NFL quarterbacks are making an absurd amount of money. The most recent example is Trevor Lawrence, who signed a 5-year $275 million deal with the Jacksonville Jaguars. It has made him the highest-paid man in the NFL alongside Joe Burrow. So where does this leave players like Dak Prescott? Should there be a way to control this lopsidedness?

Tom Pelissero came to The Rich Eisen Show and talked about the rumors about QB salary caps. Some team owners are looking for a panacea for this QB salary extravaganza. Colin Cowherd picked up the conversation and expanded on the idea of why some highly paid QBs wouldn’t ever be in the “Super Bowl bubble”.

The narrative of paying “good quarterbacks great money,” seems to be irking Cowherd, and it had something to do with the fans and the media. Being a rich quarterback doesn’t necessarily equate to being a Super Bowl Champion. Take Burrow, Lamar Jackson, and Trevor Lawrence for instance. They’ve never won a Super Bowl.

On the other hand, people like Patrick Mahomes and Tom Brady have often found success because they took team-friendly deals. This idea of keeping the sanctity of the team often leads to championships, but these days fans don’t seem to understand that.

“Fans I think are so much smarter today than years ago with football because they watch it, they care about it. These people that are winning fantasy football leagues, it’s not easy like, it’s competitive, fans are smarter than ever,” said Cowherd on The Herd with Colin Cowherd.

He further expanded, “You can go ask people in the Draft Kings business and those kind of businesses that the sports bettor is smarter than he’s ever been and he’s getting smarter. except when it comes to quarterbacks and saying ‘pay Tua the bag, pay Dak the bag’, you’re immediately eliminated if you look at our last 12 years from the Super Bowl conversations.”

Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes collectively won 7 Super Bowls out of the last 12 and there’s something common between the two. And perhaps that reason is what sets them apart from the others.

Why less is more

It was very common for elite QBs like Drew Brees, Patrick Mahomes, and Tom Brady to take a pay cut, or a team-friendly deal to make everyone happy. Mahomes signed a 10-year $450 million deal with the Chiefs and every year, the Chiefs tweak his contract to free up cap space. However, the trend doesn’t stop here. According to some reports, Brady left $60 million on the table just so the Patriots can build a championship-winning roster.

Drew Brees took a pay cut of $24 million as a parting gift to the New Orleans Saints. In 2021, he played for a veteran’s league minimum of $1.075 million and helped free up $24 million in cap space. There are other exemplary names like Brock Purdy, who signed a rookie contract worth $3.7 million and took the Niners to a Super Bowl. There’s obviously a pattern here, something that doesn’t seem to exist with the non-SB winner QBs.

Joe Burrow fell short of winning a Super Bowl but is the highest-paid QB in the league, alongside Trevor Lawrence, as mentioned earlier. Lamar Jackson, though a great QB, has never won a Super Bowl and has a 5-year $260 million extension. Jared Goff is on the same tangent with his 4-year $212 million deal. Therefore, taking a team-friendly deal is more often than not associated with winning championships.

Cowherd’s statement about paying “good quarterbacks great money,” stands true in some capacity. While it’s really motivating to get a huge paycheck, teams might also derail from the road to the Super Bowl if their QBs suffer an injury, or something unexpected comes up. It seems to be possible through QB cap regulation, but that seems like a far-fetched reality.