This boils down to why I'm saying this is a Jason Licht / NFL QB issue, not a Baker Mayfield issue. If every team is paying their QB $40, $50, $60M a year, why do we have to pay that? It's the market price, right? Doesn't have to be though. The market price is set by the buyer. If no owner wants to pay a particular player (or group of players), a certain price, then that player (or players), have choice... a) take the money being offered or b) don't play at all, have no contract, and hope, someone pays you what you want.Backside wrote: ↑Wed Jul 30, 2025 11:27 am I’m just confused because all of these QBs you’re comparing are guys who got the massive contract extension that you don’t want to give Baker. Dak, Lawrence, Hurts, Kyler, etc. could all go into the Eagles situation and win the SB, okay sure, so could Baker. But all of those guys are also paid near the top of the league, so I guess those huge QB contracts you rail against aren’t really holding the team back like you say?
Like where are the cheap journeyman QBs you say could step into Bakers spot without skipping a beat? Your post was pretty light on the Fields and Minshews of the world. Daniel Jones I guess? He’s been much more bad than good, you can say he’d be as good or better than Baker here if you want, I’d disagree and hope we never have to find out who was right.
Your post seemed to confirm that paying a QB, even a non elite one, a top contract is fine, you just need to build a great team around them to have playoff success. That was always the case though and no one argued it. We argue against playing musical chairs with cheap journeyman QBs just because the rest of our offense is good and a nice situation to drop a QB into.
Again, the best example to your point of a giant QB contract crippling a teams ability to build out a roster is… Joe Burrow who got paid, made sure his WRs got paid. And his defense that was great in the playoffs getting him to a Super Bowl has completely fallen apart. But if they had just drafted well the last few years, like the Eagles, they’d be fine. So again it really doesn’t seem to be about giving the QB a giant contract at all. It’s about building a great roster around them whether they are elite or in that tier below. No where in that post did you state the merits of building an amazing roster and picking up cheap journeyman QBs who you rotate out for a new one as soon as they are due to be paid.
Understand, what I'm saying, already happened in the NFL. It happened with RB's. When the NFL realized that RB's can be drafted in R's 2 through 5 and yield similar results, they stopped drafting them in the 1st round. Now, not completely, but remember, there used to be a bunch of RB's taken in R1, because they were very important in the 70's, 80's, 90's, and even the early 2k's. With the rule changes in the NFL making the game easier to pass in (which is a part of the rationale of my stance), as well as the longevity or RB's, teams massively reduced their targeting of RB's in the draft as well as handing out big contracts. We're in an environment now where there's enough QB's to go around. We're vastly approaching an environment where there's a surplus. Something every GM should do, is draft a QB every year in the 3rd (or 4th), through 6th rounds if they think the QB has a shot to be at worst, an adequate starting QB. If they did that instead waiting until it's too late, and being forced to draft a 1st rd QB, they'd probably find out that it's a lot less stressful. For example... what would've been so bad by taking Will Howard or Kyle McCord in the 5th instead of Elijah Roberts? I think we all know by now, that the team doesn't believe Kyle Trask could be a starter in the NFL, right? Why not take a shot on a guy who could be? The Eagles took McCord, the Steelers took Howard. Both will be sitting behind successful QB's and will have a chance to sit back, learn, and develop. Both teams are going to have at least 2 years to see what they have in those two. We could've done the same. Historically, we could've done the same. They had 2 years to evaluate Trask, he's still here. Why? He should've been replaced after the 2023 season.
With respect to this comment: "the best example to your point of a giant QB contract crippling a teams ability to build out a roster is… Joe Burrow who got paid, made sure his WRs got paid. And his defense that was great in the playoffs getting him to a Super Bowl has completely fallen apart."
I'm not sure what you're using to justify your point. The Bengals defense that year was middle of the pack the year they went to the Super Bowl. They were 17th in points (giving up 22.1 ppg), and 18th in yards (giving up 350.8 ypg). In the playoffs, they gave up 20.5 ppg and 356.5 yards per game.
The following year, was better in terms of points against, but in terms of yards, they were very similar. They had Hendrickson in the Super Bowl year and ever since. Sam Hubbard who was second on the team in sacks the Super Bowl year, is still there. Their best tackler, Logan Wilson, is still there. Germaine Pratt, their next best tackler those years, just left this year on free agency. The only 2 guys that you could argue that they left, that were impactful were their safties Bell and Bates. The thing is, they left after the Super Bowl year... not the following year where they still made it to the AFCCG. Bates, in 2023 had a career year in Atlanta... last year, was a huge step down. It was on par with some of his lesser seasons in Cincinnati. Bell went to Carolina in 2023, sucked... re-signed with the Bengals last year. Their OLine was one of the worst in the league both the Super Bowl and AFCCG seasons... so they clearly didn't get worse. What evidence do you have that they lost impactful players on defense? I'm not seeing any.
Sure, they needed to draft better, but that's everyone. The thing is though, their best players those 2 years are either still there or not really doing well elsewhere. You need a good team to win a Super Bowl, regardless of the QB, but your chances are better if you have an elite one. The fact that Burrows was able to get his team, which was at best, league average (I think less than that because their OLine sucked), to the Super Bowl and AFCCG in back-to-back years, proves he is an elite QB. The last 2 years, the defense was one of the worst in the league and he still managed to keep them competitive and almost get them into the playoffs. I don't know if any QB, other than Mahomes, could've even gotten this team to a 9-8 record.
I would say that you could look to teams like Dallas, Minnesota, Detroit, Arizona, etc as teams who paid their QB's and there's no discernable improvement of the team over the last few years.
