It must be Jared Goff day or something. This is a companion piece to another Goff article written on Wednesday. Anyhow, let me just get this out of the way. I don’t have any inside information on this, but I think we can all agree at this point that Jared Goff is going to get an extension this offseason and it’ going to be a lot more than some Lions fans are comfortable with.
In my opinion, he’s going to get something in the $50 million a year range. You can thank Daniel Jones and the New York Giants for that. If a guy that throws 15 touchdowns in a season can get that, Goff, who in the top six in every major statistical category is going to get a lot more. This is just reality of the situation.
The big concern here is that this is going to affect the Lions long term plans. I don’t think that’s going to happen and I’m going to do my best to explain some reasons as to why.
Nobody is making $50 million a year
It seems that what people often overlook is that just because a guy makes $50 million a year, that doesn’t mean his cap hit is $50 million. There’s four quarterbacks in the NFL that make an average of $50 million or more a year and not one of them counts for $50 million against the cap right now. All of their deals are backloaded and it looks like they’ll get that amount at some point, but the reality is that they may not because of restructures.
Guys are getting guaranteed money. That is how you’re able to pay a quarterback a lot and not have it destroy your cap. Take Lamar Jackson for example, He makes an average of $52 million a year, but his cap hit doesn’t hit $50 million until 2026. His cap hit this season is just over $22 million. He accounts for 9.91% of the Ravens cap this season.
The same type of deal will happen for Jared Goff. He’s not going to just get $50 million dollars right up front and have that hit the cap. They’ll likely still pay him what he’s owed in 2024 or rework it some way. If they pay him what he’s owed in 2024, he’ll account for just 12% of the teams total cap. They’ll still have money to go out and do things. The amount of money that you’re worried about affecting the cap will be pushed off to later years. The Lions can still work out deals with guys they want to keep and guys they hope to add while still getting Goff a pay day.
Cap Rise
The salary cap is rising and rising every year. Take for example when Matthew Stafford became the highest paid NFL player of all time in 2017. The salary cap that year was $167 million. By the time the Lions traded Stafford in 2021, the cap had risen to $182.5 million. It’s gone up drastically since then. The salary cap in 2023 is $224.8 million. That’s a $42.3 million rise in just two years. It’s going to rise again next year. The projected salary cap for 2024 is expected to be surpass $240 million.
Stafford’s contract seemed astronomical at the time, but as the leagues economics changed, that contract became less and less a problem and the way it affected the teams cap went further and further down as well.
Goff’s deal may initially look gigantic, but as the cap rises and other quarterbacks start getting their new deals, Goff’s contract could begin to look like a major discount. It’s the nature of the business. Players are going to get paid more and more as the years go by.
Restructures
It’s important to note that contract restructures are not guaranteed. The team may want to move some things around, but that doesn’t mean the player will agree to it. With that said, players are usually ok with moving money around to make their team better more often than not.
So while you might see a large cap hit in the future, that doesn’t mean that cap hit is set in stone. Things can be renegotiated later and some of that cap hit can become guaranteed money to free up cap space.
An Out
The Lions will surely work an out into this contract. An out being a time in which they can get out of the deal with as minimal a cost as possible. The Lions had an out with Goff after the 2022 season and chose not to use it. They’ll work one in to this deal too. That way if things don’t work out they can say thank you and part ways.