The Cost of a Quarterback

The NFL offseason officially starts tomorrow, but it’s already been a very busy year. The past month has seen more activity with player movement that I can honestly recall from any offseason, with seemingly each day bringing a new shocking trade of a big name player. Beginning with Alex Smith and working up to Cleveland’s frenzy over the past week, trades are suddenly all the rage.

The NFL is notoriously averse to trades, especially compared to other professional sports leagues. The most exciting deals we usually see are simply swaps of mediocre players for midround draft picks, the sort of deals you usually forget until you notice that a player you rarely think about has switched teams. The events of the past month are highly unusual, and it’s raised plenty of eyebrows from people wondering why the sudden frenzy of activity.

There are all sorts of reasons for teams to make trades, but they can all be summed up pretty simplistically. A trade happens when two teams value each other’s assets more than they value their own. There are all sorts of reasons why this could happen. Poor schematic fits, different windows for competition, varying needs on the depth chart. These are the reasons most trades have happened in the past, but they don’t explain why this offseason has seen such a breakout.

The sudden explosion in the trading market is due to a new source of value inequity, one that dates back to the lockout that happened prior to the 2011 season. There were a lot of factors that went into this labor negotiation, but probably the most significant consequence was the institution of a rookie wage scale. Prior to 2011 rookies were able to negotiate any contract they wished, and the teams that drafted them had no choice but to pay up or risk the player entering the following season’s draft again.

This negotiating leverage led to some extremely undesirable results, from the perspectives of both the owners and the players. The owners didn’t like having to shell out $68 million to JaMarcus Russell and then watch that investment go to waste, and the veteran players didn’t like seeing draft picks like Eric Berry become the highest paid player at his position without playing a single snap. So the new collective bargaining agreement instituted a rigid scale around rookie salaries, reducing the risk to owners and (theoretically) freeing up more money for veterans.

(Of course the people who got screwed in this deal were the college players who suddenly saw their first contracts drop by up to 75%, but they had no leverage and no spot at the negotiating table. They’re just lucky the NCAA makes sure they’re fairly compensated.)

These were the reasons behind this change, and they are arguably good reasons. But the real, and likely unintended, consequence was to radically alter that way teams are constructed. In a capped league salary is a wildly significant piece in how players are valued, and having an entire class of players with their salaries restricted changes how both rookie and veteran players are viewed.

The effects of this are visible at every position in the league, but nowhere is it more clear than at quarterback. The importance of the quarterback position is at an all time high, and that has led to some very uneven negotiating terms, resulting in a skewed and ridiculous compensation distribution. Now any quarterback who can claim to be a reliable starter is able to demand to become the highest paid player in the league (as we’re seeing with Kirk Cousins, an average quarterback who is about to sign the first fully guaranteed contract in NFL history), while backup quarterbacks are seen as having virtually no value.

A proven starting veteran quarterback is going to earn more than $25 million a year in the NFL. Matthew Stafford, Derek Carr, and Joe Flacco have all signed contracts in excess of $100 million over the past few seasons, and no one would consider them superstar passers. But on the other end of the spectrum we have an entire class of quarterbacks still on their rookie contracts. Mitchell Trubisky will count only $6.6 million against Chicago’s cap in his second season. Jared Goff and Carson Went are both looking at cap hits between $7 and $8 million. On the open market these players would likely receive more than twice what they are costing their current teams.

Together these classes of quarterbacks have led to extreme disparities in how teams are paying their quarterbacks. The chart below shows the Average Annual Value of the contracts for every quarterback on each team’s roster last season. See if you can spot where things drop off.

There is a general slight downhill trend among the first half of teams, followed by an immediate and sharp dropoff. The only two teams in the middle were Cincinnati and Buffalo, with a pair of middle of the pack quarterbacks they were able to convince to take rare moderate contracts. Below them we see teams whose main starting quarterbacks last year were either on rookie contracts or unwanted veterans who managed to hold off the mistakes of drafts past. (I see you, New York and Denver).

I’m sure you’re all very interested in the minutiae of NFL contract structures, but now you’re wondering what this has to do with the recent flood of trades. Well if you look closely, you will notice a couple consistent trends. Many of the teams trading away veteran players are on the left side of the chart, and many of the teams acquiring them are on the right.

This disparity in the cost of the quarterback position means that teams with signed veterans and teams with players on their rookie deals are essentially playing two completely different games when it comes to team building. A team like the Rams, the Bears, or the defending Super Bowl champion Eagles have essentially $20 million extra in cap space. And looking at the distribution of teams above, it doesn’t appear that quarterback expense has that much to do with value received from the position, as teams like Arizona and Detroit sit near the top of the list while Green Bay, Seattle, and New England fall in the middle.

Let’s just run through a few examples to see what I’m talking about. The clearest case is Michael Bennett, traded from the Seahawks to the Eagles. Seattle could no longer afford his contract, and despite how valuable he is to their defense, they decided they needed the money more than they needed him. Fortunately the Eagles were there with plenty of cap space to absorb him, adding another talented pass rusher to their already extremely deep front.

A similar deal happened between the Broncos and the Rams. Both teams are among the lower paying class, but while the Rams appear set in the near term with Goff at quarterback, Denver is still desperately in need at that position. And because they (erroneously) believe they are one quarterback away from competing, their plan is to jump into the higher paying class, adding Case Keenum at a cost of $18 million a year. To clear the space for this they had to ship away Aqib Talib, a starting cornerback the Rams were happy to accept.

In both cases a team facing a cap crunch made a decision to let a veteran star go in exchange for an unproven, but much cheaper, draft pick. On the other end, the space saved by the rookie quarterbacks allowed the Rams and the Eagles to add a costly veteran to their already deep roster.

Not every trade falls into this category, but you can see strands of the same thinking throughout. Cleveland has plenty of cap space, so they were able to absorb Tyrod Taylor as a bridge option while the Bills search for a cheaper rookie passer. The Browns also sent away a couple of draft picks for Jarvis Landry, a quixotic receiver who is going to be able to demand a lot more money than he deserves. Such a player doesn’t have a place on the team that paid the most money to quarterbacks in the league last year, but for a Browns team with nothing but cheap rookies and a mid-level expiring veteran, he is worth the gamble.

A player like Marcus Peters was dealt away for off the field reasons, but the Rams were able to take him because of Goff’s contract. And the Chiefs sent away a proven veteran quarterback in Alex Smith largely because they want to move from the left group into the right, enabling them to bring in Sammy Watkins. (Don’t ask me to explain why the Giants traded for Alec Ogletree or the Panthers traded for Torrey Smith. Sometimes teams are just stupid.)

We are now seven years into these new contract structures, and teams are beginning to figure some things out. Last season the Eagles were able to win the Super Bowl largely because of the space saved for them by Wentz. They were able to add veteran free agents like Chris Long and Alshon Jeffery because of this cap space, and they traded for players nearing the end of their rookie deals like Timmy Jernigan and Ronald Darby because they had the cap space to keep them around that their original teams did not.

We saw the benefits of this depth clearly in their NFC Championship matchup against the Vikings. Minnesota is one of the few teams that can match up one for one with Philadelphia along the defensive front, with a pair of double digit sack producers and a run stuffing defensive tackle. Early in the season it was a very reasonable argument which team had the more disruptive defensive line.

The difference between the two became clear as the season went along. While Philadelphia was able to pull players like Chris Long and Derek Barnett off the bench, the Vikings were stuck using largely the same front on every play. Of all the Eagles defensive linemen, Brandon Graham played the highest percentage of their defensive snaps at 64%. All four Vikings starters eclipsed that number. Unsurprisingly, their effectiveness waned as the season went along, and by the time they reached the championship game, Nick Foles was able to stand comfortably in the pocket while Case Keenum was running for his life.

Seven years in we have already seen one full cycle of development under the rookie quarterback scale, and we are now seeing a strategic shift across the league in response. The first real guinea pigs for this new system were the Seahawks, and they handled things about as well as you could imagine. In 2012 they stumbled upon a pot of gold with third round pick Russell Wilson, a franchise quarterback that cost them less than $3 million total over his first four years. Obviously finding draft steals like Richard Sherman and Bobby Wagner helped as well, but the presence of an affordable quarterback made it possible for them to swing for the fences and add players like Bennett, Cliff Avril, and Percy Harvin (some additions worked out better than others).

Obviously this core won the Seahawks a Super Bowl in 2013, and it set them up for as good a sustained run of success as we’ve seen in recent memory from a non-Patriots team. But it also had a very clear time limit. In 2015 Wilson signed a four year deal worth $87.6 million, fundamentally altering the entire makeup of Seattle’s roster.

They did their best to lock up their stars, but they no longer had the money to keep around useful contributors like Bruce Irvin and Golden Tate. They tried to compensate by paying almost nothing to their offensive line and hoping Wilson could work magic behind them, a strategy that came back to bite them as they failed to make the playoffs in 2017.

Seattle put it off for as long as they could, but this offseason the bill has come due. In addition to trading Bennett, the Seahawks have also released Sherman, the first steps of what will likely be a major dismantling of the core that won them their Super Bowl. Wilson is still there for the long term, but the team they are going to build around him is going to be brand new, built on cheap young talent they have to hope can replace their proven but expensive veterans.

A starting quarterback on a rookie contract is the most valuable commodity in the league, but it doesn’t last forever. There is a very defined window for competition, when a team can build depth around a budding star and make a run. Philadelphia hit this window a year ago, and they’re doing as much as they can to make the most of the remaining two years. The Rams are trying to do the same in the two seasons they will have before Goff’s inevitable extension forces them to carve apart their roster.

The math of building an NFL roster has fundamentally changed since the rookie wage scale went into effect, and teams are still figuring out the best strategy to take advantage of these new rules. It raises all sorts of interesting questions going forward about whether teams will rethink things that until now have been taken for granted. Will the Titans and the Buccaneers just hand Marcus Mariota and Jameis Winston huge contract extensions if they continue to have up and down performances, or will they try to find something more cost effective? Should the Giants be more willing to part with Eli Manning for a chance to get a true franchise option? Did teams pass up on the Cousins sweepstake knowing that the 4-5 depth pieces they could add with that money may be worth more than the difference between him and an unproven rookie?

These consequences weren’t intended when the league instituted the rookie wage scale, but they’re happening nonetheless. And while we can definitely debate the merits and the ethics of the system they’ve set up, we can’t deny that it’s brought an interesting spark to the NFL offseason. A new market inefficiency has opened up across the league’s rosters, and the activity we are seeing this offseason may be only a taste of what we will see in the years ahead.

A Super Bowl We'll Never Forget

Well holy shit.

I’m not sure what else there is to say. I wasn’t particularly excited coming into this Super Bowl, expecting it to be a rather uninspiring game and another victory for the Patriots. Obviously, I had no idea what the hell I was talking about. Not only did the Eagles win, they did so in one of the most thrilling games in NFL history.

High scoring games get all the love, but a lot of times they can be just as sloppy as low scoring contests. That certainly wasn’t the case with this Super Bowl. There were of course a few blown coverages and a fair number of missed tackles, but there was also a lot of exceptional offensive football, players making spectacular individual efforts to keep the ball moving down the field.

Last night saw 84 points scored and 1151 yards of offense. The latter is an NFL record, not just for a Super Bowl or a postseason game but for any game. There were turnovers, fourth down conversions, clutch field goals, missed kicks, and pretty much everything except punts. I’m not going to try to jam this into a single cohesive narrative, so instead here are a few of my thoughts on what happened.

Nick Foles

Any conversation about the Super Bowl needs to start with Nick Foles. The winning quarterback is often the MVP of the game by default, winning unless he has a truly mediocre game or someone else plays spectacularly. But in this Super Bowl that was certainly not the case, as Foles was the best player on the field the entire night.

When Carson Wentz went down for the Eagles late in the season, most people gave the team up for dead. We saw both the Dolphins and the Raiders roll over in the playoffs a year ago, and by now it’s been pretty much accepted that a team’s season is over as soon as their starting quarterback gets hurt.

It’s easy to say now that we may have been hasty in dismissing Foles. After all, he’s a veteran with a lot of starting experience and a history of playing at an extremely high level for short bursts. And even though he looked atrocious the last time he was on the field, we saw this year from Case Keenum and Jared Goff how much escaping Jeff Fisher can help a quarterback.

But his performance during the regular season did little to inspire confidence, completing less than 60 percent of his passes with an average of 5.3 yards per attempt after taking over. The Eagles narrowly beat the Giants and the Raiders, then got shut out in a meaningless Week 17 game to the Cowboys. And even in a win over the Falcons in the first playoff game Foles did little to inspire confidence.

The quarterback we saw over the past two games is a completely different player. He was confident, he was bold, and he repeatedly pulled off ridiculous throws. The touchdowns to Alshon Jeffery and Corey Clement were perfect down the field throws. He dropped another touch pass over Jeffery’s shoulder later in the game, and he hit a dart up the seam on Philadelphia’s final touchdown drive to pull them into scoring range. He had one interception that wasn’t his fault, resulting only after an uncalled defensive pass interference and Jeffery’s attempt to make a one handed catch flipped the ball to the defender. Every other pass he threw was exactly where it needed to go, and the Eagles moved the ball consistently because they could count on their quarterback to make these plays.

New England’s defense isn’t good, and we knew there were going to be opportunities down the field. The Eagles hit them early, but all game I was expecting them to make a mistake. When their defense looked like they had no hope of stopping the Patriots, it seemed like it was only a matter of time before Foles missed an open receiver or held onto the ball for a costly sack. But he was flawless the entire night, and he needed to be for the Eagles to pull this one out.

Doug Pederson Stays Aggressive

Coming into the game it seemed pretty clear where each team had the edge. The Patriots have the greatest coach of all time and one of the best quarterbacks in NFL history, and the Eagles had the edge pretty much everywhere else on their roster. There was no way we could have predicted that not only would Foles outplay Brady, but Bill Belichick would also end up outcoached by Doug Pederson.

It’s no secret that NFL coaches are almost without exception far too conservative. The downside of taking a risk is much greater for their job than it is for their team, as any decision that backfires will undoubtedly be held against them. They punt when they should go for a first down, they kick extra points when they should go for two, and they very rarely manage end of the game situations properly.

Pederson has been a refreshing change of pace over the past couple seasons. The Eagles have one of the stronger analytics departments in the league (to some extent a holdover from the Chip Kelly era), and Pederson trusted those analytics when they came to him before the season and told him to be more aggressive. The Eagles went for it on fourth down more than any other team in the league this year, and they kept that up in the Super Bowl as well.

You only need to look at three crucial fourth and ones to really see the difference in this game. The first came to New England early in the second quarter, facing a fourth down on the Philadelphia eight yardline. With only a yard to go to set up a first and goal, the upside of the conversion was tremendous. But they elected to send out their field goal kicker for the sure thing, a sure thing that fell through when the holder fumbled the snap.

The Eagles faced two similar fourth down situations later in the game, and in both cases they were rewarded for making the decision the Patriots didn’t. The first turned into the play that will be replayed for decades to come, the throwback touchdown to Foles to opened the game up before halftime and kept the Patriots from pulling off their typical two-for-one scoring opportunity. In that case, going for the conversion made even more sense, since even failure would have pinned the Patriots at the goalline and likely cost them any chance of scoring before halftime.

The second situation was a much more interesting call, and one that I think very few coaches would have made. Trailing by a point and facing a fourth and one on their own 45 with six minutes remaining in the game, the Eagles kept their offense on the field and converted to keep the drive alive. That drive turned into the touchdown that ultimately won them the game, and it never would have happened if they had followed conventional wisdom.

Most coaches would have given the ball back to the Patriots, trusting their defense to stop them and get it back with enough time to go down and score. Of course, Philadelphia’s defense hadn’t stopped the Patriots yet all night, and in all likelihood a punt would have only added a couple plays to New England’s ensuing scoring drive. Philadelphia’s aggression paid off, and hopefully it will lead more teams to being aggressive in the future.

When Play Calling Gets Cute

People love to tear apart play callers for dialing up something fancy when good, old fashioned football could have worked. The Falcons should have just run the ball last year. The Seahawks should have just handed it off to Marshawn Lynch. And on fourth and goal from the one yardline, the Eagles should have just trusted their offensive line rather than dialing up some ridiculous throwback to the quarterback.

Er, scratch that last one. It worked, and so it became a brilliant play call, one that will earn Pederson credit as a football mastermind for years to come. It could just as easily have backfired, if the defense got penetration, if someone covered Foles, if the pass was missed or the catch was dropped. Oftentimes execution is the difference between a coach being “brilliant” and “too cute”, and on the biggest stage things broke Pederson’s way.

They did not break Belichick’s. Three times during the game the Patriots dialed up similarly unique play designs, and all three times they blew up in their face. The most obvious was the decision to call almost the exact same play as the Eagles earlier in the game, throwing the ball back to Brady.

It seems insane to try to throw a pass to a 40 year old quarterback, but the play design actually worked perfectly, and with a better throw and more luck on the catch it could have easily turned into a twenty yard gain. The play call was made on a third and five, and they knew from the beginning that if the pass didn’t work out they would go for it on fourth down. That they ultimately failed to convert doesn’t take away from the fact that they were in a perfect situation to try a high upside play, and they very nearly pulled it off.

I have a few more questions about their call on the play immediately preceding the failed field goal attempt. Facing a third and one, they elected to run a jet sweep to Brandin Cooks. That play didn’t make a lot of sense to me, taking the ball out of Brady’s hands while trying to outflank a speedy and aggressive defense. Of course, the play call didn’t have much to do with Cooks’ ultimate decision to ignore the ten yards of open space on either side of the defender and choose to try to go over him, but it was still strange to put him in that position to begin with.

The final perplexing moment came with a minute left in the game. The Eagles kicked off, and the entire stadium held its breath in anticipation of another potential amazing comeback for Brady. And the Patriots decided that some of their precious time was better spent trying to run a reverse to Rex Burkhead, which ultimately pinned them at the nine yardline with 58 seconds remaining an no timeouts.

Any of these plays would be easy to dismiss as blunders, but if they had worked out they would have been works of unparalleled genius. Belichick called for a pass to Tom Brady—Tom freaking Brady—in the Super Bowl. Belichick, always the master of the special team edge, pulled off a huge return on a reverse in the final minute of the Super Bowl. Being cute with a play call is just another risk, and often the only difference between a masterful call and a boneheaded mistake is the execution on the field.

What is a Catch?

It wouldn’t be an NFL game without at least one controversial play, usually involving a disputed catch. And in this game we were fortunate enough to get two, both involving Eagles touchdowns. Midway through the third quarter, Foles launched a perfect pass to running back Corey Clement that he appeared to possibly bobble before going out of bounds. And then at the very end of the game, tight end Zach Ertz lunged for the endzone after making a catch over the middle, losing the ball upon crossing the goalline and striking the ground.

Both plays were ruled touchdowns on the field, and both turned into the agonizing reviews. Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth hemmed and hawed for several minutes, before deciding in each case they were likely to be overturned and ruled incomplete. And since both passes came on third down, the Eagles would have been forced to kick two field goals rather than two touchdowns, costing them eight points that ultimately proved to be the margin of victory.

I’ve been meaning to write about this for some time, and I’ve never gotten around to it, but now seems as good a time as any. When people start complaining about the NFL’s catch rule being indecipherable, I really don’t know what they’re talking about. I’ll admit that the rule does have some gray area, but that comes from the nature of these plays themselves, and I would say that 95 percent of the time I find myself agreeing with the call that is ultimately made.

These two plays are perfect examples of people forcing themselves to complain about things that are pretty cut and dry. On the first, it looked from a couple angles like the ball moved in Clement’s hands after his left foot came off the ground, meaning he only had possession with a single foot down in bounds.

But the closer I looked at the play, the more suspect I became about the “movement” of the ball. Because while movement is often a sign of a receiver losing possession, it doesn’t work in 100 percent of cases. A ball can move in a receiver’s hands while still being fully under his control, and nothing that I saw on that play indicated that Clement did not have control of the ball. It may have shifted slightly down his chest, but his hand remained pinned against it the entire time, and it didn’t bobble at all as he hit the ground out of bounds.

The case of Ertz’s touchdown was even more cut and dry. Michaels and Collinsworth made a lot of comparisons to the Jesse James play in the game between the Steelers and the Patriots earlier this year, where the Steelers tight end made a catch at the one yardline and twisted to fall into the endzone, losing the ball when he hit the ground. That play was also ruled a touchdown on the field before being overturned on replay, and it ultimately cost the Steelers the game and the top seed in the AFC.

But when you actually look at these plays, they really don’t have much in common. Ertz made his catch at the five yardline, and he took several steps before having his legs cut out from beneath him and diving for the endzone. It’s hard to truly capture the point at which a receiver completes the “process” of the catch, but Ertz clearly had the ball long enough to fulfill those requirements. He caught the ball, tucked it away, and then extended it for the goalline, where James’s extension was part of a single motion extending the catch he made.

People continue to complain about this rule, and eventually the NFL will listen to them and will try to make some changes. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing—I would like to see them tighten the definition of the process to exclude players clearly possessing the ball long enough to extend for the goalline, so something like James’s catch would count and Ertz’s would be incontrovertible—but the truth is I’m not sure how they can find something that will work perfectly in every case. These will always be difficult decisions, especially now that we have the ability to slow them down and view them in ultra high definition. But in the vast majority of cases, I do believe that the referees get things right, including the two Eagles touchdowns in the Super Bowl.

Brady Under Pressure

The most fascinating aspect of the game came when the Patriots offense faced off against the Eagles defense. This was supposed to be the heavyweight matchup of the game, a future Hall of Fame quarterback leading a top offense against one of the best defenses in the league. Absolutely no one expected what we ultimately got, the Patriots totally shredding Philadelphia to the tune of 33 points and over 600 yards.

Over the course of his career Brady has been quietly pretty mediocre in Super Bowls, and it’s ironic that by far his best performance came in a loss. Throughout most of the second half New England was all but unstoppable, moving the ball the length of the field and into the endzone with ease. They had three straight 75 yard touchdown drives to open the half, and the Eagles looked like they had no answer.

The most interesting thing was the total lack of pressure the Eagles managed through most of the game. Their defensive line is one of the best and deepest in the league, and going against a New England team that’s struggled to keep Brady upright more this year than at any time in his career, it seemed inevitable that they would harass him into some tough situations.

With this in mind, it certainly seemed strange that Philadelphia’s defensive strategy to open the game was to blitz like crazy. The Eagles are not a team that blitzes frequently, but early on they were bringing additional rushers on nearly every play. And more often than not they were getting home, collapsing the pocket around Brady and making him uncomfortable.

The Eagles got pressure in the first half, but they did not get any sacks, and Brady often made them pay for their aggression. With defenders in his face he wasn’t able to get his customary zip and precision on the ball, but on several occasions it didn’t matter. Philadelphia’s secondary is an issue when they have seven defenders dropping into coverage, and once they started sending additional defenders into the backfield it became a straight up problem. There were receivers running wide open thirty yards down the field, and Brady was content to loft the ball up and let it fall into their arms, with the defenders too far away to make any sort of play on the pass.

The blitz wasn’t working for Philadelphia, so they backed off of it. Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to improve matters either. For most of the second half Philadelphia sent four rushers after Brady, and for most of the second half they didn’t get anywhere close to him. The Patriots double teamed Fletcher Cox on almost every play and kept backs and tight ends in to chip on the defensive ends. This negated Philadelphia’s pass rush, but it also took away the running backs as receiving options (Dion Lewis didn’t have a catch, and after setting a record with 14 in last year’s Super Bowl James White only had two this year).

This could have worked for Philadelphia, except that even dropping extra men into coverage didn’t help them on the back end. New England’s receivers got whatever they wanted running through the middle of the field, and the entire defense looked helpless and exhausted for most of the second half.

During my preview of the game I broke down five crucial matchups, the last of which was the Eagles versus time. Time was killing them in the second half, as the Patriots stacked up three straight drives that lasted a total of 25 plays. They weren’t running no huddle, but they weren’t exactly taking their time either as they marched down the field.

A couple sections above I discussed Pederson’s decision to go for it on fourth down late in the game. Not only did this decision keep his offense on the field, but it kept his defense on the bench as well. Philadelphia’s last touchdown drive took more than seven minutes on the game clock, and it gave their defense the time they needed to catch their breath.

In the end, the pass rush that was nonexistent for most of the game was what iced it for the Eagles. Not just the sack and fumble that killed Brady’s first attempt to drive down the field, but the pressure that harried him into three straight incompletions to start the last. For 57 minutes this game looked nothing like we expected it to, but at the very end a bit of sense entered the world, and Philadelphia’s defense became the unit we expected them to be all along.