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To me, this contract is crazy, but it shows you the state of the NFL at this position. True answers aren’t growing on trees.
The Carolina Panthers are on the brink of giving Cam Newton a five-year, $103 million contract.
I personally that is way too much, but good for him and his agent for getting it.
And the fact that he’s getting this deal is illustrative of a problem in the NFL – there is a major franchise QB shortage.
So if you find a guy who is perhaps above-average, you hold on to him.
Look at the contracts guys like Colin Kaepernick, Andy Dalton and Joe Flacco got; money probably not commensurate with their talents.
John Harbaugh can say Flacco is a “superstar quarterback” but he’s not. He had a nice run a few years ago, but there has been a lot of mediocre plays around that (including that season). I remember running into a Jets assistant coach a few years ago in the airport, and he told me that the Jets’ defensive coaches felt they could always contain Flacco, and he wasn’t that hard to deal with. And if you think back to some of the Jets-Ravens games, that is so true.
So where am I going with this?
Some non-star quarterbacks are getting star-money.
Newton is another one of these guys who certainly looks the part – great arm, good speed, fantastic size, but doesn’t read defenses that well and telegraphs a lot of passes. He also has had a lot of injuries because he runs a lot and is a big target for defenders to hit.
But these teams feel they have no choice. Franchise quarterbacks don’t grow on trees, and Andrew Luck-type prospects seem to only come around once a decade.
So you have to make due.
Why do you think Ryan Fitzpatrick keeps getting jobs? He’s a serviceable, competent NFL QB. Aside from about six or seven teams with true franchise quarterbacks, so much of the league has to settle for that.
At least, at this point, the Jets are literally spending no money at the position.
They can go with serviceable in Fitzpatrick, or perhaps an improved Geno Smith in Year Three, and hardly eat any cap space.
Obviously, ultimately, they need to find a franchise quarterback, but as we’ve pointed out, they are very hard to find, and this leads to overpaying above-average.
I thought Bowles made a great point recently on the NFL quarterback frontier.
“With 32 teams in the league, you aren’t going to have 32 franchise quarterbacks. That is just a fact. You can name five (franchise quarterbacks), 10 if you want to stretch it into two type of tiers. There are 12 playoff spots. There aren’t going to be 12 franchise quarterbacks in the playoffs.”
Until the Jets find a franchise quarterback, which won’t be easy, they have to make due with middle-of-the-road, and try to buttress the position by being strong everywhere else.
But at least they don’t have to pay big bucks right now for middle-of-the-road.
June 2, 2015
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