Month: June 2026

Patrick Mahomes and the rest of the rest of the starting quarterbacks In the NFL should send Jerry Jones a thank-you note.

Jones waited to the final year of Dak Prescott’s previous extension before waiting to extend him again. So Prescott had all the leverage and signed a four-year, $240 million deal in new money with the Cowboys in 2024. That bumped his salary up to $60 million a year that doesn’t expire until 2028 and made him the highest-paid player.

At the time, the highest-paid quarterbacks were making $55 million a year.

So the Chiefs, who signed Mahomes to a 10-year, $450 million deal that was the best total value in sports when he signed it in 2020, decided that Mahomes needed a new extension.

If not for the Prescott extension, they might have aimed for a $60 million deal. But he had to make more than Prescott, who has never made a Super Bowl. So they signed Mahomes to an extension that will pay him $64 million a year and expires after the 2033 season.

So now Mahomes and Prescott are the two highest-paid quarterbacks at $64 million and $60 million.

The next five at $55 million are Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, Trevor Lawrence, Jordan Love and Matthew Stafford, who signed a one-year deal and may be near retirement.

Of the other four, Allen’s deal expires after 2030 as does the Lawrence contract. Burrow’s deal runs until after 2029 season and Love’s through 2028. It remains to be seen if any of them top the $64 million mark Mahones has set in their next contracts.

Next on the list are Jared Goff and Mark Purdy at $53 million, Justin Herbert at $52.5 million, Lamar Jackson at $52 million and Jalen Hurts at $51.

Daniel Jones signed at $44 million last year and it expires after this season, but he was injured last year so he has to prove he is due for a raise in 2027.
 
And then there are young quarterbacks like C.J. Stroud and Bryce Young, who both will play on their fifth year option, and Derek Maye, who enters his third season this year.

All this means, there are going to be a lot of interesting contract negotiations in the next few years. It won’t be surprising if a quarterback gets $70 million in the next few years.

The NFL’s  most exclusive club lost a member recently when Russell Wilson retired to the broadcast booth.

That means only five active starting quarterbacks have won Super Bowls — Patrick Mahomes, Sam Darnold ,Jalen Hurts, Matthew Stafford and Aaron Rodgers.

Mahomes  is the  only one of the five to win more than one. He has made five appearances and is 3-2. Mahomes won three of the last seven and can become the sixth quarterback to win four or more in a decade.  The only five who  have done it are Sid Luckman, Otto Graham, Bart Starr, Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana. Luckman, Bradshaw and Montana won four while Starr won five and Graham seven. Graham went to ten title games in a row, the first four in the AAFC and the NFL now counts their stats. Tom Brady, of course, also won seven but took two decades to do it.

Hurts is the only one of the five who  won one and lost one.

Four quarterbacks — Drake Maye, Brock Purdy, Joe Burrow and Jared Goff — have lost their only Super Bowl starts. None of the other starters, including Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson, have made it to the Super Bowl.

Since this is likely Rodgers’ last year, the list will lose another one going into the 2027 season. We will find out if a new name is added to the list. 

For the Los Angeles Rams, the future is always now.

The Ram proved it again this week when they traded their 2027 first round pick, their 2028 second round pick and 2029 third round pick along with pass rusher Jared Verse, their 2024 first round pick, to the Browns for Myles Garrett.

Since 2016 the rams have eventually traded all their first round picks except for this year when they traded it to Chiefs to draft quarterback Ty Simpson. They traded four of them — two each — to get Matthew Stafford and Jalen Ramsey. 

The strategy has worked for the Rams since they have only missed the playoffs twice since 2017 and have gone to the conference title game three times and twice to the Super Bowl and won it once.

The trade made sense for both teams. With the Super Bowl being played in their home park in February and with Stafford being near the end of his career, they figured they would go all out for the Super Bowl this year. And the Browns figured they could use the three picks and Verse to build for the future.

The oddsmakers are already giving giving the Rams better odds of making the Super Bowl. According to oddsmaker Jimmy Shapiro, BetOnline.ag, the odds on the Rams winning the Super Bowl went from 15-2 to 6-1.

It is now Super Bowl or bust for the Rams this year.