The Jacksonville Jaguars and beginning quarterback Trevor Lawrence have agreed to a brand new contract extension that can tie him with Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow for the highest-paid participant within the NFL.
The deal is a five-year extension price $275 million — $55 million per season — and greater than $140 million absolutely assured.
It is a vital deal for the Jaguars as a result of it retains their beginning quarterback in place for the foreseeable future and takes care of a giant query mark.
However that doesn’t essentially imply it’s a good or productive deal for them. At the very least not proper now, and it exhibits the largest drawback with the present quarterback market — there is no such thing as a middle-ground salary-wise for the second-tier gamers.
There may be nothing mistaken with having Lawrence as your group’s beginning quarterback. He’s a wonderful participant — in all probability an excellent participant — and has helped flip the Jaguars right into a aggressive soccer group. They definitely don’t wish to lose him as a result of the probabilities of them discovering an improve usually are not excessive based mostly on what is usually out there every offseason or within the draft.
The issue is that they don’t seem to be paying him like he’s that quarterback.
They’re paying him like he is among the elite gamers within the NFL.
He isn’t. He won’t even crack the highest 10 or 12 quarterbacks within the NFL at this second.
Except he dramatically improves all through the period of that contract, it’s an overpay — maybe a extreme overpay. That may be terribly damaging to groups in a tough salary-cap league and considerably restrict their flexibility in constructing a full roster.
The Jaguars may quickly be dwelling that actuality.
The shortage of a middle-ground for quarterback salaries makes it so that you both want an absolute stud quarterback (like a Patrick Mahomes) to justify the top-tier cash, or get fortunate and discover a younger franchise quarterback who continues to be on their rookie deal (C.J. Stroud, Brock Purdy) and nonetheless comparatively low-cost in opposition to the wage cap to win. If it’s important to begin paying gamers like Lawrence (and within the coming months Jordan Love and Tua Tagovailoa) among the many highest-paid gamers in soccer, it’ll make profitable a fair greater problem than it already is.
The Jaguars had no alternative however to signal Lawrence. The market dictates that is the wage it needed to be. That doesn’t essentially make it a win for the Jaguars.
