It’s no secret the Philadelphia Eagles want to extend Carson Wentz this offseason.
Howie Roseman made almost no effort to retain Nick Foles, despite the quarterback having won playoff games in consecutive years and the franchise’s only Lombardi trophy to date. Last year’s third-stringer Nate Sudfeld was brought back at a second-round tender, one that will pay him a shade over $3 million in 2019. And career journeyman Cody Kessler was inked on a low-cost contract in free agency, one that will allow him to compete with Sudfeld for the top backup spot this summer.
That gives the Eagles’ quarterback room solid depth, while posing absolutely no threat in pushing Wentz to take the starting job. Roseman has said on multiple instances that the Eagles want to extend Wentz this offseason, and per the NFL’s CBA, negotiations are now eligible to be underway between the Eagles and Wentz’s agent.
There’s no denying the fact that Wentz will be paid handsomely. He’s a 26-year-old quarterback with prototypical size and athleticism to go with a strong arm and impressive escapeability. He was on track to win the league MVP in just his second season before suffering an ACL injury, and he still had played well enough to put the Eagles in position for home field advantage and then a Super Bowl trophy. Even in his much-criticized 2018 campaign, he still finished with a higher passer rating than he did the previous year, and that was while recovering from a torn ACL and dealing with a back injury.
His health issues are obviously concerning – a torn ACL and broken back in consecutive years add to an injury history that already included a broken wrist in college and a broken rib in his rookie preseason. No quarterback had ever missed consecutive postseasons for his team until Wentz did so.
That will be a driving factor in the Eagles’ negotiations with Wentz, but his talent will ultimately outweigh his injury history. Roseman mortgaged a slew of draft picks to acquire him in 2016 and there’s not much leverage on the Eagles’ side at this point. They need him more than he needs them. If the Eagles were to pull a Washington with Kirk Cousins and let Wentz hit the open market, he would be the hottest free agent in the game’s history, no questions asked. Quarterbacks of his skillset don’t hit the open market, and the Eagles won’t let that happen.
Quarterbacks of his skillset also get paid well – very well. In a league in which Andy Dalton and Ryan Tannehill have signed $100 million contracts, Wentz will blow that proportion out of the water.
The ever-changing quarterback market seems to be reset every year, and the once-mythical $20 million-per-year quarterback is now a mere afterthought in today’s era. As recently as 2013, Aaron Rodgers signed a five-year, $110 million deal ($22 million per year) that includes $62 million in guaranteed money. That would be chump change just six years later.
In just the last year, we’ve seen Jimmy Garoppolo sign a $137 million deal after just seven career starts, Kirk Cousins sign a fully-guaranteed $84 million deal despite no playoff victories, and then 33-year-old Matt Ryan re-write it all with a five-year, $159 million deal that included $100 million in guaranteed money.
Last month, Russell Wilson topped Ryan’s deal with a four-year contact of his own that included $107 million in guaranteed money. Wilson is a better player right now than Wentz is and he’s proven to be remarkably more durable. Then again, Wilson is also four years older and at 5’11”, may see a more difficult transition to being a pure pocket passer once his legs begin to fail him in his thirties. If the Eagles were to let Wentz test the market right now, he’d probably come close to Wilson’s deal, and if he puts together a strong 2019 year and plays every game, there’s no question that he would surpass Wilson’s deal.
So how much can Eagles fans expect to see Wentz get paid? He’ll likely clear the $30 million-per-year mark with ease, and there’s a chance he will approach $35 million. Wentz and Ben Roethlisberger share the same agent, and Roethlisberger just got paid $34 million per year at age 37. It’s fair to note that Roethlisberger’s deal contains essentially only one year of guaranteed money, but still, Wentz has to be hoping for more than that $34 million given the fact that he’s over a decade younger.
A reasonable proposal for Wentz and the Eagles is this – five years, $166 million, $96 million guaranteed. That’s $33.2 million per year, which is less than that of Wilson ($35 million), Roethlisberger ($34 million), Aaron Rodgers ($33.5 million), but more than Ryan ($30 million), Cousins ($28 million), Drew Brees ($25 million), and Andrew Luck ($24.9 million).
The $96 million in guaranteed money wouldn’t quite set a new precedent for the position, as it would still trail that of Wilson ($107 million), Ryan ($100 million), and Rodgers ($98.7 million). But it’s still an impressive haul for Wentz. If the $96 million guaranteed scares you, don’t let it. It’s essentially three guaranteed seasons (think roughly $25 million, $29 million, and $33 million) and then a buyout before the fourth year ($9 million) if the Eagles wanted to play it that way. Would you not commit wholeheartedly for three years to Wentz?
Count me among the fans who believe Wentz will absolutely return to the dominance he showed in the first three months of 2017. He’s not the first quarterback to suffer serious injuries early on. The ideal scenario is that he becomes more of a traditional pocket passer and turns into a regular 16-game starter. Matthew Stafford dealt with three significant injuries in his first two years in the league and has played all 128 games since. If Wentz’s injuries persist, the Eagles will be paying a pretty penny for a quarterback on injured reserve, but it seems as if this is a risk that the organization will need to take.
There’s a widespread belief among NFL fans that a team can’t win with a quarterback on a cap-heavy deal. We saw the 2017 Eagles and 2018 Rams catapult rookie QB deals into Super Bowl appearances, and having Wentz/Jared Goff on rookie contracts allowed Roseman and Les Snead lots of flexibility when it came to spending. It’s easy to pay veterans like Chris Long and Brandon Brooks and Ndamukong Suh and Brandin Cooks and Todd Gurley when you are paying your quarterback the same as you’d pay your veteran third receiver. And last year, the teams with the four highest-paid quarterbacks by 2018 cap hit all missed the postseason – San Francisco (Garoppolo), Detroit (Stafford), Oakland (Derek (Carr), and Baltimore (Joe Flacco). That doesn’t, however, mean it can’t be done.
There had never been a team win the Super Bowl with a $100 million defensive player, and then the Eagles did it with Fletcher Cox – and the Los Angeles Rams nearly did it with Aaron Donald the following year. You can’t necessarily judge future events by the past. While it’s certainly easier to win Super Bowls with quarterbacks that aren’t making $25 million-plus per year, the bottom line is that top-tier quarterbacks get paid what they’re worth and maybe even more than what they’re worth.
The Eagles will have to pay Wentz, and the Dallas Cowboys will choose to pay Dak Prescott, and the Rams will pay Jared Goff – and it’s probable that the first of the three quarterbacks to sign a deal will set the market for the other two. When it’s signed, Wentz’s contract will probably seem like a ridiculous overpay for an oft-injured quarterback. But next offseason, there’s a good chance Deshaun Watson will reset the position market, and then by the time Patrick Mahomes signs a $40 million-per-year deal and Andrew Luck is due for another extension, Wentz’s deal will seem like a bargain.
And don’t forget who the Eagles’ GM is. A former lawyer-turned-salary cap wizard, Roseman is an absolute master at manipulating the team’s cap space on a year-in, year-out basis. One of Roseman’s first moves after being reinstated as the team’s general manager in January 2016 was to give Zach Ertz a $42.5 million contract extension that probably seemed high at the time; within a year or two, it became a bargain given Ertz’s production. The same will happen with Wentz, and there’s no one better than Roseman at converting salary cap hits to bonuses and restructuring contracts in a way so the Eagles manage to avoid salary cap jail every single year.
Accept the fact that the Eagles will be paying Wentz a nine-figure deal soon, and it may even a record-setting amount of guarantees.
