Trevor Lawrence contract: Here’s why Jaguars QB landed record deal despite underwhelming start to career

On Thursday, the Jacksonville Jaguars handed Trevor Lawrence an absolutely massive contract extension. The five-year contract pays him a total of $275 million, $142 million of which is fully guaranteed, and the $55 million average annual value ties him with Joe Burrow as the highest-paid player in league history. turns on. With the exception of Patrick Mahomes, who signed an extraordinarily unique 10-year contract, no one received even a higher total dollar amount.

At first glance, it seems a little ridiculous that Lawrence would get such a deal. He’s been very good since being selected with the No. 1 overall pick in 2021, but it’s also fair to say that he has yet to live up to his status as one of the best quarterback prospects in recent memory. His rookie season under Urban Meyer was a disaster. He took a significant step forward in Year 2, then seemingly plateaued a bit, along with the rest of the Jaguars’ offense, last season.

In the two seasons he was an actual coach, Lawrence completed 65.9% of his passes, averaging 7.1 yards per attempt, with 46 touchdowns and 22 interceptions. His passer rating of 91.9 during that span is slightly above the league average of 91.5, and his 0.04 EPA per drop mark, via TruMedia, checks in at 14th in the league. He has done a very good job limiting sacks (his 5.1% sack rate is 7th lowest in the league) and has been a very successful scrambler in terms of volume (17.2% pressured drops, 7th in league) and efficiency (8.4 yards per carry, also 7th). But he has struggled to access deeper parts of the field (his 8.2% explosive pass rate ranks 18th) and has also missed his intended target more often than you would expect from someone with his arm talent (12. 0% of passes, 24th in the League).

In other words, he has been a slightly above average quarterback in years 2 and 3 of his career, at least in terms of performance. There’s reason to think his raw talent is better than he’s been able to get out of it, but the results on the field have been a little more mixed than the Jaguars probably expected to get when they made him the first pick in their class.

But here’s the thing: they were still almost certainly right to make that deal with him, right now. Yes, even a deal that made him the highest-paid player in league history, despite the fact that he’s clearly not the best defender in the league, and that you have to squint to make the case that he’s in the top five. .

The reason is very simple. The idea that Lawrence “doesn’t deserve” to be the highest-paid player in the world NFL It’s simply not relevant when it comes to quarterbacks. Given a certain talent base (essentially, above-average starting level), the next quarterback to sign a new contract will almost always become the highest-paid player in the world. NFL. This is how it has been happening for years. On a episode of the Pick Six Podcast Several years ago, I explained this concept in connection with the Dallas Cowboys’ failure to reach a deal with Dak Prescott:

He doesn’t deserve to be the highest paid player in the league. Since when does this literally matter in quarterback contract negotiations? Like always? Joe Flacco was the highest paid player in the league. Matt Stafford was the highest-paid player in the league. Derek Carr and Jimmy Garoppolo were the highest-paid players in the league. That’s how it works.

Since then, seven other quarterbacks (Deshaun Watson, Kyler Murray, Jalen Hurts, Lamar Jackson, Justin Herbert, Burrow and Lawrence) have become the highest-paid players in the league. Notably, none of them are the best quarterbacks in the NFL, because none of them are Mahomes. But, for example, the Jackson ($52 million per year) and Burrow ($55 million) deals already seem like bargains, simply because they were matched or surpassed by contracts given to Herbert ($52.5 million), Goff ($53 million) and Lawrence ($55 million).

And it won’t be long before Lawrence’s deal is surpassed by a hand for Jordan Love or Tua Tagovailoa; and the next deal Prescott gets, whether from the Cowboys or someone else, will blow them all out of the water. He has more influence than any quarterback in league history coming off a Second Team All-Pro season during which he finished second in MVP voting and is heading into the final year of his contract that contains a no-tag and no-trading clause. The Cowboys will have to meet each of his demands or allow him to leave for free next offseason, where there will certainly be a massive bidding war for the services of a 31-year-old quarterback who has consistently been one of the best. 5 to 10 players in position. (Incredibly, the Cowboys put themselves in exactly the same situation they were in four years ago. A truly excellent job of cap management from Jerry Jones & Co.)

And even after he gets paid, it will likely be less than a year before C.J. Stroud gets a market-defining contract, and then deals for Mahomes or Josh Allen or anyone else will be reworked to top that one, and so on. cycle will. That’s how things work at the quarterback position, and that’s how they will continue to work as long as quarterbacks have more of an effect on their team’s ability to win or lose games than any player at any position in all of sports. Again, this was part of the argument I made regarding Prescott in 2020:

It would look like even more of a bargain when Watson and Lamar get paid, presumably more than Dak, because, again, that’s how quarterback contracts work. And it would have been a great bargain to begin with. We are talking about US$35 million per year. This represents 17% or 18% of the salary cap. Is there anyone anywhere who thinks that quarterbacks only represent 17% or 18% of a team’s chances of winning? Does this feel right? If there’s anyone who thinks that, like, I want literally every other team in the NFL to sign him because they’re idiots. Quarterbacks are the biggest bargain in the league right now, and it’s not even close.

The portion of the salary cap that these deals represent has since increased. At the time he signed it, Burrow’s deal was equivalent to 24.5% of the cap. But as the limit continues to rise, that percentage will decrease. And if you think that quarterbacks only account for 24.5% of a team’s ability to win games, well, you’re wrong. These deals are still likely bargains compared to what the players are actually worth in a salary cap league. That’s why it’s best for teams to do their work in advance. Waiting will only cost you more money in the end. The price of bricks never drops.

If they didn’t want to make him the highest-paid non-Mahomes player in the league, or didn’t want to hit those numbers, they should have paid him before the Seahawks paid Russell Wilson and before the Eagles paid Carson Wentz. and before the Rams paid Jared Goff so he was overtaken as the highest-paid player in the league very quickly. But they didn’t do that. So, there was no choice. And there has never been a situation where, if he agreed to an extension, he wouldn’t be the highest-paid non-Mahomes player in the league.

The Jaguars getting this deal done before Love, before Tagovailoa, and before Prescott probably saved them a lot of money. And realistically, as we’ve seen in the past, it’s not that hard to get out of deals like this, even if they end up being overpaid. The Eagles exited the Wentz deal quickly, and the Rams did the same when it looked like Goff wasn’t the answer for them. Unless you hand a player a fully guaranteed Watson-style contract, you’re always going to have outs as long as you don’t continually restructure it to push dead money into the future.

And because it’s so hard to find good quarterback play, there will almost always be some other team in an even worse quarterback situation that is interested in the player you’re determined to find an upgrade on. Being in the quarterback desert is such a discouraging prospect for teams that they do things like “four years and $160 million for Daniel Jones” or “four years and $150 million for Derek Carr” or “trade draft picks for Sam Darnold” or “mortgaging the franchise’s entire future to a player who hasn’t played in over a year and is about to be suspended after being accused by two dozen women of sexual misconduct.”

It’s not like Pro Bowl or especially All-Pro quarterbacks grow on trees. Since Prescott entered the league in 2016 NFL teams called up 95 defenders. Of these 95 players, 65 participated in at least one game. Only six – Prescott, Wentz, Mahomes, Jackson, Allen and Hurts – made at least one All-Pro team. Six out of 95, over a period of eight years. It’s so hard to find top-notch quarterback play, even now, when teams have more resources at their disposal than at any point in league history. And that’s why, when you meet someone who is goodand who do you think has at least one chance To be great, it’s worth maintaining and doing your best to put you in a position to succeed. Otherwise, there’s no telling how long you’ll have to wait to get another chance at this type of talent and what you might have to give up to get it.