With Kyler Murray becoming the latest quarterback to land a major contract, let’s take a look at who’s next to cash in, either this year or next. (Or, maybe, not at all.)
Lamar Jackson.
The Ravens quarterback spent months resisting the team’s overtures to do a long-term deal. Now, he wants to get his second contract. Complicating matters is that he has no agent. He has said that contracts signed by other quarterbacks don’t matter to him, which is a clear example of why he desperately needs an agent. Those other deals become precedent for his own, a bar that he should strive to meet or to exceed.
It’s a challenge to separate team from self when it comes to getting a fair contract. Some players get brainwashed by the idea that they owe it to the broader effort to leave extra meat on the bone. Other players recognize that their duty to themselves and their families is to maximize the value that they generate from playing football, because their time for doing so is extremely short. They have no equity in the business. They have only what they can squeeze from ownership and squirrel away in the bank.
Yes, it’s a team sport. But there definitely is a “me” in team when it comes to ensuring that full and fair value is generated by a player who has earned every penny he makes, and who is entitled to pursue as many pennies as he can from owners who have money to burn — and to buy superyachts with.
Russell Wilson.
Deshaun Watson leveraged the quasi-free agency he finagled for himself into a brand-new, market-setting deal. Wilson, who had only one place he truly wanted to play if not Seattle, didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to ask for more on the way through the door.
And that’s a smart move, because he’ll get even more after the 2022 season.
With the richest owner by far poised to buy the team, and with the team giving up so much in trade assets to get Wilson, he’ll get a market-value deal after the season. It likely will be fully guaranteed.