Big Ben gets his Brees/Ryan/Flacco contract

When are these QB contracts going to swing back the other direction? Eventually GMs will realize there are only a handful of QBs that can carry a team by themselves, and paying a good QB this much money does more harm to your team than good

I mean look at the Saints and Brees, he's an elite QB but they still can't put enough talent on that team to compete because of that huge contract

Yup. Brees is a midget.

He's won 2 super bowls and been to another one. I think he deserves it.

Damn Big Ben get that bread

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When are these QB contracts going to swing back the other direction? Eventually GMs will realize there are only a handful of QBs that can carry a team by themselves, and paying a good QB this much money does more harm to your team than good

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A QB who is elite, great, or simply just "good" is worth every penny of the mega contracts they get. The bottom line is you can't consistently field a winning team in the NFL today without solid QB play. Look at nearly all of the bad teams, year after year, and they almost all have bad QB play in common. The opposite is true for the good teams.

There are only like 15 humans in the entire world who can do what these guys do. If you lose one because you won't pay him, you almost never have the option of replacing his production in the FA market or the draft.

The QB's are not robbing the team for cash either. They are just getting the extra money that would have been going to veteran HB's 10 years ago.

Kind of helped that he came off easily the best season his career. Wish he took a little less to help the Steelers out with their cap but he deserves it based on his play.

But that big contract just guarantees that all of his star WRs will walk. Again. And again. And again.

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When are these QB contracts going to swing back the other direction? Eventually GMs will realize there are only a handful of QBs that can carry a team by themselves, and paying a good QB this much money does more harm to your team than good

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Will it matter if the salary cap steadily increases?

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The $200 million cap is coming
The NFL implemented the salary cap in 1994. It was $34.6 million per team. In 2009, the last capped year under the previous collective bargaining agreement, the salary cap was nearly $128 million. The 2015 cap of $143.28 million is $20 million more than the 2013 cap.

So a $200 million cap isn't just conceivable -- it's coming.

"The salary cap, in its own way, has contributed to growth in revenues," Jerry Jones said. "I don't think you'd have these stadiums like you've got without it. I don't think you'd have the type of revenues like we have. There are incentives to build stadiums by ownerships. There are all kinds of competitive aspects that [have] created an enormous gain that has appeal and that produces a lot of revenues, which the players are the chief benefactor of."

What will the NFL look like with a $200 million cap? No one knows for sure, but one general manager speculated that the landscape might include "NBA-type" trades, by which a team that needed to reach the minimum spend would trade with a cash-strapped team for the hefty expiring contract of a star player.

Last year, one team had internal discussions about doing just that when it became apparent that Dallas was going to release veteran pass-rusher DeMarcus Ware, who was due $12.25 million.

As for the present, there is this certainty: Teams must spend.

"Top players are still getting paid like top players," Demoff said of the current CBA. "The cost of rookies at the top of the draft has been lowered so that draft picks are more valued because they're more affordable than they used to be. That disparity has probably made it so the middle class probably gets squeezed on both ends. The top guys are making more. To afford that, we may take a chance on a rookie versus a veteran.

"I think as the quarterback deals grow and the top player deals grow, that trend will be the one you'll have to keep a pulse on to see if you can still build an effective team with four or five players taking up 40 to 50 percent of your salary cap. Now, if you draft well and coach well, that method will work. And if you don't draft well and you don't coach well and you have the top four players take up 10 percent, it won't matter."

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LINK

pittsburgh gets raped on that one

Good for him. He's earned it.