Super Bowl 57: A test of opposite ways with quarterback contracts. Seahawks are watching
Which way of paying quarterbacks wins championships?
Kansas City’s way, with Patrick Mahomes?
Or Philadelphia’s way, with Jalen Hurts?
Since the NFL instituted its salary cap in 1994 to change the league forever, only one time has a team won the Super Bowl with a quarterback taking up more than 13% of the salary cap.
That was San Francisco with Steve Young, in the first capped year of 1994. Young signed a $25.25 million extension with the 49ers one year before the NFL instituted the cap. Young’s cap charge for the ‘94 season when San Francisco won the Super Bowl was 13.08.%
On Sunday in Super Bowl 57 in Glendale, Arizona, Mahomes and his Chiefs are trying to set the new standard for quarterbacks, their cap hits and winning it all.
Will a team win the title while having its QB on a nearly half-billion contract?
Mahomes signed a $450 million, 10-year contract with Kansas City before the 2020 season. His cap charge for this season is $35.79 million. That is 17.2% of the Chiefs’ salary cap, and is the league’s largest cap hit.
He won the NFL most valuable player award Thursday night, for the second time.
Hurts and the Eagles represent what NFL cap-era history says is the optimum way to win a championship. It’s the way the Seahawks with Russell Wilson won their only title in the 2013 season: with a quarterback still on his rookie contract.
Sunday, Hurts, who got one MVP vote to Mahomes’ 48 (out of 50), will try to become the fourth quarterback in 10 seasons to win the Super Bowl while on his rookie deal. That’s since Wilson led Seattle to Super Bowl 48 in his second NFL season.
Wilson was a third-round draft choice in 2012. He had a salary of just $681,000 when he and the Seahawks won it all.
Mahomes won the Super Bowl while on his rookie contract with Kansas City, at the end of the 2019 season. He signed his mega deal five months later.
The Eagles won the Super Bowl with Carson Wentz on his rookie deal in the 2017 season.
Rookie salaries, even for top-drafted quarterbacks, are fixed and slotted by draft position each round. That’s per the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement with its players. Salaries, prorated signing bonus cash and incentive monies in any given year make up a player’s salary-cap charge for each season.
Each team must fit their top 51 players (by cap charge) under the league’s salary cap by the time it sets its initial 53-man active roster for the regular season days before the opening game in September. Teams must stay under the cap through the end of each season.
Wilson, Mahomes, Wentz and now Hurts have started recent Super Bowls while taking up almost none of their teams’ salary caps. That has allowed their teams to sign free agents and re-sign veteran stars, to build and maintain a championship team around their young-gun QBs.
Since the salary cap began in 1994, six quarterbacks have won the Super Bowl playing on their rookie contracts:
Tom Brady with the Patriots in the 2001 season
Ben Roethlisberger with the Steelers in 2005
Eli Manning for the Giants in 2007
Wilson in 2013
Wentz in 2017
Mahomes in 2019
Only four quarterbacks since Young in 1994 have won the Super Bowl while taking up even 10-plus% of their team’s salary cap:
Peyton Manning in 2006 with the Colts and 2015 with the Broncos
Eli Manning in 2011 with the Giants
Brady in 2014 and ‘18 with the Patriots and in 2020 with the Buccaneers
Matthew Stafford last season with the Rams
Hurts is earning $1.08 million in this his third NFL season since the Eagles drafted him 53rd overall in round two. He is taking up just 0.73% of Philadelphia’s salary cap for this season. Wilson took up 0.51% of the Seahawks’ cap in 2013 when Seattle routed Peyton Manning and Denver in Super Bowl 48.
Hurts being on his rookie deal allowed Eagles general manager Howie Roseman to sign veterans to improve Philadelphia’s defense. Kyzir White, Haason Reddick and James Bradberry signed with the Eagles in $55.25 million worth of free-agent contracts before this season.
Reddick is a large reason the Eagles are in this Super Bowl. The 28-year-old edge rusher, who signed for $45 million over three years, had an MVP year debuting for Philadelphia. He led the league with 19 1/2 sacks.
Besides Wilson, Mahomes and Wentz, the other time in the last 10 years a team has won the Super Bowl while allotting its QB less than 10% of its cap space was Brady, in 2016. That year he agreed to restructure his contract and lower his base salary from New England, to drop his charge to 8.6% of the cap. That afforded the Patriots the buying power to build another championship team around him.
Brady was married at the time to the world’s richest supermodel. Gisele Bundchen was worth an estimated $360 million then.
Geno Smith’s contract
Seahawks coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider know all this.
It was in the back of their minds when they said last spring they came to believe Wilson would not be re-signing with Seattle a third time when his contract was to end with the team. That was to be following the 2023 season. The Seahawks knew Wilson was eyeing a next contract of perhaps $50 million per year or more, what Aaron Rodgers signed to stay with Green Bay last year.
The Seahawks say the crux of the matter of them trading Wilson to Denver last March was Wilson made them believe he would be walking away, into free agency in the spring of 2024, with Seattle getting nothing more than a compensatory draft pick.
“We were under the impression that there wouldn’t be a long-term extension with us,” Schneider said 11 months ago.
Wilson and his agent have since strongly denied to The News Tribune they and the Seahawks ever talked about his next contract, and what it would take to keep him in Seattle beyond 2023.
Now Carroll and Schneider are considering how much to pay Geno Smith.
Seattle’s 32-year-old successor to Wilson is coming off the first Pro Bowl season of his career. After seven years as a backup for four teams, Smith set four Seahawks season records for passing. He broke Wilson’s team records for completions, attempts and yards. Smith also led the NFL in completion rate.
Smith said last week at the Pro Bowl in Las Vegas it was “looking very good” he will re-sign with Seattle.
“We think we can get some things done,” Smith told SiriusXM satellite radio, “but obviously those things take time.”
Smith and his agents of the Wasserman Media Group are likely targeting about $30 million a year in the first multiyear deal he will sign since his rookie contract with the New York Jets in 2013. Tennessee’s Ryan Tannehill averages $29.5 million per season. Tannehill is three years older than Smith. He is not a Pro Bowl quarterback. He did not lead his team to the playoffs, as Smith just did.
The Seahawks are deciding how close to $30 million per year to go with Smith.
Last week, the NFL informed teams the salary cap for 2023 will be $224.8 million. Smith getting $30 million per season in a new deal would put him at 13.3% of Seattle’s cap for this year.
But the Seahawks can prorate the salary-cap hit of Smith’s new contract with his signing bonus over the entire length of the new deal, up to five years, per NFL cap rules. So $30 million per season wouldn’t necessarily be $30 million against Seattle’s cap this year. The Seahawks and many other teams like to back-load their larger contracts, packing higher cap hits onto the later years of deals. That’s because history shows on aggregate the cap will rise each successive year through the league’s annual revenues. Estimates are the 2024 cap will approach or exceed $250 million. That’s because the league’s new media-rights contracts kick in this year.
So re-signing Smith to $30 million per season could take up perhaps only 12% of Seattle’s cap in 2024, and less than that in 2025 as the cap rises again.
That’s the incentive for Seattle to get Smith signed to a new, multiyear deal to keep him from free agency — and not having to use the franchise tag to retain him. The franchise-tag charge for quarterback in 2023 is $32.4 million for one season. That’s more than the cap space the Seahawks currently have for this year, and would leave the team with nothing to sign the help on defense they need.
Drafting a quarterback
Even if they re-sign Smith, the Seahawks drafting a quarterback is not out of the question.
In fact, it may be financially prudent.
This is the first time since 2009 Seattle has owned a top-five draft choice. That’s thanks to Denver going 5-12 this past season. The Seahawks got the Broncos’ first-round pick in the Wilson trade.
Seattle owns four choices among the first 52 picks in this spring’s draft.
If a quarterback the team likes is still on the board in the first two rounds, Seattle could take a passer who would not have to play right away, should the team re-sign Smith before the draft in April as it appears it will. If a Smith deal is for two or three years, that would keep the Seahawks in the market to draft one. Then at the conclusion of Smith’s contract, the Seahawks would have a highly touted QB still on his rookie deal.
You know, the way they won it all 10 seasons ago, the way the Eagles are trying to in Sunday’s Super Bowl with Hurts.
“The first four picks are enormous opportunities for us,” Carroll said.
The News Tribune asked Carroll last month whether Smith’s Pro Bowl season has changed the Seahawks’ approach regarding drafting a quarterback at the top of this draft.
“If we didn’t have a quarterback that functioned really well, it might’ve been a little bit different,” Carroll said.
“The quarterbacks in this draft are extraordinary players. You don’t get opportunities like this.
“We are really tuned in to all of those options.”
