NFL Quarterback Tiers: Tua, Trevor Lawrence and the Biggest Contracts Ever for Tier 3 QBs

The 50 NFL coaches and executives who voted on the 2024 Quarterback Tiers didn’t confuse the Miami Dolphins’ Tua Tagovailoa and the Jacksonville Jaguars’ Trevor Lawrence for a second with the game’s best quarterbacks.

They ranked Tagovailoa 15th and Lawrence 16th among the 30 veterans at that position, putting them at the top of Tier 3 as win-withnot win-because-of Quarterbacks. Good players. Promising. Unproven difference makers.

The balance sheet cannot separate them from future Hall of Famers.

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Lawrence’s $55 million-a-year contract extension in the offseason made him the league’s highest-paid quarterback until Dak Prescott surpassed him last weekend. Tagovailoa’s $53.1 million-a-year contract extension has him firmly in the top five.

It wasn’t always so common to award top contracts to mid-level quarterbacks.

From 2014 through ’22, Kirk Cousins ​​was the only Tier 3 quarterback to command contracts with average per-annual-pay (APY) values ​​of at least 15 percent of the individual team’s salary cap in the years the deals were signed. Cousins ​​accomplished this by reaching free agency, where he could solicit bids from desperate suitors.

Times have changed. Over the past two years, the New York Giants (Daniel Jones), New Orleans Saints (Derek Carr), Jacksonville (Lawrence) and Miami (Tagovailoa) have signed Tier 3 quarterbacks to extensions that were valued so highly relative to the cap. The deals for Lawrence and Tagovailoa had APYs that were more than 20 percent of the cap.

The Giants, Jaguars and Dolphins could have all waited for more from their QBs. Instead, they entered into expensive long-term relationships.

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“When people weren’t willing to let Daniel Jones play, the world blew up,” said one NFL team contract negotiator. “We’re not even talking about Tua, who had tremendous production. We’re talking about Daniel Freaking Jones.”

It was a rough week for Jones, who threw a pick-six interception in the Giants’ 28-6 loss to the Minnesota Vikings. The point here isn’t to brag. But in an era when more coaches can seemingly get tremendous production out of good quarterbacks, and when drafted quarterbacks enter the league on cost-controlled contracts, why are teams paying mid-tier veterans like they’re Patrick Mahomes?

“There’s been so much media pressure to just pay the guy,” said another negotiator. “He wanted $2 million and you offered $1.6 million. It made sense to say, ‘You know what, we should pay the guy — it doesn’t really matter.’ But when you’re close to $50 million and you say, ‘Pay the guy,’ what does that mean? There’s this wave of ‘The market is the market,’ and it’s the top of the market, even if you’re not.”

The table below shows Cousins ​​(shaded in red) as the only quarterback outside of Tiers 1 and 2 whose APY represented at least 15 percent of the salary cap allotment in the year of signing, from 2014-22. His three contracts with Minnesota all came during that nine-season eligible period.

Cousins ​​was the outlier, the rare veteran starting quarterback who hit the market. The other 24 deals in the table above went to quarterbacks who were voted into the top two tiers when the contracts were signed.

That’s generally been the case at the position, with Level 1 and 2 quarterbacks seen as the ones who can lead their teams to the Super Bowl without the best defenses on their side.

But as the table below shows, four of the 13 most recent qualifying contracts went to players who were viewed by NFL coaches and executives as Tier 3 quarterbacks at the time of signing. That’s a shift.

“Quarterbacks used to be paid to win the Super Bowl, not to have good regular-season stats,” said another team executive. “It was Steve Young, Dan Marino, John Elway, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning. Then, all of a sudden, I think it started around Matthew Stafford with the Lions (in 2013), where it was, ‘Next man up.'”

Stafford entered the league in 2009, two years before the league and its players began lowering salaries for highly drafted rookies. That meant Stafford and the Lions negotiated a steep salary cap in 2013. For that extension, the Green Bay Packers paid Aaron Rodgers near the top of the market in 2008, after Rodgers had only started half a season. Rodgers had spent three seasons on the bench behind future Hall of Famer Brett Favre, so he was deeper into his rookie deal.

Teams are now signing top-of-market extensions to quarterbacks on cheaper rookie deals. They’re doing these extensions a year or two before the players have a shot at free agency, and when teams can use the franchise tag to buy even more time to evaluate.

Teams can justify the approach to some extent by arguing that the extension, when added to an existing deal with years left on it, allows them to spread the new total over a longer period of time, thereby lowering the average and locking in the terms before prices rise. But they still often end up spending huge sums on less-than-elite quarterbacks when they could have waited.

If you look at all 37 deals in the tables above, you’ll see that the lines between Tier 2 and 3 quarterbacks blur. Some of the QBs voted into Tier 2 at various times — Jimmy Garoppolo and Jared Goff come to mind, with Tagoavailoa right behind them at the top of Tier 3 this year — have looked really good and really bad for reasons that have more to do with coaching and surrounding personnel.

“You’re struggling with the question, ‘Is Tua good or is (Dolphins coach) Mike McDaniel pulling the strings?'” said one of the contract negotiators. “The owner says, ‘Well, I don’t know the difference.’ You score points.

“Most coaches and GMs haven’t won enough yet to say to their owners, ‘You know what? Let’s reset.’”

San Francisco 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan, Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay and Philadelphia Eagles general manager Howie Roseman had built up enough equity with their owners to part with the quarterbacks they had invested heavily in with huge contracts and/or expensive draft trades.

No one is saying the Dolphins should move on from Tagovailoa or the Jaguars should move on from Lawrence. But why couldn’t those teams stop themselves from paying them at the top of the market? Why couldn’t they push for deals that would bring those quarterbacks closer to the league’s position?

“Tua has a sensational passing attack, a high level of success there,” said one of the contract negotiators. “Goff, against a lot of people’s expectations, took Detroit to the brink of the Super Bowl. I’m talking more about Derek Carr or Kirk Cousins, who haven’t had real success in the playoffs and haven’t led top 2-3 offenses.”

Money may not buy happiness, but it can buy peace between a player and a team, prompting the quarterback to show up to training camp and compete. Tagovailoa and Green Bay’s Jordan Love reported to camp this summer but withheld their services until their contract extensions were signed. Their teams could have played hard, but clearly saw no value in competing.

For decision makers, it may feel safer to tell the owner that the supposed franchise quarterback is “the guy” and should be paid accordingly than to point out the quarterback’s limitations to save money. That could be especially true in an era when wealthier owners and escalating salary caps have created a climate in which teams are more willing to cut losses and coaches may only be given a few seasons to turn a franchise around.

“Everything in the NFL is about, ‘What’s going to help me keep my job?'” one executive said. “It’s not about what’s right. If I can pay a quarterback and move on in two years and maybe not get blamed, that’s better than going through a whole year of, ‘Are you going to pay him or not?'”

As the table below shows, the gap between Lawrence’s No. 16 ranking in the 2024 Quarterback Tiers and his No. 2 APY is the largest gap for a Tier 1-3 QB since 2014, the inaugural year of QB Tiers. Tagovailoa just missed the cutoff this year by a margin of -10 (No. 5 APY, No. 15 Tiers ranking).

The 49ers’ Brock Purdy, still playing on a seventh-round rookie contract worth less than $1 million per year, represents the biggest value since 2014 by those metrics. His No. 12 ranking in the 2024 QB Tiers is 68 spots better than his No. 80 APY ranking among quarterbacks.

Purdy is eligible to negotiate a long-term extension beyond the current season under NFL labor rules. He is the league’s No. 1 statistical quarterback since 2022 in expected points added per pass play (EPA), passer rating and yards per pass attempt.

Coaches and executives think Purdy is a great fit for the 49ers’ stars, and a good player. Their question is: How well would he perform with an average supporting cast, or without Shanahan designing the offense? Coaches and executives don’t think Purdy will ever carry a team the way Mahomes or the Buffalo Bills’ Josh Allen can.

Recent history shows that none of that matters when it comes time for a new contract. Purdy has already climbed to Tier 2, and he doesn’t seem to be done climbing quite yet. The league won’t be surprised if and when he surpasses Prescott or whoever is the NFL’s highest-paid quarterback at the time.

(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletics; Photos: Ric Tapia and Mitchell Leff / Getty Images)