The most important decision that an NFL team must make is often not to choose the right quarterback, but to determine the right thing to do with the quarterback they chose a few years ago.
The Jets and Sam Darnold are reaching a crossroads. Cleveland Browns and Chicago Bears are facing similar decisions with Baker Mayfield and Mitchell Trubisky. Should these teams offer their marginally impressive, often disappointing contracts, to young budget startups or send them away and start over?
There is no middle ground. If there is a compensation package for a former first-round defender who falls somewhere between nine-digit gold handcuffs and a bus ticket out of town, the NFL offices have yet to find out.
Darnold, Mayfield and Trubisky made their team’s decisions more complicated by playing well – but not This one well – in the past few weeks. Darnold led the Jets to consecutive victories. Mayfield had 10 touchdowns and only one interception in a four-game period that ended when a coronavirus outbreak left him playing for the scouts team’s wide receivers in Sunday’s Jets defeat. Trubisky completed more than 70 percent of his passes and launched six touchdowns, leading the Bears to three consecutive wins, albeit against a trio of fighting opponents.
All three defenders may be showing signs of improvement by the end of their third (Darnold and Mayfield) and fourth (Trubisky) NFL seasons. Or your lukewarm strings may simply be random fluctuations caused by the quality of your opponents, some strikes of luck and strongly moderated expectations.
Trubisky is only a few weeks away from being replaced in favor of Nick Foles. Mayfield behaved like he was his own internet troll a few times in the past year and struggled with quality defenses earlier this season. Darnold is classified on the Jets curve: showing up and trying his best, he guarantees at least one C +.
First draft round choice contracts come with fifth-year team options built in: the player receives a substantial increase (Darnold’s base salary, for example, would jump from about $ 920,000 in 2021 to about $ 25 million in 2022), while the team receives an extra year of evaluation / procrastination. Therefore, the Jets and Browns could delay their final decisions on Darnold and Mayfield until 2022. But exercising a quarterback option for a quarterback is like asking a fiancé to postpone the marriage until college is over: perhaps prudent, but a undeniable of true feelings.
Team politics also often plays a big role in determining the fate of a young defender. Newly hired coaches are rarely eager to fix the prospect that helped get the last coach fired.
The next Jets trainer will probably approach approaching to undo Adam Gase’s work in the same way that Batman defuses one of the Joker’s time bombs: the safest bet is simply to throw everything in the Gotham River. So, if the Jets keep Darnold, it may just be like a placeholder for the lame duck, while his novice replacement learns the manual. Under such circumstances, an exchange or release could provide the Jets and Darnold with a much needed restart.
The Bears refused Trubisky’s fifth-year option in the last off-season, so he enters 2021 as a free agent, leaving the team with several expensive and suboptimal choices. Trubisky’s franchise appointment would cost the Bears more than the nearly $ 32 million a year salary Dak Prescott earned from the Dallas Cowboys’ indecision this season. A long-term contract can cost around $ 118 million over four years, as indicated by Ryan Tannehill’s contract with the Tennessee Titans. The cap bears would struggle to pay for either option, none of which Trubisky won.
Front-office policy can also play a role in the Bears’ decision. General manager Ryan Pace traded a package of choices in the intermediate draft with the San Francisco 49ers in 2017 to select Trubisky when Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson were still on the board. An executive who admits such a mistake rarely has a chance to make another. All the more reason to pretend that Trubisky is an Aaron Rodgers who flourished late.
Mayfield overcame Darnold and Trubisky, overcoming many bad youth habits while leading the Browns to their first winning record since 2007. This makes the team’s next decision even more dangerous. Mayfield appears to be in line with a contract in the range of $ 32 million to $ 40 million a year, such as those signed by Watson, Jared Goff and Carson Wentz in recent years. (Mahomes’ $ 500 million contract, like his entire career so far, belongs to his own category).
The Eagles, of course, put Wentz on the bench in favor of newcomer Jalen Hurts. But Wentz’s huge contract will make negotiating it like trying to sell a Lamborghini with 48 payments remaining after being hit by a train. And Goff is the football equivalent of a $ 40 hamburger. Watson played well under desperate circumstances, and not every gigantic quarterback contract brings instant regret. But if the Browns decide to overpay Mayfield for “good enough”, they are likely to get exactly what they bargained for.
It is easy to suggest that any team that is not completely satisfied with the development of its young defender should cut the bait and dive into the pit of next year’s must-see beginners. But Darnold, Trubisky, Mayfield, Wentz and Goff came from similar must-see pools. If selecting and developing a franchise quarterback were easy, several teams would not face this situation each year.
Ultimately, the Jets are likely to negotiate or release Darnold; Mayfield was supposed to get money for the Browns’ Goff / Wentz; the Bears will find a solution to the Trubisky puzzle that makes sense only to the Bears; and everyone will wish they had chosen Mahomes when they had the chance. The whole cycle will start again next year, when the Giants try to figure out what to do with Daniel Jones.