Revisiting Ryan Tannehill’s contract

With the Raiders Derek Carr resetting the bar as the highest paid QB. Here is a look at how Tannehill’s value might shake out.

It looks as though Carr has hit the jackpot entering into just his fourth season with this contract. He signed a 5 year, $125,025,000 contract with the Oakland Raiders, including a $12,500,000 signing bonus, $70,200,000 guaranteed, and an average annual salary of $25,005,000. In 2017 and $40M fully guaranteed according to Spotrac.com.

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But wait there’s more; His team will soon be moving to Nevada where there is no state taxes and the NFL will be into a new CBA- Collective Bargaining Agreement before his contract is over. And also QB’s Matthew Stafford and Kirk Cousins could be paid as much if not more if and when their collective teams sign them to new contracts.

There might be other QB’s that will renegotiate or be offered contracts as well. And it will soon reset what some might see as market value for QB’s. But it is a fickle thing to do so.

Right now Ryan Tannehill’s average yearly salary is 15th among NFL QB’s. But that should soon change pushing him down the list. There are back loaded contracts (as Tannehill’s) and front loaded ones as Carr’s with some stipulation I don’t grasp. An NFL contract has all sorts of moving parts like base, bonus, incentives, etc, and that’s why teams carry capologists. Being a layman I like to focus on the money made for the present year and the fully guaranteed money.

So these two figures are as follows from Spotrac.com. and above link.

Derek Carr

Present year $ – $25.2M
Fully guaranteed $ – $40M

Ryan Tannehill

Present year $ – $18M
Fully guaranteed $ – $21.5M

Some are in the camp that NFL QB’s are making too much. Some feel they don’t make enough. And some like myself fall in the middle. As previously stated there are a lot of contractual moving parts. Also a CBA that changes as well as a maximum team cap money allowed that is fluctuating higher every year.

Also stated before the QB market being fickle. This might be due to teams locking up the better ones and not having many as free agents while the cap keeps going up every year. Also compounding matters is having consistency over time for the borderline QB’s and apprehension teams should have to avoid throwing away money on someone who turns out to just be a one year wonder.

Tony Romo was supposedly available before last season but had no takers. So the Cowboys ended up having him as a backup. Come to think of it I wonder if the Miami Dolphins tried to reach out to Romo as they did with Payton Manning after Tannehill went down last season.

I stated Tannehill’s yearly pay was back loaded. That isn’t necessarily the case in the final years of the contract. It will drop by half a million next year then it will go up $1.25M the following year and in the last year will go up again to $19.5M. Which would put him half a million less than Carr for that year. All other final years Tannehill is short of Carr’s amount by an average of $2M.

While I can see how highly valued QB’s are. What seems to mostly get lost in the mix is the importance of the coach that is over him. And also the connection of the two. This chemistry shared is of utmost importance in order to form a bond between the two. Making the selection of a new coach on the level of getting the QB’s themselves.

So in conclusion Tannehill being paid about mid-level of all QB’s is about right for the time being but that is about to change as new contracts get made for others soon. Not to say that Ryan is just an average QB. But there are about eight QB’s at the top that are so-called elite. Then the next eight that fluctuate are still good but could trend in either direction toward elitists or toward average.