This past September, it was learned that NFL owners attempted to write a maximum player salary into the most recent CBA. Such a proposal was quickly rejected by the NFLPA, but a similar idea has remained a point of discussion. 
During an appearance on the Rich Eisen Show, NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero noted that discussion has taken place amongst some owners regarding the establishment of a cap specifically used for quarterbacks (video link). Limiting the percentage of a team’s salary cap a franchise signal-caller could occupy would of course be a dramatic development. Pelissero adds, though, that no agreement on this front is imminent.
Issues pertaining to the salary cap are collectively bargained, so any formal arrangement would require the approval of the player’s association. As Mike Florio of Pro Football Talks writes, though, the setup being considered would be more akin to an unofficial agreement amongst owners to not spend past a certain point on quarterback deals (either in the case of extending in-house passers or signing outside free agents). Owners could approach the matter in terms of a percentage of the salary cap, or in terms of total dollars similar to NBA supermax contracts.
The QB market has surged in recent years, and four passers reached surpassed $50MM per year on their respective contracts last offseason. That quartet (Jalen Hurts, Lamar Jackson, Justin Herbert, Joe Burrow) has since been joined by Jared Goff and Trevor Lawrence. Eyebrows were raised when the latter matched Burrow’s annual average value – $55MM – on his Jaguars extension despite his thinner resume compared to the Bengals star. With the salary cap set to continue rising, the likes of Dak Prescott, Tua Tagovailoa and Jordan Love are positioned to add to the $50-per-year club or perhaps reach the $60MM mark.
As Pelissero notes, part of the potential pushback amongst owners is the fact that many teams already have a quarterback mega-contract on the books. Others are set to join them in the future, with Brock Purdy in line for an extension as early as 2025 and C.J. Stroud amongst the QBs who will be eligible one year after that. With gambling revenue and new media rights deals driving the salary cap forward, future contracts for signal-callers could continue to increase in value for years to come.
The 2011 CBA saw the introduction of the rookie wage scale, which slotted salaries of players’ initial contracts based on their draft position. That essentially ended contract disputes with players’ earnings being pre-determined and negotiations being steered toward signing bonus payouts and guarantee structures. The introduction of an upper limit on quarterback earnings would likewise represent a dramatic development affecting the financial landscape of the NFL. Without further consensus from ownership, though, even an informal agreement on the matter should not be expected in the near future, let alone an official cap jointly negotiated with the NFLPA.
As much as I love Joe Burrow, this discussion should absolutely be put into place. I mean guys like Dak rumored to get 60m a year?! Really?! Something has to give, or the NFL will eventually die because everybody wants top of the market deals, even if their play doesn’t match it.
Yeah. Seems like logical idea that can benefit more players that the union represents. Spreading the wealth is better for the major of the non QB position players.
Running backs getting mad their number is going down. Maybe they should ask their QB for a raise.
The Trevor Lawrence deal is ridiculous.
What is your alternative to stability at the QB position for the next 5 years?
I’m disappointed that the Jags caved and paid him that much. So far he’s won nothing. He’s proved nothing. To be paid like he has is a crapshoot.
The market will correct if it needs to. The NFL is making more money than ever before. Something like 93 of the top 100 rated TV slots of last year were NFL. The league isn’t going to die because quarterbacks are making too much money.
The owners pay the quarterbacks outlandish amounts of money and in a fit of hypocrisy decide to punish the players for their idiocy. Get that guaranteed money up front.
The more these salaries go up the more distance they put between the product and the common fan. I don’t trust the NFL as a product anymore. In fact… all 4 major sports have questions to me about the legitimacy of the results. Betting has officially turned me off to the product. I will not watch NFL games anymore. I might catch the highlights but I don’t believe in the product anymore. Freed up a lot of my time to do things that are legitimate.
This makes a lot of sense for almost everyone, which is one reason why the players will never go for it.
Well the theory would be you have to give to take. NFL owners want cap on qb salary. I think it’s only fair nflpa asks for a minimum spending floor in return so more players get paid and/or an increase in vet minimum.
If the teams have a cap, my assumption would be that your QBs cost go down while other positions will be the beneficiaries.
It would work if the owners made a pact and stuck by it. But you always have the Jerry Jones and Robert Krafts who think the rules don’t apply to them. Same way in baseball, if you said here is the hard and fast limit to what you can spend on players and everybody stuck by it then everyone could compete. But you have the Yankees and Dodgers who think they need a 400 million dollar team while the Rays have a 80 million dollar payroll.
There should be a contract floor for RBs if they make this for QBs. No idea how they’d do it tho
the NBA might be a good model to try and emulate on a larger scale. they have max contracts and it’s set up to try and help teams keep their best players by being able to offer more. plus they have higher vet minimums
Well I wouldn’t want to emulate the NBA in anything. NFL has much better parity and a proper hard cap, not a suggested cap that teams work to subvert.
There should be a general rule regardless of position that no player can exceed 10-15% of the salary cap.
If that’s the case, what’s the point in starting? I’d take 3% of $250m+ of cap room. Why get beat up when you’re worth millions?
“The World needs ditch digger too you know.” Judge Smails
3% of 250,000,000 is 7,500,000 a year.
But 10% would be 25,000,000 a year. So I mean, get gud at your position?
Players can still make millions capping it at 10% of the cap. 5% would be 12,5000,000 a year.
And you can always haggle negotiate saying I’m worth 5.5% not 4.75% or whatever.
Baseball arbitration style?
Some Quarterbacks are at 21.5% of the cap now. Cap it at 22% and have it so only the top 5 with the highest QB rating can get that. The next 5 max at 21%. Something where it’s based on performance. Also increase the draft pick compensation for a team that loses free agents. The highest now is a third round pick. Make it something like if a team loses a free agent to a team and they’re paying him over 50 million a year 2 first round picks and somehow make it that part of the compensation comes from the team that signed the player. That in itself would stop teams from throwing crazy money at quarterbacks.
Actually, adding a “first come, first served” element could be intriguing…I’m not saying that it’s necessarily a good idea, but having a limit of, say, five players in the league who are allowed to get a 20% cap would make the scramble to sign such players an interesting race to watch-particularly for fans of the teams not having to be involved in such a race.
Id cap it at 20%
Tiering it would be hard cause how do you define top 5 top 10 top 15?
I like the draft pick compensation if teams lose out on free agents but think they should be pushed into the future by a year or 2. I can see teams letting players walk and just banking cheap contracts for guys on rookie deals. So that’s something you gotta be wary of is teams abusing the system. Pushing compensation draft picks or limiting it to 1 per round I think would work.
I also think the nfl should adopt bird rights I think where teams can offer more years and money to their own players compared to other teams. But that’s not like a must for me.
How about simply not counting the QB in the cap? It would be cap plus QB.
That would defeat the purpose of the salary cap.
What is the purpose of the salary cap? It seems to me it is to protect the owners from themselves and suppress the player’s salary. Not counting the QBs salary in the cap would be a compromise. They could still collude on the rest of the contracts, but teams/rosters would not be punished for drafting and developing a star QB.
Then all the good players would just go to the best QB’ed team. They have to be counted for some percent.
Why? “Good players” that were not QBs would not be cap exempt. I picture it sort of like the franchise tag. It wouldn’t even have to be a QB, but each team would have the ability to “tag” a player cap exempt. It would seemingly be used on your QB, but it could be any player in theory. I think it is bad for the NFL that teams have to choose between Hill and Mahomes because the cap will not let you keep both.
They could have kept both, but they knew Hill was a luxury( eventually winning 2 titles shows that). No winning team is taking Hill over Kelce and or Chris Jones, not happening.
It would be good for the NFL if productive players that teams drafted and developed did not become “cap casualties”. The Chiefs, or other teams, shouldn’t have to decide between this player or that player. I believe that MLB has it right. Protecting the owners with salary caps and “contracts” that aren’t guaranteed is the worst part of the NFL.
And the MLB has the same old teams being the same old teams. The salary cap is a good thing, and if there weren’t one, then you may as well only have five teams and pick one before the season to award the trophy to. The only way that there’d be any excitement is if that team lost to one of the other two superteams unexpectedly.
There’s no good reason to let one or two teams pile up all the stars Yankee style. The MLB isn’t a great example of parity throughout its history. 19 titles for one team…that’s just nuts.
The Yankees haven’t won a WS in 15+ years and no team has really run the gauntlet on titles either. Plus 11 of those Yankee titles were before integration… Yeah teams like LAD spend all this money teams like Baltimore don’t have, but there’s still competitive balance. There hasn’t been a repeat World Series champion in 24 years. Since 2000 16 of 30 different franchises have won a World Series.
Since 2000 13 of 32 different NFL franchises have won a SB. Maybe no cap isn’t such a bad thing.
MLB has the most playoff turnover of all major sports leagues. The NBA salary structure creates super teams of players wanting to play with their buddies in Miami. The NFL has a bunch of mediocre teams with no QB. Parity is a word owners use in defense of collusion.
Maybe there’s more parity today, but we can’t just discount the first 100+ years of baseball history, either. The lack of cap directly contributed to that.
Also, the NFL has a couple of more teams. That’s two more slots to fill. The Broncos’ owners are worth more than twice, easily, what Tepper is in Carolina. Tepper was supposedly the richest owner in the league before them. Kraft has a huge personal fortune, even compared to most NFL owners. Kroenke is the same. Mark Davis is supposedly the poorest, and supposedly worth less than a billion. Do you think that the Raiders could ever compete with the Broncos, Panthers, Rams, or Patriots if there were no cap to what an owner could spend? Is it a positive for the league if a few teams at the bottom continually just are punching bags for the rest who can financially compete? You may have a handful of brilliant moves that make a difference, but the biggest factor will easily become money. If that’s interesting to you, so be it.
In my mind, that’s one of the reasons that MLB has lost some of its charm to me-the turnover purely in pursuit of the biggest contract just isn’t interesting to me. Too easy to figure out, and too much airy B.S. on the part of the signee or his agent as to why he did it. Besides, baseball and football are two completely different games, with completely different ownership groups. People already complain about billionaire focus and handouts for stadiums already-could you imagine what the excuses would if they could complain even more about how much they have to spend to compete? The excuses would go through the roof. And people would believe them. And for what, so that athletes can make even more money?
The league is much more even in seventeen games, I think, than other leagues are in more. I would have to check that, to be fair. But NFL teams seem to lose to each other all the time when they shouldn’t, even if they don’t win the pennant. Championships aren’t the only way to measure parity, after all.
‘In my mind, that’s one of the reasons that MLB has lost some of its charm to me-the turnover purely in pursuit of the biggest contract just isn’t interesting to me.’
Lol this happens in EVERY sport including the NFL they aren’t special. Tom Brady left the dang Patriots in a pursuit for a bigger contract… Aaron Judge, Mike Trout you can’t say the same about. I used championships as my starting point because you initially noted the Yankees many championships as ‘being the same old teams vs the same old teams’….
I have much more context to go on about how the MLB has much more parity, along with why we shouldn’t care about how much money they make because at the end of the day the owners are pocketing billions more anyways….
I don’t want to continue too far here, but I do want to clarify. I didn’t say that players don’t leave at all. I was talking about the number of players who change teams. Brady spent 20 years in New England before leaving. It’s hard to find players who do that in any sport, but it’s harder to find “one helmets guys” in baseball than in football. It makes sense if you consider it-baseball is a sport with nearly 200 games and requires “semi-starters” who are expected to start for resting players. Not to mention specialized players or players who start due to some circumstance. Football teams don’t usually start a different defender because the quarterback has weaker arm, or start a different edge rusher because the runningback is a lefty. It just isn’t as relevant. Of course there would be movement; the game has more specialists, and more changeable pieces.
We’re beginning to venture into another discussion-that of players leaving specifically rather than the salary cap itself-but I certainly was not arguing that players don’t leave in football. They do leave, certainly, but not to the degree that they do in baseball.
Should parity be the goal? Should the goal of MLB be to bring other teams down to the level of the Pirates and Marlins? MLB exposes bad owners. NFL protects them. I’m not sure that bad owners and teams with poor scouting and player development deserve protection by the league. Having universally mediocre teams in the NFL is not fun to watch. Watching the Mets set records for payroll spending and finish in last place was delightful.
You have a point regarding bad owners, but what’s the gain? You can’t fire the owner, as one Mr. York once poignantly observed. Watching a team suck could be pleasureable for certain people, but the quality of the games overall suffers. If only a third of the schedule is impactful, it’d make for a pretty boring season. In the old days of the NFL, there were certain teams that players just wouldn’t go to. They didn’t pay enough, their equipment sucked, their owner was…you know. That could be a fun for a few years if you disliked the team, but after those teams fold or become little more than speedbumps, who do you have to compete against?
The league created parity, and the salary cap, out of necessity. It’s been abused, ignored, selectively enforced, arbitrarily determined, and otherwise rendered cumbersome over the years. But there is a reason that it’s there, and there’s a role that it plays in making the NFL the most popular sport (or television event) in America by far.
To an extent, yes. If you really want your sport to be marketable and to grow you need more than 5 good teams… And no one said spending money is what makes you good or not.. The owners make more than anyone, they should be expected to spend it too.
NFL is good in spite of the cap, not because of it.
“Then all the good players would just go to the best QB’ed team”? That’s a fancy way of saying “It’s All About The QB”. Dumb Sportsball Trope Supreme!
The salary cap has lagged so far behind the leagues accelerating revenue. There have been two significant jumps and there will be another in the near future. Team owners understand the cap will continue to increase and these QB salaries are a reflection of that inevitable future. People whining about the Dallas Cowboys QB salary, as if the most important position, on the most popular team somehow doesn’t deserve all the money. Agents and GMs don’t care that you can’t wrap your brains around big numbers.
It’s a reflection of internal discovery of your own experience of inequality that makes you lash out at athlete salaries. I know it may be news to you, there is enough money in this country for Dak to make $60 million and you to also be paid a fair wage. Thinking Dak should accept a below market salary, in the BIGGEST market, so you can somehow feel better about your personal income is unintelligent. If Trevor Lawerence and Joe Burrow getting paid make you upset, wait until you learn how much Shad Kahn and Paul Brown make.
People aren’t “upset” over how much is being made, for the most part. While it is ridiculous what a lot of these people make, be they owners or players, in comparison to the average person, most people are worried about the team makeup. Players who take more cap space can only take up numbers that could be used to sign other players. Fans are more upset that one player is taking up room that another player, or multiple players, could use.
I actually agree with you regarding Prescott, though, and most QBs in general. That’s just the going rate. The “highest paid X player” at any position only lasts for a heartbeat, anyway. I’d rather see the money spread to all the players, personally, not just QBs. Well, actually, I’d rather see the cap increases go to hiring/paying full time referees; perhaps full time officials could be more accountable in a game where penalties make up a full fourth phase of the game.
I don’t think anyone cares about the total dollar figure, its just about % of cap space utilized. If cap can rise exponentially like top-end salaries are, its sustainable.
The CBA is voted on by all players–and most players are not making top dollar. I don’t know why lower paid guys would want such a disproportionate amount of money going to one player on each team.
Because they’re still paid a lot more than nearly every American for playing a game.
That does absolutely nothing to dispel his comment that lower paid guys want a bigger slice of the pie, regardless of what my salary is.
Most people jobs don’t involve a high injury risk…
AncientOne I have to disagree with that statement.
Construction crews, road workers, firefighters, Medics, all levels of law enforcement (local, State, Federal), Military, roofers, fish and game, steel workers, and many more jobs are all high injury and fatality risk. These jobs are performed by people who make far less than the league minimum salary of $795,000.
With fewer benefits, too. That doesn’t mean that football players are bad for getting what they can, or that the hey don’t have dangerous jobs, but it’s not as if they’re working for nothing, here.
They are specialized people and do a job that 90% of people couldn’t, and for that they get deserved acclaim. But their job is not exactly essential to society, either. Most jobs aren’t, to be fair, but there are a lot that are, and/or are riskier, at that. As much as I love football (I think that y’all can relate to that part), they don’t provide as much value at the end of the day as a lot of people do who work for less. I’m not of the opinion that we should judge them for that, but we should keep that in mind when talk about hard their job is in the eyes of a large portion of people-including football fans.
It’s supply and demand-people will pay what they’re willing and able to, and there’s a lot of money in football. The owners make more even of it. But let’s also keep some perspective here that there are a lot of people who can’t sympathize with financial concerns that are well above anything that they could ever afford, for doing a job that is at once beloved and at the same time non-essential.
lol. Of course some NFL owners want to make it illegal for them to take on actual risk. I’m guessing one of the real reasons for this is that some owners are concerned about the cash they need to pony up, since guaranteed money has to be put in escrow at signing.
There already is a QB cap. It’s the phrase “No, we aren’t paying him that”.
when has a good QB ever not gotten paid?
I’m not sure what the motivation is behind this suggestion. If teams want to spend 20%+ of their cap on QBs that are only marginally better than average, that benefits the teams that plan better.
As a Raider’s fan, Denver’s moves on Russell Wilson benefited us greatly. Past that, this is like every other signing. There will be winners and losers.
…an unofficial agreement amongst owners to not spend past a certain point”.
The owners have always been their own worst enemy so the above strategy is doomed from the get go…lol.
Honestly not sure why the owners care, what they are paying out as a whole is capped, do they really care how fairly their crumbs are distributed?
Now…ALL of the OTHER players who are NOT QB’s, OTOH…I can see them having a sincere interest in this idea.
The problem really isn’t the salary cap. The problem is the game model. The league has altered rules over time which has made it very attractive to adopt a passing game approach and thus we now have a passer centric model where you really aren’t going to succeed unless you have a top level QB. The solution is to backtrack on some of those rules that handcuff defenses. If it becomes harder to succeed by passing, teams will have no option but to rely on the run game more. This would slow the escalation of QB salaries while giving the RBs a boost. The model the NFL needs would be one that finds a middle ground between the run dominated 70s and the passer centric model that now exists.
This! A thousand percent, this!
The league determined the best way to increase revenue was to gear the game more towards offense, and it has gotten richer because of it. This is the price they pay now. They have made an “average” QB worth every penny of 40m a year.
The Miami Dolphins are proof that a passer-centric model doesn’t work. Sportsball fans and the National Sports Media are slow to admit that you don’t win in the NFL without defense.
I would agree fifteen years ago, Chucky, but the rules have changed to such a degree and with such a purpose in mind that they’ve rendered that sentiment lukewarm. I would prefer a more balanced game, but lemon is 100% correct. The rule changes have emphasized one position by far and away above any other. The league prefers it that. Easier to sell a star face than it is to sell 53 of them (or even just 12).
Its inevitable. NBA has MAX contracts because the disparity between star player and role player is too wide.
We’ve reached a point where every successive QB contracts needs to top the previous one. Joe Burrow, then Jared Goff, then Trevor Lawrence. Its just not sustainable. Will the Bears need to sign Caleb WIlliams at $100 million/year when the time comes?
“the setup being considered would be more akin to an unofficial agreement amongst owners to not spend past a certain point on quarterback deals”
If this isn’t collectively bargained with the NFLPA, isn’t this the very definition of collusion?
I was saying the same thing as I was reading. If it’s not collectively bargained, how can that be allowed to happen? Especially if it’s openly discussed and reported.
You are correct. Perhaps the biggest example of pro sports owner collusion to suppress wages is when the MLB owners colluded to limit the length of player contracts in the late 1980s, resulting in the players being awarded nearly $300M in damages.
It is collusion. I’m surprised the writer doesn’t know that.
Qbs are holding teams hostage with these contracts. It’s not a problem with the top tier qbs getting paid. The problem is the mediocre guys getting paid because teams are afraid to let them go and start over at qb. The draft is a crap shoot for qbs so letting go a mid level guy and risking being stuck for 5 years without a qb is too risky. Maybe there will be a point where teams stop giving out ridiculous deals but we obviously aren’t there yet.
Or just ban the Jaguars from giving out stupid contracts. Problem solved!
The New York Football Giants ran off their best player because “It’s All About The QB”.
The NFL did just this to Al Davis. His handling of JaMarcus Russell created the Rookie Salary Cap.
If I was a non-QB I’d be pressuring the player association to create a more equitable salary situation for ALL positions. Why should a single QB make more than the combined salaries of perhaps 40 other people on the team?
We are already seeing that the mega salaries QBs are receiving are impacting other positions. WRs have been the first to benefit as their salaries are quickly heading north. Eventually ALL positions will cost the owners more than they anticipated which is another reason they’ll need to re-evaluate the current game model.
The Trevor Lawrence deal will be the Sam Bradford rookie deal that breaks the system and causes change.
Don’t feel bad for the owners one bit. Get your money boys.
As in every business, the cost increases eventually get passed down to the customer…so fans are right to be concerned.