What’s a quarterback worth?
It seems like we need a place to talk about this. One discussion that keeps coming up is how much the Bears should pay for Jay Cutler, and while I am probably in the pro-Cutler camp (I like McCown, too, though, and would love it if we could somehow keep both of them), I think it’s worth having a general discussion about what a QB is worth, these days. Since McCown is going to hit free agency, anyway, we are in the market for a quarterback one way or another. How much should the Bears expect to pay?
Using mostly numbers from Over The Cap, I went through at looked at the average salaries for ‘starting’ quarterbacks in the NFL. Feel free to disagree with my methodology, but I made my best guesses. For example, I disregarded Mark Sanchez’s terrible deal and used Geno Smith’s salary instead (more than a $12,000,000 difference), but I did plug in Kolb instead of Manuel for the Bills (a roughly $800,000 difference).
Quarterback |
Team |
Average per year |
Guaranteed |
$22,000,000 |
49.10% |
||
$20,750,000 |
40.50% |
||
$20,100,000 |
24.00% |
||
$20,000,000 |
40.00% |
||
$19,200,000 |
18.80% |
||
$18,000,000 |
37.00% |
||
$17,666,667 |
78.30% |
||
$16,250,000 |
35.90% |
||
$15,500,000 |
47.00% |
||
$15,300,000 |
41.60% |
||
$14,668,750 |
68.20% |
||
$14,664,417 |
37.70% |
||
$13,000,000 |
64.10% |
||
$11,400,000 |
57.90% |
||
$9,258,333 |
32.40% |
||
$8,000,000 |
62.50% |
||
$7,500,000 |
46.70% |
||
$5,527,000 |
100.00% |
||
$5,506,375 |
100.00% |
||
$5,279,775 |
100.00% |
||
$3,700,000 |
27.00% |
||
$3,375,000 |
44.40% |
||
$3,250,000 |
26.90% |
||
$3,167,128 |
100.00% |
||
$3,050,000 |
16.40% |
||
$1,875,000 |
13.30% |
||
$1,303,550 |
77.30% |
||
$1,281,074 |
74.20% |
||
$1,254,901 |
61.10% |
||
$905,000 |
40.30% |
||
$749,193 |
? |
||
Tyrell Pryor |
$686,517 |
? |
|
|
Average |
$9,505,271 |
|
Adding everyone from Tyrell Pryor (Aaron Rodgers ($22,000,000/year), the average starter is making about $9.5 million per year. About half of that looks to be guaranteed. Obviously, the rookie salary system is a big part of keeping that number so low, and there are some amazing bargains to be had. Russell Wilson is worth about $750,000 (less than $32,000 per touchdown, if he stops right now). A number of very good posts have already explained the hit-or-miss nature of relying on the draft, but it would be an option.
So, what is a quarterback worth?