Is this the new standard contract?

So yesterday in the wake of the Jalen Hurts contract where $255 million are coming his way, but just over $179 million, just, just, just over $179 million is guaranteed. Freddie Coleman of ESPN suggested that because of the nature of contracts, the NFL might have to do something a little drastic. Here's something else when it comes to Jalen Hurts, Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert, when that money starts rolling in and that money train that not, that does not have a wall stopping in front of that track when it comes to the NFL, you wonder how many of these deals will keep happening. And when does the NFL think about having a separate salary cap for quarterbacks, where it's not compromising the rest of your salary cap for your team? Now owners won't do that unless one owner decides to say of an influential person, say, this would be really, really good for the league. And it's not like we're losing money, having a salary cap for quarterbacks and a salary cap for the rest of the team to keep your teams together, compete for championships. If a guy like Jerry Jones races think about that, I guarantee you, all those owners will fall in line. They may not want it, but if somebody really that they believe in and has a face their league would want that they would definitely fall in line. There's no doubt about that. They don't want to, but you wanted a certain point.

They may not have a choice because they don't mind paying quarterbacks money, but then have to pay them a lot of money to that level that they never saw coming. No. Billionaires don't become billionaires by saying, well, I'll pay more than I want to for this.

No. Except if it's a yacht, right? They're fourth yachts.

We spared no expense on the fourth yacht. Come on, man. The last thing these guys want to do is give money to players. So, in theory, I get Freddie Colman was right in theory. Great idea, man. I wish we weren't in such a salary cap crunch.

They're going to bail themselves out like that. Anyway, we'll talk to Will Brinson about that and other things. He joins us on the Adam Gold show. All right, sir. I know I know a pick six podcast is coming up in a matter of moments.

People can smash all the like buttons that they want. So let's talk about the Jalen Hurts contract real quick. Isn't that the benchmark contract in the NFL now? Or is it Deshaun Watson? Yeah, I mean, I think the idea that like Lamar Jackson just lost his window, basically. And I know that Lamar Jackson has played an MVP level, a unanimous MVP level.

Right. The problem is Jalen Hurts just took basically the deal that Lamar was offered previously by the Ravens, which his deal includes $110 million fully guaranteed. That's a ton of money.

I could live on $110 million. What is the 179? Is that for injury? Yeah, I think it's for injury. I haven't seen the full contract yet, so we'll have to wait. I don't think it's been filed. I don't think the actual paperwork has been filed. That's how when we get all these details, and it may have been, excuse me, the like once it's filed, then you see the actual details start to leak out like salary cap hits, et cetera, et cetera.

He has that full, he has that no trade clause, which I think is the first time in Eagles history, but I think the 179 is likely guaranteed for injury. I would guess that the 68 million or $69 million, whatever it is will be due on the third day of the league year, two years prior, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, it's like the idea that they're going to make this more complicated by adding a quarterback salary cap is just crazy. I mean, you have to figure it out in the construct of what, like the salary cap, the reason why the salary cap isn't going anywhere is because as you point out, billionaires don't like to overpay for stuff. They're not going to get rid of the salary cap because if they do, then you have a situation of baseball or basketball is that soft cap where if you go over, you have to pay luxury taxes. They love the salary cap. That means you have to have a salary cap. It's almost for competitive balance. It's to keep the teams nice and equal. No, so the teams can't spend as much money.

You can't have freaking George Steinbrenner going out there and making it rain for whoever the hell he wants and just winning because he's got cash. Do you remember what happened? We talked about this a few weeks ago, I think, but like in 2010, the NFLPA executed an option or a clause in the CBA, which negated the final two years of that. Then CBA proceeded what would almost be a lockout, but ended up getting a deal that got done at the last second. And the last year was uncapped. Correct. I think the last two years were technically uncapped and the NFL had an agreement, a silent agreement amongst all the teams, which some may, some people who like to operate or utilize dictionaries or thesaurus sign. Is it thesaurus? I have no idea, man.

I don't know. They might call that collusion. At any rate, the point being is that given the opportunity for an uncapped year and even despite being told, do not go spend money and push this stuff into the future, don't overspend. We're still going to operate as if there's a cap there. The Washington football team, Dan Snyder and the Cowboys, Jerry Jones still went out and made it rain anyway. Do you think Jerry Jones is going to control himself? He actually is pretty low in the cash spending flow. People will be surprised with that. But the Waltons would just buy a title for Denver.

David Tepper would just buy a title for Carolina or try to anyway to screw it up, I'm sure. But the point being is that the salary cap is, it does create competitive balance in the NFL, except it doesn't really matter that much anymore. Everyone can sort of circumvent or circumvent to quote Joe Bluth, the salary cap. It now exists to keep salaries down and to keep spending down.

That's all it is. Salary caps in every sport are simply to control owners from overspending. The NFL salary cap is an accounting trick. The NBA salary cap is just barely there. It's probably closer to what Major League Baseball's system is than even the NBA wants to think about. The only real league with a salary cap, honestly, is the NHL. And even they can they can exceed it. Carolina was over it for a time this year.

I guess they still are over it. Because you can get some money back if you have players out for extended periods of time. But that's the only league with a real salary cap. But none of it has been done ever for competitive balance. I wish people would understand that. Because if they might say that, but ultimately, and I don't want to get into the weeds here. And maybe there probably was a time when competitive balance did matter. Well, maybe it does, but it doesn't work out that way. So the data suggests that there is no there's no impact on competitive. My point is that what they say is about competitive balance over time has been proven to not be about competitive balance. Because Major League Baseball with no salary cap has just as much or more competitive balance than the other sports. So maybe it doesn't matter.

Maybe it's just a way for billionaires to keep more of their money. I just want to get to Lamar Jackson. Is the is the bigger deal is if Lamar is so dug in that he's still not looking at this as the benchmark that this is the one he needs to focus on, right? He wants more than what Deshaun Lawson got. And so what's happened here doesn't really matter.

Yeah, it doesn't matter. It's he's not going to get it. Because what's happened now is and this is sort of, you know, we talked about this, like the Lamar, the confluence of events, Lamar wanting a new contract, Deshaun getting that deal from Jimmy Haslam and the Browns, right? You know, the the time like the the nature of Lamar as a player a 2019 unanimous MVP who's had not three great three years that were not that great in there, at least we're down from from those numbers, which are possible numbers to replicate. The guy with a history of being injured the last couple of years who runs a lot and you know, you don't like there's just there's just this crazy like it's a perfect storm of stuff where Lamar wants this deal. The owners really don't want that to become a precedent. And now you have Jalen Hurts and you're probably about to get Joe Burrow and Justin Herbert who now can just say give us the Jalen Hurts deal with more guaranteed money up front versus we want to those guys are going to like bang the table for fully guaranteed deals. Joe Burrow didn't want to do that. Pay Joe Burrow and Joe Burrow is just going to take whatever the best deal on the market is like I guarantee you he Justin Herbert or just just whoever goes first, the next one is going to be higher. And that's just how it's going to be. They're going to take you know, you know, they're going to take Jalen Hurts style deals, because now Jalen Hurts has done that he has set the new precedent for young quarterbacks to come in and to take less to take not to take less money, but to take, you know, you don't have to take this deal.

That is I'm trying to find the only thing that's been uploaded. Yeah, so we still have Jalen Hurts. No, we don't. We know what the cap it is for next year, though.

It's 4 million. It doesn't kick in until the following year. It's an extension. It's amazing.

Howie Roseman is the best. Well, that's the thing is like people need to understand when you do these things, you do these deals, like Jalen Hurts has played three years, you know, if you're undrafted, if you're eligible for two, anybody else eligible for three, he's been in the league for three years, he's getting his contract, this is the deal you are going to get if you sign a contract on the first season you're eligible, and the team is going to want to make it an extension, they're not going to make it a let's tear up the rookie contract and add and just make it this big deal. They now have him under control for x, you know, like, and if you're Justin Herbert or Joe Burrow, they're still going to exercise the fifth year option. Yep. Because they decided to do that in the next like, like they've already done it. Right. But they did it with two.

Right. They did it with two in Miami, which I think is a smart thing. Because it's pretty clear that they believe that if two is healthy enough to play, he's a good quarterback, and they can win with but but I'm saying with Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert, the teams have exercised the fifth year options already. So you now have after three years, you have the fourth year and then you have the fifth year option, you have two years of team control. So if you sign Justin Herbert or Joe Burrow to extensions, it's not a contract that replaces what they have. It's on top of the two years of team control at relatively low cost that you already have. And maybe you mix up the salary cap numbers a little bit.

But like doing these deals early, if you believe you have the guy makes all the sense in the world. And if you're that player, you're not going to push for a fully guaranteed contract because you haven't been through the franchise tagging process. Now Lamar has been through his fifth year option. He is now in the franchise tagging process.

This is where rubber meets the road. If you really want to press this team and really want to press this issue. If it's me, I will take the 110-130 fully guaranteed million dollars. And I'm just going to assume that I'm going to see most of that contract. I think that's where having an agent not having an agent hurts Lamar.

All right, we had about a minute left here. I will just say this that if Lamar Jackson was inclined to do that, he would have already done it. So he's not inclined to do it. The Deshaun Watson contract is his goal. And I think he's going to hold out for as long as he could. All right.

Just very quickly. It's also so different once you get past that fifth year where you're like, look, I got two franchise tag, big money, fully guaranteed. I'm going to play this out. If you're jailing hurts, you're thinking like, I've got one more year in my rookie deal plus two fifth year options. And if you're Bernard Herbert, it's even it's four years.

So it's worth getting that cash in your bank account right now. And Lamar Jackson is already at the point where he got franchise tagged and it was even the lower now. All right. Final thing. The I saw there's like this groundswell coming up now that we won't have an early run on quarterbacks. I've seen mock drafts that had quarterbacks on one, two, three, four.

I'm about to do a weird one, buddy. I have to to quarter to the big four dropping out of the top 15. That's what I'm guessing. But I think that's that's entirely possible because at some point, at some point, we stare at these quarterbacks and go, you know what? He might be good, but he also might stink. So yeah.

And you have to weigh that. So field fields with 11 Mahomes with 10 Deshaun Watson with 12 and like we had better feelings about those guys coming into the draft. Yeah. So, so you think, do you legitimately think that could happen or are you just, you know, under the control out last week?

I legitimately believe that could happen. All right. Well, I, I, I do too.

Especially with the talent of, of offensive lineman. Yeah. Stinks.

Don't you sneaks? Well, I'm going to read your mock draft anyway. Will Brinson pick six podcast, senior NFL writer, CBS sports.com. Thank you, my friend. I'll talk to you later. Yeah, man. Hey, if anybody out there is listening knows Will Newman, text him and tell him to cheer up your sour puss. Yeah.

Cheers. Cheer up Will Newman. I don't even know who that is, but I want him to tear up. Cause that's my guy, Will Brinson. Seriously.