Cleveland Browns analytics front office may balk at ultra-expensive QBs
Charge up your calculators, Dawg Pound, because the NFL has lost its mind on quarterbacks, and the Cleveland Browns might be one of the few sane players.
The Cleveland Browns may not be players in the Baker Mayfield sweepstakes at today’s prices. It seems as if Covid or some other dread disease may have attacked the brains of NFL general managers because they have gone mad overpaying for quarterbacks.
They are spending their teams into salary cap hell by paying decent quarterbacks like Matty Ryan an astounding $48.9 million dollars in 2022 salary cap charges. Even an indecent quarterback like Deshaun Watson is good for over $40 million. No team is buying wins by investing in these $40 million dollar plus per year contracts.
The MBAs and economists are going to punch in the numbers and find out that if you overpay the quarterback by that much, the salary cap is so screwed up that that team cannot pay for the players it needs to actually win the game where it really counts: in the trenches, especially on defense.
Well, what about Patrick Mahomes? He’s getting paid all that money and the Chiefs are perpetual contenders, right? Wrong. The Chiefs have promised to pay big dollars in the future, but If you look at the actual salary cap dollars to date, Mahomes’ salary-cap charge for 2021 was only $7,433,381.
That’s actually significantly less than Baker Mayfield, who cost the Browns $10.5 million. The Chiefs have promised whopping big dollars starting in 2022, when his cap charge increases to $35,793,381. That’s the thing. The league has gone through a phase when there have been a lot of big numbers thrown around, and 2022 is the year when it is just starting to become real.
To some extent, they can refinance and restructure, but many of these quarterbacks are getting old and they actually can’t defer payment much longer.
The largest quarterback salary-cap charge in 2021 was Russell Wilson of the Seahawks at a cool $32,000,000. His team won 7 games. Russell missed a few starts due to injury, but his personal record was only 6-8.
In fact, let’s look at the top-10 quarterbacks in terms of salary cap charge as well as the percentage of the total cap allowance. Cap allowance was $182.5 million in 2021. Salary numbers are courtesy of overthecap.com and calculated as a percentage of cap allowance by your humble correspondent.
Player (2021) Team Cap Number Pct of Cap Allowance
Russell Wilson Seahawks $32,000,000 17.5%
Kirk Cousins Vikings $31,000,000 17.0%
Aaron Rodgers Packers $27,573,568 15.1%
Matt Ryan Falcons $26,912,500 14.7%
Jimmy Garoppolo 49ers $26,850,000 14.7%
Ben Roethlisberger Steelers $25,910,000 14.2%
Derek Carr Raiders $22,125,000 12.1%
Carson Wentz Colts $21,305,882 11.7%
Matt Stafford Rams $20,000,000 11.0%
Dak Prescott Cowboys $17,200,000 9.4%
2021 Average of TOP 10: $25,087,695 (13.8% of cap allowance)
Wilson’s personal win-loss record was 6-8 this season. The second highest salary cap hit was Kirk Cousins. His team was 8-9 in the weak NFC North. Third highest was Aaron Rodgers of the 13-4 Packers, followed by Matt Ryan of the 7-10 Falcons. Jimmy G of 10-7 San Francisco rounds out the top-5.
We can certainly construct a case that league MVP Rodgers deserved his money, and Matt Stafford, Derek Carr, and probably Jimmy Garoppolo based on his accomplishments, though his front office hates him, as evidenced by the fact that they gave up a king’s ransom to draft his successor.
Dak Prescott’s figure is heavily discounted because it is the first year of his multi-year contract. The rest of them underachieved their contracts, frankly. The best values were Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson (though injured), and certainly, Joe Burrow, who were operating on their rookie contracts and do not appear in the top ten for 2021 or 2022. The 2021 quarterback veteran class as a whole is way overvalued. It also should be mentioned that Tom Brady found a way to defer his salary to such an extent that his cap number is slightly less than Baker Mayfield’s. He too was a huge bargain.
It starts to get really nuts in 2022, as you can see from the top-10 list below. The 2022 Salary Cap is scheduled to increase to $208.2 million, a phenomenal increase. But it’s not just the raw cash. Adjusting for inflation, the quarterbacks are hogging up a much greater share of the percentage of the cap allowance than ever before.
It had been creeping up previously. As a check, ten seasons ago, in 2013, the top ten quarterbacks averaged $15.2 million and 12.4 percent of the team cap allowance. In 2021, that figure had grown to $25 million and 13.8 percent of the cap allowance, as shown in the table above. But the 2022 numbers show the top ten are averaging $38.6 million, which is 18.5 percent of the salary cap allowance. This is an enormous difference, and it is out of whack.
Player (2022) Team Cap Number Pct of Cap Allowance
Matt Ryan Falcons $48,662,500 23.4%
Aaron Rodgers Packers $46,664,156 22.4%
Kirk Cousins Vikings $45,000,000 21.6%
Deshaun Watson Texans $40,400,000 19.4%
Ryan Tannehill Titans $38,600,000 18.5%
Russell Wilson Seahawks $37,000,000 17.8%
Patrick Mahomes Chiefs $35,793,381 17.2%
Dak Prescott Cowboys $34,450,000 16.5%
Jared Goff Lions $31,150,000 15.0%
Carson Wentz Colts $28,294,119 13.6%
2022 Average of TOP 10: $38,601,416 (18.5% of cap allowance)
But let’s just look at the percentage basis for the top player, Matt Ryan. Ryan is currently scheduled to receive 23.4 percent of the 2022 salary cap allowance. The only player we thought was possibly worth his high salary in 2021 was Aaron Rodgers at 15.1 percent of the 2021 Salary Cap Allowance. That is a huge difference.
To be precise, it is (23.4 percent -15.1 percent)/15.1 percent * 100 percent = 55.0 percent. What this means is, correcting for inflation, Matty Ryan is being granted an inflation-adjusted 2022 salary that is 55 percent higher than Aaron Rodgers received in 2021. The raw numbers are even more gross: ($48,662,500 – $27,573,568)/($27,573,568) = 72.8 percent.
How can Matt Ryan be so much more valuable than the league MVP? The answer is that he is not. The Falcons have no guts to say no, and most of the NFL teams are the same way. They will be punished in the won-loss column.
Suddenly, in 2022, eight quarterbacks are now more valuable than league MVP Aaron Rodgers was last season (including Rodgers), on a percentage basis, correcting for cap inflation. So what has happened to make quarterbacks so immensely valuable in one year? The answer is — nothing. NFL general managers have lost their minds.
Remember when your mom used to ask you, “So, would you go jump in the lake just because the next-door neighbor kid is dumb enough to do it?” Well, yes, NFL general managers would go jump in that lake. They’ve been promising huge mega deals ever since the Chiefs promised an insane $450 million dollar deal to Patrick Mahomes, and it has always been promised for later. Well, later is happening in 2022.
For all of the fans — not just fans, but all over the country, this is the time of year when fans fantasize about ditching their team’s quarterback for someone else — who may be salivating over the prospect of adding someone like Kirk Cousins, Matt Ryan, or accused deviant Deshaun Watson to the payroll, be advised that not everyone thinks it is a great plan to spend the team into oblivion for the sake of old men who were once good quarterbacks.
How much do the Cleveland Browns owe Baker Mayfield?
By the way, the Browns are on the hook for $18.85 million to Baker Mayfield, fully guaranteed, and it is not clear that any NFL team would be willing to trade for that. Nor is there a guarantee that Mayfield ever gets out of the shoulder harness. After a year of mangling that torn labrum in NFL combat, how much is there to sew back together? Will it be like it was before?
Do you realize that even in 2022, the combined cap charges for Myles Garrett and Aaron Donald amount to less money than the cap charge for Matty Ryan, Kirk Cousins, Aaron Rodgers, and Deshaun Watson?
We could have a discussion about Aaron Rodgers being worth two All-Pro defensive linemen, even at age 38 (though this analyst believes it is a mistake to give him a record pay raise from15.1 percent total cap charge to 22.4 percent cap charge in one year, a massive hike, almost guaranteed to harm the team), but would anyone seriously consider one of the other three quarterbacks over Donald plus Garrett combined? Seriously?
By the way, did you watch the Super Bowl? Did anybody really see that game as Matthew Stafford proving his superiority over Joe Burrow, and Aaron Donald had nothing to do with it? Really? If you start adding up the salaries for who has to leave in order to make room for one of these $40 million dollar quarterbacks, it is not a pretty concept.
This year’s generation of general managers, like adolescent fans, seem to believe that quarterbacks have unlimited value and that they are forced to pay quarterbacks whatever they want. A courageous front office will realize that overpaying is harmful to the team and is robbing the team of resources that can be better spent on other positions.
Next. 3 worst Cleveland Browns contracts heading into 2022. dark
If you can sign two All-Pro defensive linemen and go to war with the best quarterback under $15 million dollars in 2023, don’t be surprised if that is what the Browns do. If that means waving good-bye to Baker Mayfield, they might do it, even if they like him.