And that much I expect. For me its more about structure.
There's almost no justification for having a single player cost $20M+ more on a YoY basis. Teams don't kill themselves by paying $35M to a player. Teams kill themselves by backloading the contract. Joe Flacco's original deal in 2013 wasn't a bad one in terms of total $ or total years... it was bad because the Ravens backloaded the crap out of it from a salary cap perspective. That's how you get a declining player costing significantly more year-over-year, and virtually no chance of getting out from under it.
I was heaping praises on the 49ers two years ago for that Jimmy G deal. I thought he was overpaid at $27.5M a year, but the structure was brilliant. They were flush with cap space in 2018, and they front loaded the crap out of it... $37M cap hit in year 1. They have a great chance to keep a lot of really good players on that team, because Jimmy's structure is ridiculously flat for the next three years, so as the cap grows, its all extra space for them to spend. They'll never have to cut a player because their QBs contract is growing too fast.
it depends what they do with the existing money on the rookie deal but yeah there's no reason not to have the first 2 years at least close to the average yearly rate - but front-loading is a luxury of teams with loads of cap space - the rams and eagles did not have much available cap space when they signed those deals
what's promising is it looks like EDC is structuring contracts now with other players and getting the salary cap into a place where a lamar contract could work within the contract framework that EDC seems to prefer (i.e. a lot flatter)
i have no problems with a flatter contract at all - but there's going to be an astronomical difference between jimmy g's contract and all these other ones because he got paid at a discount a little bit - his inflated year 1 cap hit to create flatter cap hits down the line is going to be probably less than the average/yr of any deal that mahomes, lamar and watson get
russell wilson's deal is probably the best deal we can use as a prototype but even that's slightly back-loaded - inevitably any deal you create will naturally have inflation cap hits if your team is competing because the salary cap as a trend increases every year but teams that compete every year are likely to be closer to the salary cap than those that arent
but russell wilson's extension has cap numbers of 26m, 31m, 32m, 37m, 39m on a 4 yr extension that was 4 for 140m at a 35m/yr average
