The QB market has no middle class, and that is the tell that it is broken. Every starter in the league is either on a rookie deal, on journeyman money, or getting 40 million and up, with nobody sitting at the 32 million average where a normal market would put most of its players.
Sam walks the value-added-per-dropback numbers through week 3 and finds Deshaun Watson, holder of arguably the worst contract in NFL history, sitting dead on the median while Justin Herbert and Baker Mayfield sit below it at 50 million plus. The episode opens somewhere else entirely: two Sacramento Kings reporters caught on a hot mic rating Ben Simmons and Zach LaVine, weeks after the Dianna Russini story put every female reporter's access under the same microscope.
The takes
- The QB market is overvalued and oversaturated. You need a really good quarterback to win a championship, not an elite one, and there is not much history saying otherwise.
- There is no middle class at quarterback. Everyone is cheap, on a rookie deal or journeyman money, or paid like a star at 40 million plus. The average is around 32 million and nobody is there.
- Mahomes and Allen did not break the market. Everyone who cashed in behind them did.
- Deshaun Watson holds arguably the worst contract in NFL history and is currently breaking even on value added per dropback, which is more than Herbert, Daniel Jones, Baker Mayfield, Joe Burrow or Jordan Love can say at the same money.
- Jaylen Brown is right that Colin Cowherd should not have said he had a disease, and wrong that reporters should name sources. You are only as valuable as your sources, and Pablo Torre does not get the Clippers story without one.
- If Brown wants everyone standing ten toes, he can start by saying what actually happened between him and Jayson Tatum in Boston.
- LeBron was never going to be a Knick. He took less to go to Philadelphia because Tyrese Maxey is tight with Bronny and Bryce, and no version of the Knicks roster beats what he has now. The championship line is cover.
- The Protect College Sports Act will not stop a single school from paying the next Dylan Stewart. South Carolina paid him seven figures when it did not have to, because if they don't sign him somebody in the conference will.
- Drake Maye looked like an MVP candidate on the easiest schedule in the league. Now he has a real one and he looks like what he was before.
- The NFLPA should be petitioning to ban play on the MetLife surface. FIFA made them pull the turf for the World Cup, and Messi was never walking out on that.