Are We At the End of an Era for Veteran NFL Quarterbacks?

The notion of trying to get a cheap quarterback is nothing new in the NFL. The Seattle Seahawks hacked this dynamic as good as anyone has a decade-plus ago, as they struck gold on Russell Wilson in the 3rd round of the NFL draft, and used his cheap rookie contract as a springboard to spend money on the rest of the team to create the historic Legion of Boom defense. Quarterbacks are by far the most expensive players on an NFL roster, so getting one who is good and on a cheap rookie contract is the best way to build a deep team.

But also, if you don’t have a quarterback, you don’t have a chance in hell to win, and this leads to a herky-jerky dynamic between the teams who don’t have one bouncing back and forth between rookies and mid-level veterans that we may be watching play itself out this season, settling on the logical conclusion of what Seattle discovered a decade ago: the worst thing you can do from a roster construction standpoint is pay a quarterback a lot of money who is not worth it.

Which brings me to the quarterbacks who may be heralding this end of an era, as this offseason, the Atlanta Falcons signed veteran quarterback Kirk Cousins to a massive four-year, $180 million contract, with half of it guaranteed upon signing. Yesterday, the Falcons benched Kirk Cousins for first-round rookie Michael Penix. Last offseason, the New York Jets traded for future Hall of Famer and ayahuasca enthusiast Aaron Rodgers who was on the verge of being cut by Green Bay, then gave him a three-year, $112.5 million contract, with $75 million guaranteed. They won seven games last year and just four this year, as a team many thought was in win-now mode is back in a familiar spot, high in the draft order and potentially looking to draft another quarterback.

Quarterbacks who are made available by their teams are never going to be true difference makers, as superduperstars like Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes will never hit the open market. Lamar Jackson, who is also in that trio of the NFL’s best quarterbacks, threatened to go to free agency this last offseason, and the Baltimore Ravens moved heaven and earth to ensure he stayed. If you want a superstar quarterback, you will never find it in free agency (Peyton Manning excepted). You have to go through the draft and develop one on your own.

Yet teams keep trying. The Denver Broncos might be the best example of this herky-jerky dynamic that has played out across the NFL. They joined the Jets last year in their sweaty desperation to skip steps and traded for Russell Wilson who had played his way out of Seattle, then gave him nearly a quarter-billion dollars over five years. It was such a disaster that the Broncos cut Wilson after just two years, accepting the largest dead salary cap figure in NFL history this season ($87.5 million) and another $33.4 million in dead cap next year just to get him and his nanobubbles out of the building.

But the Broncos drafted a quarterback, and Bo Nix has completely turned around the franchise’s fortunes, as he has demonstrated a level of competence under center that the team hasn’t enjoyed since Peyton Manning. Many thought that the Broncos were just accepting a full-blown rebuild in a year where 34 percent of their salary cap was dedicated to someone not on the team, but after last week’s big win over the Indianapolis Colts, the Broncos are heavy favorites to make their first playoff appearance since 2015.

This likely resembles the model the Falcons were following, as they saw the Rodgers and Wilson disasters and accepted that signing the less talented Kirk Cousins could backfire as well, and they took out a hefty insurance policy using the eighth overall pick in this year’s NFL draft. Whether Michael Penix is good or not is very much to be determined, but the disastrous and wildly expensive play under center for the Falcons, Jets and Broncos these past few years may have killed the booming free agent market for veteran quarterbacks once and for all. I would be shocked if teams going forward still gave out the same kind of guaranteed money to veteran quarterbacks that Kirk Cousins got.

If the playoffs started today, only three playoff teams, the Pittsburgh Steelers, Minnesota Vikings and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, will start quarterbacks they signed in free agency, and they got them at a discount. The Vikings signed Sam Darnold on the cheap to back up their rookie J.J. McCarthy, and after McCarthy went down for the year with a torn ACL, Darnold has been one of the better quarterbacks in the NFL as the Vikings continue to threaten for the top overall seed in the NFC. Baker Mayfield was cut in Cleveland to make room for Deshaun Watson’s disastrous contract, and in his first season in Tampa Bay last year, Mayfield led them to the playoffs and is poised to do it again this season. Meanwhile, Russell Wilson has been a revelation in Pittsburgh, as they have clinched a playoff spot on his paltry $1.2 million cap hit after signing him in the wake of the Denver disaster.

In recent years, it has become far easier to find successful examples of bargain hunting at quarterback than successful examples of teams paying a ton of money to the best quarterbacks available every offseason.

Which makes me wonder whether we are at the end of an era for veteran quarterbacks. The Falcons and Broncos situations are so stark, the former where they practically predicted the Cousins disaster and the latter proving that a competent rookie quarterback can cure a lot of ills in a cap-strapped world, that one cannot help but wonder why anyone would pay a veteran quarterback a ton of money going forward who isn’t on the level of Josh Allen or Joe Burrow or Patrick Mahomes. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are likely wondering this too, as Baker Mayfield’s contract jumps from a very modest $6.9 million cap hit this year to a $35.7 million one next year, as his value proposition to their team will change dramatically. Teams are drafting more quarterbacks earlier these days, and one cannot help but wonder if the analytics nerds’ dream of drafting back-to-back 1st round quarterbacks is going to become more common as teams continue to sour on the veteran free agent market. It certainly didn’t hurt the Arizona Cardinals when they missed on Josh Rosen and drafted Kyler Murray the following year.

Sports are a young man’s game, and one look around the globe shows how younger players are becoming the dominant athletes in their professions. That’s not to say that older quarterbacks can’t hack it, as Russell Wilson is demonstrating this year, but that the risk-reward of paying an older quarterback gets exponentially worse the more money you give them. The opportunity cost of using those cap savings to patch up other areas of the roster is immense, and it can be the difference between being a Super Bowl contender and missing the playoffs.