Last Sunday, the Kansas City Chiefs defeated the San Francisco 49ers 25–22. The win is their third Super Bowl victory in five years. They are officially a dynasty. The bigger question is: how does this game change the NFL? This is a copycat league, and every other club is looking at these two teams for indication of what to change going forward. This game will change how teams spend their money and build rosters. Specifically, it will change how they allocate money for the most important position in the game and the hardest to get right: the quarterback.
$242 million dollars. That’s the amount of money each NFL club will have available to spend this upcoming offseason across its 53 roster spots and 16 practice squad members. This is a strict limit with no exceptions. Teams must be creative and only spend on positions of need. This has caused trends like the increasing pay of pass rushers and linemen paired with a decline in running back pay due to the increasing focus placed on the passing game. Still, these patterns pale in comparison to the rising cost of the quarterback position.
Looking at the Super Bowl teams, Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes notched a $37 million cap hit this year. That number is the highest in the league and roughly 17 percent of the team’s total money. On the other hand, Niners QB Brock Purdy earned $889,000. That number ranks him at 67 amongst Quarterbacks and 1,406th across all players.
Purdy is no Mahomes. There is a reason he was drafted last in the 2022 NFL Draft, earning him the title of “Mr. Irrelevant.” He is competent but will rarely make the winning play. Still, the benefit of a player like Purdy is that his low salary allows the team to sign big contracts for supporting players. 49ers Nick Bosa and Christian McCaffery ranked as the highest earning edge rusher and running back respectively when bonuses and incentives are accounted for. They are supported by an elite arsenal of weapons like Deebo Samuel and George Kittle. On the opposite end, the Chiefs were forced to trade star receiver Tyreek Hill in 2022 after Mahomes signed a new contract. This left an aging Travis Kelce as the Chiefs lone star pass catcher. Despite this, they remain a dominant team and are poised to only get stronger.
Mahomes raised his third Lombardi trophy carrying the highest cap hit in the league. This upcoming year, he is slated to hold the third highest figure after the newest wave of quarterbacks get paid, and he is only set to sink further in future years. Some players — Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, Joe Burrow — are clearly worth their high priced extensions. Increasingly, however, there are teams out there paying Mahomes-level money for Purdy-level quality. This leaves mediocre QBs paired with equally mediocre rosters. Giants Quarterback Daniel Jones signed a four year $160 million contract in 2023 and then proceeded to go 1–5 before ending his season due to an ACL injury. Russell Wilson, DeShaun Watson and Derek Carr all underperformed on similar deals. Jones’s deal is not quite the $45 million for Mahomes annually, but it is close enough to illustrate an imbalance. Mahomes is an A+ player making A+ money. Jones is a C- player making Amoney. Something has to change.
Last Sunday’s game showed that there are two paths now. Teams can either spend on the luxury market on players of Mahomes’s caliber (if they can find them) or go bargain hunting for Brock Purdys, scraping the bottom of the barrel for quarterbacks in the draft so that more money is available for other players. What they cannot do is spend on mediocrity. For the past several years, conventional wisdom dictated that teams lock in their franchise quarterback to a high-priced extension. Over time, the contract would become undervalued as other teams sign their signal caller to higher figures. It has allowed mid-market QBs like Kirk Cousins to clean up, but that might be going away. Players of this caliber like Dak Prescott, Tua Tagovailoa, Baker Mayfield and Justin Fields, who are due for extensions, could be in trouble. With a deep quarterback draft ahead, some teams might look to draft a new signal caller to avoid paying a veteran.
You cannot out-quarterback Mahomes. The only way to beat the Chiefs is to keep him off the field with a quality running game and make him uncomfortable using a dominating defense. For two and a half quarters, the Niners did just that. It was only when Brock Purdy had to make plays down the field that the game began to unravel. Only teams that can do this — and more importantly, afford to do this — have any chance of stopping this dynasty.
