Tuesday, June 10, 2014
The Middle Ground?
Andy Dalton thinks that the 49ers and Colin Kaepernick "found the middle ground" and got a deal done. Hmmmm. While I understand now that a lot of the guaranteed money is not actually guaranteed (soft guarantees is what experts are calling it), he is still among the top paid players in the NFL. The 49ers had a pretty poor passing attack last year, and while Kaepernick is a great athlete, let's not ignore the fact that the team was great mostly due to a great defense. I love how Dalton is trying to politic his way to a huge contract based on Kaepernick's. This is going to go down as the age of mediocre QBs getting gigantic contracts (Kaepernick is better than mediocre, and may end up great, but Dalton and Alex Smith are average and will get ridiculous money). Fun stuff.
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This contract shocked me, even as a Niners fan. I think Kap is good, and potentially great, but he isn't the latter yet, and this is a huge contract. That being said, the details that have emerged about it make it better--the Niners have ways out, and Kap gets rewarded if he continues to improve. However, I also wonder what happens if he improves a bit but not dramatically, and the team keeps picking up the contract, confident he'll keep getting better even if it doesn't appear that he's getting better enough to be paid this highly.
ReplyDeleteFlacco's contract a couple of years ago (and maybe Matt Ryan's) seem to have set this precedent in which good-not-great QBs are getting extensions making them the highest-paid, even though they're not the most productive/talented/accomplished. Teams seem to want the security of locking up known quantities rather than looking for new QBs, and they'll overpay to do it. I wonder if there's some sort of football version of Moneyball coming--some team deciding a franchise QB is BS, and building some completely different way.
And what is Russell Wilson's next contract going to look like?
To quote a 49ers friend of mine who lives in SF, this was his opinion on the Kaep contract: "He's a franchise QB who has an even higher ceiling. He's never known anything less than the NFC champ game. And he's getting top 6 money? I'm ok with that. Particularly because when Wilson and luck get their deals, he'll be in the bottom half of top 10 highest paid qb"
ReplyDeleteHe has a point, but at the same time, I'm not sure Kaep is that great. His legs have carried his talent so far.
I hate to make this comparison because it is not fair to Kaepernick, but Mark Sanchez made two straight AFC Championship games... He sucks. Kaepernick is a better QB than Sanchez, but it is also clear that he made those title games because of a stellar defense in addition to anything he did. I'm interested to see what the team does if he plays well enough to warrant the team picking up the "guarantees" in his contract once guys like Patrick Willis and Novorro Bowman become too expensive. Running around doesn't win titles with a mediocre defense, just ask Michael Vick/Randall Cunningham. Unless Kaepernick develops Steve Young-like accuracy, I don't see this working out too well because he will be good enough to get the money paid, but I don't think good enough to get them a title in the absence of a great defense.
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