How much is Cleveland Browns linebacker Joe Schobert worth?

Cleveland Browns linebacker Joe Schobert is an unrestricted free agent this offseason, but what will his value be on the open market?

Cleveland Browns linebacker Joe Schobert is going to hit free agency on March 18. The Browns hope to bring him back, but how much will it cost to retain his services? That matter is a great controversy, not only among fans but among NFL front offices

On the one hand, Schobert puts up big numbers every year. In 2017 he led the NFL in tackles, and last year he finished 10th. He made the Pro Bowl in 2017. He is a legitimate star who represents the team well and is a team leader. On that basis, we might be persuaded that Schobert is a top-10 talent and the Browns should just back up a Brinks truck to his home and unload as much money as he wants.

The agent for Schobert is the respected firm Athletes FIrst, which also represents Aaron Rodgers, among others. No doubt they have the opinion that Schobert deserves a much larger contract than the Browns believe, based on the fact that an extension was not reached in 2019. After all, Schobert has been grossly underpaid as a fourth round pick in the 2016 draft, at an average of about a million per year.

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Former Browns general manager John Dorsey could have extended him but did not. Meanwhile he brought in Olivier Vernon at $15 million a year and Sheldon Richardson at $12.3 million a year. Schobert is at least comparable to Vernon or Richardson, and maybe more valuable.

If you survey fanzines around the league, many sportswriters would love to have Schobert on their team. Just last week, John Owning of the Dallas Morning News ranked him eighth overall among linebackers. According to Spotrac, the eighth highest linebacker salary in the NFL in 2019 belonged to Myles Jack of the Jacksonville Jaguars, who was given a four year extension at $57 million, or an average yearly compensation of $14.3 million dollars. Athletes First will ask for something on that level.

Management’s counterpoint, however, is that the Browns defense has been terrible against the run the past few years, and thus it is difficult to justify large salaries for a sub-par unit. For that matter, it is not clear that Vernon and Richardson are going to survive salary cap cuts and make it to the 2020 regular season.

Another negative is that Schobert misses a lot of tackles, at least 15 in each of the past three years. Moreover, if Pro Football Focus is used as a neutral focal point, Schobert was graded only as the 48th best linebacker last season, and really came in with a low grade at stopping the run. Should he not be paid about the 48th highest salary, or in other words about $5 million per year on a nice four-year deal?

Both rationales have some merit, and that is why it is hard to place a value on him. The missed tackles is a sore spot, but it is kind of like shortstop errors in baseball. If your player gets to 50 more balls per year than the average shortstop, but drops 10, isn’t it really the net that is important, i.e., 40 extra balls. Schobert arguably gets to as many tackles as anyone, misses a bunch but still winds up in the top-10 in tackles. The extra ones he makes should cancel out the ones he does not make.

However, the tackle stats are still somewhat inflated because of the Browns’ underperforming defense. Defensive stats are weird because the player usually gets better stats in a poorly performing unit. For one thing, the unit stays on the field longer and the other team runs more plays. For another, Schobert has to make tackles that he should not have to make, namely because runners broke through the porous front four of the Browns. Then too there is the unorthodox 4-2-5 alignment preferred by former defensive coordinator Steve Wilks, which further incentivized teams to run against the Browns and thus generated an increased number of tackles for the two linebackers.

Schobert is not the biggest or fastest linebacker in the NFL. His 40-yard dash time at the rookie combine was 4.76 seconds. Ho hum. But the reason why he gets to more balls is because he is one of the smartest players in the NFL and can anticipate where the ball is going as well as anyone in the league. In addition, the middle linebacker is kind of like the defensive quarterback, whose job is to recognize the offensive play and put the defense in the right configuration. By all accounts, Schobert is very good at this and that is an important contribution that does not show up on the stat sheet.

In this case the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Schobert is a smart, heady player who creates opportunities. He has played his heart out for the Browns despite having an unfair contract that the Browns did not extend. He is the “coach on the field” for the defense. The Browns know they can count on him for 100 percent effort all the time. This fan places his value much higher than his Pro Football Focus numbers suggest (and, as always, remember that PFF is trying to evaluate the effectiveness of the player in carrying out his assignments, which is not the same thing as how good he actually is).

He is probably not a top-ten linebacker, like his raw numbers suggest, but he is close. At 15th to 20th highest in the NFL, he would end up with four years and about $40 to $45 million dollars, or over $10 million dollars per season. That is my best guess at what it will take to retain him, and truthfully, I am not real confident in the accuracy of the estimate.

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No matter what, good luck to number 53. This fan has no complaints if he takes the best offer out there, and if the Browns offer is second-best, so be it. He has earned every penny he gets, and deserves the respect of the fans even if he chooses to leave.

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