National Football League

NFL's salary ceiling is made of banknotes — Patrick Mahomes and Brock Purdy will smash it

Published Sep. 15, 2024 10:26 a.m. ET

The NFL's salary ceiling isn't made of glass. It's made of paper — more specifically, it's comprised of crisp, new, glorious banknotes, which also happen to emit a siren song that trills "come and get me."

It's being sung to Patrick Mahomes and Brock Purdy, dueling signal callers in the last Super Bowl. It's already made its cry to Kyler Murray, Jalen Hurts, Lamar Jackson, Justin Herbert, Trevor Lawrence, Joe Burrow and Jordan Love, all of whom have come to visit the ceiling and found it to be a flimsy old barrier.

NFL numerology is a wild business, one that loosely follows the laws of inflation, the quirks of psychology, the principles of marketing and the cruelties of hope, but more than anything is tied inextricably to the cutthroat nature of supply and demand.

The progression of the timeline following the status bestowed upon pro football's highest earner is the simplest way to keep up and understand it, and a milestone of some note was reached in the hours ahead of last Sunday's action, when the Dallas Cowboys locked in Dak Prescott at a nice, round $60 million per year, for four seasons.

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Did we say milestone? Stepping stone would be more accurate. For no one who has been paying any kind of attention to this phenomenon heard Prescott's number and envisaged it as a roadblock to what follows. Like every other deal that's been done over the last few years, it now represents a juicy jumping point for grateful agents to catapult from in search of even higher figures.

Where next? Perhaps not quite "to the moon," to borrow phraseology from that GameStop stock market circus, but definitely in some sort of stratospheric direction.

For now though, while there looks to be a temporary lull in the wealth-bestowing action, let's try to learn from the role Aaron Rodgers has played in the process.

When Rodgers became the NFL's best-paid player in history in April 2013, he began collecting an annual sum of $22 million, then seen as a whopper of a deal for a transformational player, entering his prime, already a Super Bowl winner and a league MVP, and a cut above everyone except Tom Brady.

It took three offseasons for that monetary mark to be broken, and even then only incrementally, Joe Flacco creeping it up to $22,133,000 with the Baltimore Ravens.

Jump ahead to March 2022, and Rodgers again set the market, this time becoming the first player in football history to top $50 million in yearly earnings. That amount, given out by the Green Bay Packers after Rodgers cruised past age 38, was enough to impress even an NFL audience long since jaded by stupendous amounts of reported loot.

Yet in far less time than it took Rodgers' $22 million mark to edge up to something fractionally higher, his $50 million line in the sand has been washed into insignificance. Yes, Prescott is now at $60 million, but meanwhile, the record was busted over and over again.

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Eight deals in the $50 million-plus range got done, most of them featuring the list of names mentioned above. Even Love, Rodgers' former backup, whose drafting set off so much of the Rodgers angst before he eventually wound up on the Jets, spent a minute in a tie for record earner.

The importance of a QB has never been greater, though it sometimes gets lost that they also need to be in the right spot to shine. Week 1 was described by FS1's Colin Cowherd as "reclamation day" for derided QBs, highlighting the winning performances of Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold, Derek Carr and Geno Smith, all well down the positional pay scale.

"It proves how valuable snaps, experience, time on task is at a quarterback," Cowherd added, on "The Herd." "It also proves how important the fit is. That's the best I've ever seen Derek Carr play." Carr and the New Orleans Saints visit Prescott and the Cowboys on Sunday (1 p.m. ET on FOX and the FOX Sports app), with Brady calling the action in his second official appearance in the booth.

Having a serviceable QB is perceived as being absolutely vital to a healthy franchise, but bear in mind that six Super Bowls in a row have featured one on a pittance of a rookie contract, though those cheapskate deals have only realized one win in the big game — Mahomes five years ago.

Mahomes since signed his "forever" contract that lasts through 2031 but has had it reworked, and also has an agreement in place to revisit it with Chiefs ownership following the 2026 campaign.

Elsewhere, what gets interesting now is that not only has a trend been set where each deal feels it has to be a bit better than the last — otherwise you're admitting that someone else has a better QB than you — but that blips and aberrations don't matter a jot.

The Cleveland Browns overpaid for Deshaun Watson, which now shapes as a giant mistake in multiple ways.

"The Browns are in such — of their own doing — a terrible spot," "First Things First" host Nick Wright told Cowherd. "This is without question the worst transaction in NFL history."

But it didnt serve as much of a cautionary tale, with the market exploding after Watson's fully-loaded, five-year, $230 million pact. You wouldn't describe Prescott's new contract as a mistake, but Dallas might have gotten a discount had it been done sooner, taking their usual route of waiting and stalling and then paying a lot.

The inflated figure, meaning that the NFL has a $60 million player quicker than it might have, won't factor in either. It is the new benchmark, a milestone, a stepping stone, call it what you will — it is just where we're at.

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We are also at a stage where simple psychology and its nuances of numbers come into play. As figures get bigger, so do the jumps. Do you think Purdy's agent will be angling for $61 million to slide beyond Prescott? No chance — why not start negotiating at 70 and hope to settle at 65, especially if Prescott still hasn't reached a Super Bowl by then, and even more so if Purdy gets to another one.

Truth be told, we are off and running towards $100 million. It took only six years for the high mark to double from Matt Ryan's $30 million in the summer of 2018 to Prescott's development. By that rationale, well, you get the idea.

Sometimes it's worth it. Inevitably, there are going to be deals done that turn into financial black holes, like Watson's, for instance.

As for Mahomes, if he continues down this route, you could pay the guy that $100 million, and he'd still be worth every penny. The way things are going, in a couple of summers, the Chiefs might.

Martin Rogers is a columnist for FOX Sports. Follow him on Twitter @MRogersFOX.