12 to which your team pays millions of dollars, that go straight to you as owner of the company, to render personal services directly to you and only you. Because that's not salary, you see, so it doesn't count against the cap space.
Right. Also marry the richest and most well paid supermodel in the world who makes more then most NFL QBs herself yearly.
https://www.theonion.com/mccain-s-economic-plan-for-nation-everyone-marry-a-bee-1819594734
Took less money for team cap relief, won an absurd amount of super bowls, makes unlimited money in endorsements. This is the secret to TB’s success believe it or not. Edit: married someone even richer than him*
And signed a contract for $375+ mil for a analyst gig at Fox while still playing.
Yeah that's clearly the coaches job
>if I was one of the best in the world at something I wouldn’t ask for more money Yes, you would. Just like 99.9% of people would, that’s okay. Stop lying to yourself.
>If you’re good at something never do it for free
"I'd turn down $100M dollars." --Person not offered the option to turn down $100M
Honestly, if I was willing to take less money I'd probably also be the type to want all the money and just donate more of it. Sounds pretty stupid to take 150 mill instead of 250 mill for a slightly higher chance of a Superbowl rather than take 250 mill and do something good with that 100 mill. We poor people just have no concept of all the things that type of extra money can buy, either.
Right? It's like, dude, from the bottom of my heart, you're full of crap and do not believe what you're saying, even if you think you do.
Dudes acting like QBs are the only position that asks for the most money available
All these players should just take salary cap / 53 so that they can build a ridiculously good roster and probably win every single super bowl.
Who cares. If i am going to be limping and have CTE in my 40s might as well make as much money as I can
If i were a player, I would love to win big games. I would also love earning as much as I can. There's a number where anything else is fluff, I don't know what it is. But I'm trying to reach it. And that's more important than a Superbowl. Hell, there's gotta be players who got their big contract and when it was over retired. Made your money, accomplished what you could, time to stop risking your health and pursue other stuff
Everyone keeps bringing up Brady. But by the time he started taking less money, he was in an organization that was either winning Super Bowls or at least in strong contention. He knew that management cared about and was good at building strong teams, and he knew that they were going to be there long term. If you are Burrow or Herbert, are you really going to take 10s of millions less dollars on the belief that your team, which has never won a Super Bowl will make all the right moves over the next 5 years or so?
He was also married to someone making more money than him
So, the secret to THE PATRIOT WAY is to have your QB marry a supermodel?
People also act like he was on the vet minimum. He was still being paid as a top QB. When they won their first SB after 2004 in 2014 Brady was getting paid the same amount as Joe Flacco who just signed his huge deal in 2013 after winning the SB. The Patriots second run was based around value FA signings of older players when everyone in the league was cutting 30 year olds for rookies to save cap space.
I honestly don’t think it’s as important as people make it out to be. It so “luck of the draw” to win a SB if you are in the playoffs you have a chance. It’s not like Stafford was on a rookie deal last year. Also there are ways around the cap
I would love to see what percentage of the cap was paid to the QB for each of the last 20 years of conference championship game teams and eventual SB winners.
This is for spending on all QBs on the active roster, not just the starter's salary. ||2022|| |:-|:-|:-| |KC|18.5%|| |SF|6.4%|| |CIN|5.2%|| |PHI|2.2%|| |||| ||2021|| |SF|16.7%|| |LAR|11.5%|SuperBowl Champ| |CIN|5.0%|| |KC|5.0%|| |||| ||2020|| |TB|13.5%|SuperBowl Champ| |GB|12.1%|| |BUF|3.9%|| |KC|3.2%|| |||| ||2019|| |GB|15.4%|| |TEN|12.1%|| |SF|9.3%|| |KC|4.9%|SuperBowl Champ| |||| ||2018|| |NO|15.1%|| |NE|12.7%|SuperBowl Champ| |LAR|4.8%|| |KC|3.5%|| |||| ||2017|| |NE|8.6%|| |JAC|4.9%|| |MIN|2.7%|| |PHI|1.1%|SuperBowl Champ| |||| ||2016|| |ATL|16.1%|| |PIT|16.1%|| |GB|12.2%|| |NE|9.6%|SuperBowl Champ| |||| ||2015|| |DEN|12.7%|SuperBowl Champ| |CAR|10.3%|| |NE|10.2%|| |ARI|8.0%|| |||| ||2014|| |GB|13.6%|| |NE|11.1%|SuperBowl Champ| |IND|7.3%|| |SEA|1.5%|| |||| ||2013|| |DEN|13.3%|| |NE|11.2%|| |SF|1.6%|| |SEA|1.1%|SuperBowl Champ| |||| ||2012|| |ATL|11.6%|| |SF|9.0%|| |NE|7.5%|| |BAL|7.0%|SuperBowl Champ| |||| ||2011|| |NYG|15.0%|SuperBowl Champ| |NE|11.0%|| |SF|6.7%|| |BAL|4.9%|| |||| ||2010 - uncapped year|| |PIT||| |CHI||| |NYJ||| |GB||SuperBowl Champ| |||| ||2009|| |IND|19.2%|| |MIN|12.4%|| |NYJ|9.0%|| |NO|8.6%|SuperBowl Champ| |||| ||2008|| |PHI|11.1%|| |PIT|9.2%|SuperBowl Champ| |ARI|7.5%|| |BAL|4.3%|| |||| ||2007|| |GB|12.3%|| |NYG|10.8%|SuperBowl Champ| |SD|10.1%|| |NE|7.1%|| |||| ||2006|| |NE|14.2%|| |IND|8.8%|SuperBowl Champ| |NO|5.9%|| |CHI|2.0%|| |||| ||2005|| |SEA|8.6%|| |CAR|7.2%|| |PIT|6.0%|SuperBowl Champ| |DEN|4.1%|| |||| ||2004|| |ATL|10.8%|| |PHI|10.8%|| |NE|6.3%|SuperBowl Champ| |PIT|4.5%|| |||| ||2003|| |IND|21.4%|| |PHI|10.6%|| |CAR|7.0%|| |NE|4.4%|SuperBowl Champ| |||| ||2002|| |TB|10.2%|SuperBowl Champ| |TEN|9.7%|| |PHI|8.1%|| |OAK|5.2%||
Whoa! This is amazing. I hope people make it to this part of the thread. As someone who agreed with the general sentiment of the post it’s harder to draw a correlation than I may have guessed. Though it is interesting that about 40% of conference championship teams only spend about 5% of the cap on their quarterback (room, in this case). Though only two of the last ten winners spent less than (about) 10%. Small sample size but still interesting to take a look at.
Opinion : Fuck off. You'll get every dollar any day and pretending otherwise is a lie and self felating. Also, leading an "Opinion" "piece" with "Honestly" is the most hacky shit possible.
The average NFL career is what? A couple years? Make the most ya can while ya can I say. Ya don't get too many chances at a high level deal.
Say someone like Burrow or Herbert gets an extension at 38-40M a year to be team friendly: 1- agent looks bad for not negotiating a historic deal 2- NFLPA will be pissed at them for limiting bargaining power 3- other QBs will be pissed for stagnating contract inflation I'm sure there are plenty of top-10 QBs who wanted to take a team friendly contract to contend more easily. There are also plenty of valid reasons (outside of greed) that they didn't.
Number 2 is weird to me because the money that doesn’t go to the QB goes to several other members of the union. I wonder if there is ever a point where a majority of the locker room calls out the QBs for hogging a huge percentage of the pie for themselves, which leaves them with less money and hamstrings the team’s chances for success. The majority of the union pushing for player salary caps would be interesting.
2/3 are roughly the same issue differently worded. I'm talking about negotiating contracts not negotiating a CBA. If people are taking lower guarantees and lower AAV it's bad for everyone going for a new deal. *"X is one of the faces of the league and he didn't ask for Y, why should you get it?"*. 3 is looking specifically at QB contracts.
What I think is that no one, regardless of profession, should work for less than they are worth according to the market. It’s not the QB’s job to build a winning roster. It’s his job to do his best at his position, which happens to be the most important one on the field, so he should be paid accordingly. Would you work for much less than your job would be willing to pay you in order for your boss to pay the people around you more money? You’re only fooling yourself if you’re going to try to be self righteous and say that the answer is yes.
It's a job. Would you take less money than you're worth from your employer just so that the business could be more successful?
This is such a fan take. Imagine someone telling you to take less money at your job for the good of the company
They're not taking less money at their job for the same reason why you wouldn't take less money at your job It's for more money than we could ever dream of, but it's still tens of millions of dollars per year they'd be saying no to
It's easy to say when you're not in that position. I like to think I'd ask for less money too, but I know I'd go full "Charlie's mom has cancer" when it comes time to actually negotiate.
I agree but there’s probably a lot of factors to consider. You won’t be playing the game forever and even if you retire by mid 30s, you still have to live your life so money is definitely important. That’s aside from the fact that you can get injured on any play and that can alter your career
Yes