That's exactly my point. These owners have lost their minds. Just about every Joe Blow QB is breaking the bank nowadays. Even middle of the pack scrubs are getting paid as if they're Peyton Manning in his prime. To me in this modern NFL $15-$18 million is the sweet spot for QBs if a team can get a capable veteran QB at that price surround him with a superior team that sounds like a winning gameplan to me.
The owners operate 32 teams but they are also partners in one Company called NFL Football. They forced a lockout to protect themselves from overpaying and guaranteed themselves an equal share of TV money. The owners as a group have made a decision to use the rookie salary cap along with the no guaranteed contract to pay stars at the expense of everyone else. It's a good formula for the owners, not so good for rookies or NFL vets who aren't known stars. Revenue is going up and so is shared revenue. That's why scrubs today are being paid like Payton Manning. Tom Brady has always worked for less than 20 million, which gives the Pats an enormous advantage over other teams. That's still only part of their success. They have always been willing to part with star players rather than pay them. They dumped, Richard Seymour, Ty Law, Vince Wolfork, Chandler Jones and many others who were in their prime when the Pats dumped or traded them. The Pats routinely trade down which gives them less high quality draft picks but more guys who are cheap to develop. We now have a cheap QB for another few years. It's time to make hay. If Darnold is an elite QB he is going to be paid a fortune if he stays healthy and we are going to have to cut bait with other players going into their contract year or better yet trade them a year early. That means we need to draft well and trade good players before their walk year. You can load up on FA's if you have a cheap QB. The Rams did it last year. If you have an elite QB you need to draft brilliantly, develop the talent and be willing to cut very productive players.
The Pats are a anomaly in just about every way imaginable. To use what they do as a blueprint for success is a recipe for disaster. I'm sorry I just don't see how this new QB salary structure can possibly work for TEAMS (it's still a team game right?) in the long run. Now Seattle trades away their franchise defender less than a week after little Russell Wilson got paid. No different than Oakland trading away Mack after they paid Carr. When Seattle went to those SBs with Wilson they had a GREAT defense, Lynch running the ball. That's gone now. And with Wilson now making what he's making I don't see them coming close to winning anything with him. So then what's the point of paying him $35 million per year? It's a disastrous contract. If this is the way things continue to go teams would be better off NOT getting a so called "franchise QB".
When Seattle won the SB with the best D in the league. Their D ranked 17th in the league in salary cap spend. Most of their cap was tied up on an O that runs the ball. Last years playoff team the O ranked 20th and 15th on D in NFL salary cap. The NFL salary cap has increased roughly 10 million per season since 2013. That's roughly 70 million a year in 7 years. Wilson's cap hit is 26 plus this year and goes up to 37 million in 4 years. Wilson will be eating up about 25% of the salary cap increase for the team, not the total salary cap. Seattle has a great running attack. Their 3 running backs and TE today have a combined cap hit of 4 million dollars. On there SB team they had about 22 million tied up in running back and TE when the cap was roughly 70 million less. It's not a team game in the way you are conceptualizing it. The cap and draft structure allow teams to make choices of which players to pay and which to replace. The NFL success is based on three premises. Competitive balance, increasing revenue and capped operating expenses for player salaries. Forcing teams to cut high priced talent and replace it with cheap draft picks, higher picks for bad teams and lower for good teams helps create that balance. Teams being better off is not the goal of the league. The goal of the league is competitive balance with enough stars representing teams to drive sales. The league isn't trying to create dynasties. They want 32 teams competing for playoff spots on week 17 of the season. I agree the cap doesn't work for the majority of the players. It does work great for the owners and the star players. It also works for fans of mediocre teams that are in playoff contention.
The Seahawks didn't win the Super Bowl just because Wilson was on a cheap contract. They won the Super Bowl because Wilson, Sherman, Thomas, Bennett, Chancellor, Irvin, Tate, etc. were on cheap contracts. In other words, they drafted really well in the early 2010s, and their roster got weaker when they had to pay or get rid of all the guys, not just Wilson. If the only guy they had to pay was Wilson, they'd still be one of the best teams in football. And if they could somehow have Wilson on a cheap deal now, they still wouldn't be able to replicate their previous successes.
Exactly how the league is designed. If the Seahawks are going to win another SB they will have to have a couple of great drafts and underpay other players. Everyone who's good is going to get paid. If you don't refresh with equal talent in other places you can't have a dynasty. The QB is the toughest guy to replace and gets the most. That's the game in a nutshell. The Seahawks could have cut or traded Wilson and tried to replace him by drafting Russell Wilson. They don't think they can. They haven't even been able to have any drafts comparable to the first draft when Wilson was taken. That's why Frank Clark traded. They are going to try and replace Clark with an underpaid rookie. We don't disagree at all. They have an overpaid QB and have to draft underpaid stars at other positions. Just what they did when they won when they had an overpaid running back and TE and underpaid QB and defense.
Seattle will regret this extension much like Oakland regrets the Carr extension. There are only a few guys in team sports since 2000 I think would be worth that type of cash, the money and the expectations that come with it wouldn't be too much for them that doesn't mean I would choose to pay that type of cash. Lebron, Peyton Manning in his prime, Brady, Shaq, Kobe, Luck. Russell Wilson as good as he is isn't one of those guys. With the monstrous contract comes monstrous expectations.
Paying non-transcendant players like they are transcendant superstars is a suckers game. Bad business.
He just doesn't have the cool name necessary for success in the NFL. Russell Wilson...sounds like a grumpy neighbor.
Russell Wilson is a Superstar in the NFL. He happens to play on the other side of the planet and you may not be aware of it. He's also in his prime unlike Brady and Rodgers. He's the best NFL QB under 35 in the NFL who's done it for more than 1 year.
It sounds like a fake name created by the sporting goods industrial complex. Clearly he is being elevated by dissident league forces as an alternative to the unholy Nike / Reebok / Under Armour alliance.
Seattle has been one of the more prominent NFL teams for the past 7-8 years. I've seen Wilson play plenty of times. Very good QB, a winning QB, on his way to a HOF career, I'd want him to be the Jets QB but NOT at $35 million per year. Few athletes in the history of team sports have been transcendant stars who would be worthy of that type of money. Wilson isn't one of them. As good as he is I don't view him as a team carrier. He needs lotsa help to deliver the desired results.
