The San Francisco 49ers give Jimmy Garoppolo the most expensive contract in league history after seven NFL starts – and do everything right. The Patriots and Josh McDaniels, on the other hand, present themselves in an unprofessional manner, while this issue of the NFL column by SPOX editor Adrian Franke also deals with Le’ Veon Bell, division forecasts, the Cleveland Browns and much more!
You also want to ask questions to the SPOX-NFL column? This goes directly to the author!
The big headline of the past few days was of course Josh McDaniels’ rejection of the Colts. In my opinion, this was an extremely unprofessional behaviour by McDaniels himself as well as by the patriots – I have put it in more detail here.
I have received the reaction to Twitter myself a few times and read it more often in general: Why is Jimmy Garoppolo given the highest contract in NFL history after seven regular season starts? Wouldn’t it have been better to work with the franchise day for one year and then, if Garoppolo confirms its performance, to negotiate a long-term deal?
On the one hand, the contract would have turned out to be much, much more expensive if Garoppolo would have performed even better under Kyle Shanahan in his first full season, including the preparations for the season. On the other hand, however, one would have accepted the risk that one might have slipped into the Kirk cousins dilemma.
An offer that the player or the consultant doesn’t like, an unfortunate public statement – in this dynamic there are always more than enough vanities and potential pitfalls that can make the fronts harden unexpectedly fast.
And another factor also played a central role here: San Francisco had started the off-season with over 115 million dollars at Cap Space. This is an absurd figure, considering that the total salary cap for 2018 is around $180 million, and “take-away” cap makes it possible, the Niners had taken nearly $40 million in cap space from 2016 to 2017 alone. Financially speaking, there was no reason to wait.
This led to a wonderfully structured contract in which the emphasis is clearly on the early years. In other words, a comparatively small signature bonus (1.4 million per year over the entire five-year contract period), but an enormous cadre bonus in the first year. As a result, Garoppolo San Franciscos Cap 2018 costs 37 million dollars, which the Niners can easily afford.
San Francisco is still in the top four in terms of cap space and Garoppolo has an absolutely justifiable cap hit over the remaining term of the contract: 20 million in 2019,26.6 million in 2020,25.9 million in 2021 and 27 million in 2022. After just two years, the Niners could be out of the contract with only $4.2 million dead cap, and if you look at the cap hits for 2018 and keep the constantly rising salary cap in mind, Garoppolo’s contract finally looks like a win-win situation.
With Garoppolo, 13 quarterbacks with a cap hit of at least 20 million dollars are going into the coming season. In addition, there are Kirk Cousins – wherever he eventually signs – and Drew Brees, who are both likely to crack the 20 million for 2018.
Brees already stands without a valid contract for the coming season with 18 million dollars in the books, only if both sides agree on a new contract before the start of the new league year, New Orleans can get some air here. Case Keenum could also join the 20-million circle, only Ndamukong Suh (26.1 million), Von Miller (22.4 million), Justin Houston (20.6 million) and Muhammad Wilkerson (20 million) could break through this sonic barrier from the non-QB squad.
Then there are a total of eight teams with the Chiefs (Mahomes), Texans (Watson), Bears (Trubisky), Rams (Goff), Eagles (Wentz), Cowboys (Prescott), Bucs (Winston) and Titans (Mariota), the status of which is still under his rookie contract for the starting quarterback forecast for 2018. Most of these players will presumably join the 20 million club with their first contract renewal.
This leads me to the conclusion and a somewhat overarching assessment. You have to consider a quarterback separately, in every respect – including salary, financial risk-taking and the cap hit. Football is on the one hand the ultimate team sport, because you are relatively dependent on your fellow players in every position. This also applies to the quarterback, for example with regard to the offensive line.
However, a good quarterback can make a good quarterback, and the enormous change within the Niners over the past season is the best example of this, his whole team doing better. On the one hand, we are talking about the difficult to measure things such as the mood, self-confidence and motivation of a team, but on the other hand, we are also talking about completely sporting aspects. You could literally watch as the offense with Garoppolo became more mature and dangerous from week to week.
It is also a reason why the annual MVP debates on whether a non-quarterback might not perhaps win the title this year are, in most cases, idle. The quarterback is per se so much more important than individually considered any other position that it takes a huge difference in performance between the best quarterbacks of the year and, for example, a running back or wide receiver to seriously start the MVP debate after a full season.
To put it another way, you could say: the influence of almost every player, as good as he is, on a game can be reduced by means of schemes and tactics, at least to a certain extent. With the best quarterbacks, this doesn’t work, or at least much more difficult. Whoever has one of the mid-level quarterbacks like Andy Dalton, Ryan Tannehill or Tyrod Taylor is ultimately always looking for possible alternatives.
If you have a quarterback below this level, you don’t have a realistic chance to reach higher goals. That’s why I was and remain critical of the Patriots decision to trade Garoppolo. For me this was a mistake, they should have kept him with the franchise day at least for the coming season.
The franchise quarterback is the premium position and you can’t afford to gamble here – at least you shouldn’t do that. Of course, the Garoppolo situation is a bit unusual for the 49ers, usually a team has a quarterback for several years before making such a financial commitment. Conversely, the Niners were fortunate enough to get a highly talented quarterback for a comparatively small trade price, which fits brilliantly into Kyle Shanahan’s scheme.
To bind him in this way was the only right decision.
Page 1: Why the Niners deal is by no means too expensive for Jimmy Garoppolo
Page 2: Le’ Veon Bell, Division Forecasts, Browns, 49ers, Cardinals – your questions