News that quarterback Matthew Stafford, who signed a five-year, $135 million contract renewal with the Lions this week, is now the NFL’s highest-paid player has made its way around the league, and many football pundits are scratching their heads.
Stafford is 51-58 overall and 0-3 in the postseason.
Winning does not seem to be a prerequisite for a huge paycheck for NFL passers. Talent—even “competence,” per BleacherReport—at the quarterback position is so scarce that teams have little option but to pay handsomely to lock in even a mediocre passer.
No wonder, then, that the top 16 highest-paid players in the NFL are all quarterbacks. What is surprising is which quarterbacks.
After Stafford, the next highest paid players in the league are, in this order, Oakland’s Derek Carr, the Colts’ Andrew Luck, and Arizona’s Carson Palmer (data compiled by spotrac.com and cited by BleacherReport).
Carr is 22-25 (.468) overall and has never been to the playoffs. Palmer is 1-3 in playoff games and 89-84-1 (.511) overall. Luck is 3-3 in the postseason and 43-27 (.610) overall. He has yet to appear in the Super Bowl.
Combined, those three men have a playoff record of 3-8 and make $125.29 million per year.
The NFL’s elite quarterbacks are making chump change comparatively. Granted, New Orleans’ Drew Brees rounds out the list of the league’s richest quarterbacks. He makes $24.25 million a year, and it’s easy to see why. Over his 16-year NFL career, he has led the league in passing yards seven times, including in each of the past three years. He won a Super Bowl with the Saints in 2009.
That was, however, his only Super Bowl appearance. He is 6-5 in the postseason.
According to BleacherReport, when news of Stafford’s contract broke, Brees texted his agent, Tom Condon, who also represents Stafford: “Wow.”
The Patriots’ Tom Brady, a 17-year NFL veteran with five Super Bowl rings (more than any other quarterback in history) and a 25-9 playoff record, makes $20.5 million a year. Fourteen NFL quarterbacks, few of whom have even a shadow of Brady’s postseason resume, have more lucrative contracts.
Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers, who is 90-45 overall and 10-7 in the playoffs, makes $22 million a year. He has led the league in quarterback rating twice (2011, 2012), and threw a league-high 40 touchdown passes last year.
Granted, inflation and scarcity have driven the price of NFL quarterbacks through the roof since Rodgers signed his current five-year, $110 million contract with the Packers in 2013, and Brady signed his two-year, $41 million deal with the Pats in 2016.
In all likelihood, Rodgers and Brady will see huge pay increases when they renew their contracts.
Not that Rodgers, for his part, seems all that worried about his salary.
“I know how this team operates. They take care of the guys who are their core guys. I think I’m one of those guys. … You negotiate based on what you’ve done, what other people have done. I don’t handle that. My agent handles that. I don’t worry about that stuff… But again, that stuff takes care of itself. You play well enough, you get another contract.”
Perhaps it is folly to judge the value of a quarterback on his winning percentage and his postseason percentage. Innumerable factors contribute to a team’s winning or losing a game in the NFL, and neither a win nor a loss can be attributed entirely to the man under center.
However, franchises theoretically invest in players in hopes that those players will yield victories and trophies. In today’s passing-intensive NFL, a quarterback is integral to a team’s winning or losing. Therefore, a quarterback is the most important investment a team can make.
But, the difference between a solid quarterback and a great–say, a $150 million–quarterback is that a great quarterback (BleacherReport cites Rodgers as an example) makes his whole team better, and finds a way to win.
Still, Joe Banner, the former president of the Eagles, chief executive officer of the Browns and front-office consultant with the Falcons, notes that, given the salary cap, it is all but impossible to build a top tier team around a quarterback who is making upwards of, say, $100 million.
“You are betting that the quarterback is so important, and so good, that you can surround him with less talent and win. The teams that are screwed are the teams paying $21-24 [million per year] and getting a good quarterback versus a difference-maker. They will have a very hard time winning.”
It remains to be seen whether the Lions—and the Raiders, Colts, and Cardinals before them—have made smart bets.
Featured Image via Flickr/Austin Kirk
