Still need some time to regroup after a thrilling Super Bowl that capped off what felt like the longest NFL season in history? Well, too damn bad! The NFL calendar never stops, and it’s already time to start looking ahead to what should be another busy offseason.
The scouting combine is less than two weeks away. The new league years begin shortly after that, including franchise tag, free agency, and fifth-year option decisions. There will be pro days and draft rumors to sort out. And, oh yeah, there should be plenty of trades. The NFL landscape will be significantly altered over the next few months. To prepare for that, let’s set the stage for the offseason with five questions that will help shape it. Since this league revolves around the quarterbacks, that feels like the appropriate place to start.
1. Will the quarterback market get reset—and how many times?
In the last calendar year alone, we’ve seen three quarterbacks (Jalen Hurts, Joe Burrow, and Justin Herbert) claim the title of “highest-paid player in NFL history.” Spoiler alert: It’ll happen again this offseason, and pretty much every offseason for the foreseeable future. This is how the league works now: When a productive starting quarterback signs a new contract, it’s almost always a record-breaking one.
Five quarterbacks enter this offseason with a real shot at resetting the market for QB salaries: Trevor Lawrence in Jacksonville, Dak Prescott in Dallas, Jared Goff in Detroit, Jordan Love in Green Bay, and Tua Tagovailoa in Miami. Let’s review each case and figure out the likely outcome of negotiations, starting with the one that appears the most cut-and-dried …
Trevor Lawrence
If Jaguars general manager Trent Baalke plans on playing hardball with Lawrence’s camp as the quarterback heads into the final year of his rookie contract, he’s not off to a good start. Baalke said last month that there’s “no doubt” about the team’s long-term commitment to Lawrence and that the two sides will “get something done at the appropriate time.” The veteran GM also put Lawrence’s disappointing 2023-24 campaign—which saw him regress in every significant statistical category, including touchdowns, interceptions, sacks, and success rate—on the team and its failure to protect him.
“Unfortunately, he had four key injuries this year,” Baalke said. “When your quarterback has a throwing-shoulder injury, a knee injury, an ankle injury, and a concussion all in one year, that’s alarming. So we’ve got to work to improve that.”
Jacksonville isn’t in the best spot cap-wise, but it has enough space to get a long-term deal done with Lawrence, at market price, while still having the flexibility to add pieces around him. It’ll have to restructure some other contracts to make it all work, but Lawrence is a talent worth moving money around to lock down.
Dak Prescott
This is another that’s pretty straightforward, but for different reasons. Prescott is coming off an MVP-caliber campaign, but we’ve probably already seen his ceiling, and it’s fair to ask whether it’s high enough to get Dallas to a Super Bowl. Unfortunately, the Cowboys can’t afford to ask that question, with Prescott’s cap hit set to balloon to $59.4 million in 2024. That’s an untenable number for a team that is currently $19 million over the cap and that will also have to work out deals with Micah Parsons and CeeDee Lamb this offseason. Signing Dak to a multiyear contract would allow Dallas to spread out that $59.4 million cap hit over a couple of years and free up enough space to get the Parsons and Lamb deals done and make other additions.
“Dak has done nothing to change my mind about any promise for the future,” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said last month at the Senior Bowl. “I think I’ve said in the deal that we will go as far as Dak takes us in the playoffs. Remember that. We will go as far as Dak takes us, and that is how far we went. So my point is, that doesn’t change a thing. We’ll go as far as Dak takes us.”
The Cowboys sound committed to their quarterback.
Jared Goff
Lions fans also seem to be committed to their quarterback. Detroit sports fans spent January randomly breaking into “Jared Goff” chants after the quarterback led the franchise to its first home playoff win in 30 years.
Not a bad endorsement.
The 29-year-old has one year remaining on the contract he signed in Los Angeles before being traded to the Lions in 2021. He’ll have a cap hit of $32.3 million for the 2024 season, with only $10 million of that guaranteed. That’s a good thing for the team, as it gives it more future flexibility than, say, the Cowboys have with Dak. But Dallas’s fans aren’t chanting Prescott’s name at sporting events across the city.
That’s what makes these negotiations so tricky. In a vacuum, Goff isn’t the caliber of quarterback that you give a $50 million a year contract to, but good luck explaining that to those fans. They won’t care that he turns into a pumpkin whenever a defense forces him off his spot or whenever the temperature dips below 50 degrees. They just watched him take the Lions to the brink of a Super Bowl appearance. It’s the closest the franchise has ever been to the NFL’s biggest game.
Detroit has to pay Goff, and Goff’s camp knows it. He’ll get his money. The only question is structure and whether the Lions can build in some fail-safes in case Goff’s play takes a turn for the worse.
Jordan Love
With only one year left on the extension Love signed last offseason, we know his deal will get reworked. The Packers are reportedly interested in discussing a long-term contract to give him a “new, fair market deal” for a starting quarterback. That’s quite the commitment to a passer who’s been starting for only a year and has just two months of high-level quarterback play on his ledger. But Love, who finished in the top five in EPA per dropback after an uneven start to the season, flashed enough talent to prove that he’s worth such an investment. You don’t need a large sample size to evaluate talent like this …
This may seem like the most complicated contract situation of all these quarterbacks, but Love’s short track record may work out in Green Bay’s favor. By getting to the negotiating table before a potential big breakout from Love next year, the Packers should be able to save some money over the course of the deal. And if he continues on this current track, he’ll be considered underpaid in a few years.
Tua Tagovailoa
While the other four contract negotiations should be amicable, this one has a chance to get ugly. The biggest complicating factor is Miami’s precarious cap situation. The Dolphins are currently projected to be $52 million over the 2024 salary cap. With Tagovailoa set to play on his fifth-year option next season, which will pay him around $23 million, a new deal could help Miami save some money—assuming that new deal would be back-loaded. And it’ll take a market-level deal to get Tua to sign after he put up two back-to-back MVP-level seasons in terms of production.
Mike McDaniel and GM Chris Grier have publicly stated their desire to keep Tagovailoa in Miami, but it’s easy to say that before figures get thrown around, and according to Spotrac’s Market Value tool, the 25-year-old could be worth up to $50 million a year on the open market. That’s based on his stat line over the past two seasons, which puts him behind only Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen in total passing EPA, per TruMedia. That’s a data point that Tua’s team will undoubtedly cite when setting their initial asking price, and it will be interesting to see how the Dolphins counteract it. Clearly, Tagovailoa benefits from playing with Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle—who is up for an extension this offseason as well—and Miami will make that case in negotiations. But the quarterback’s stock may never be higher than it is right now, and it’s hard to imagine him giving the Dolphins a discount.
Miami will be the side more desperate to get a deal done, which should work in Tua’s favor.
2. What will the Chicago Bears do with the no. 1 pick?
Let’s get one thing out of the way: Chicago needs to use this pick on a quarterback. Whether it’s Caleb Williams or Drake Maye—I currently lean toward Williams, but Maye is also worthy of the first pick—the Bears cannot go into the 2024 season trying to make the Justin Fields experiment work again.
Fields is a tantalizing talent. He has the bones of a modern franchise quarterback but hasn’t fleshed out the rest of his game nearly enough over the past three years to justify passing on two legitimate blue-chip prospects. Fields finished this season ranked 24th in EPA per dropback and 28th in success rate. Whatever strides he made in his third season still left him near the bottom of the league’s statistical leaderboard. And if you take his production on scramble plays out of the equation, Fields was arguably the worst starting quarterback in the league.
The idea that Chicago should hold on to Fields is absurd—especially when you consider the draft capital the Bears would be passing on to retain him. In a league where Sam Darnold fetched the Jets a second-round pick in 2021, Fields should garner at least that and maybe even a conditional second-rounder that turns into a first if he can hit specific benchmarks with a new team. Chicago should get some solid assets in a trade that could help the team build around its latest quarterback of the future.
3. What will Jim Harbaugh’s first offseason back in the NFL look like?
Harbaugh is being welcomed back to the NFL with an aging and terribly flawed roster and one of the worst salary cap situations in the league. The Chargers are about $45 million over the cap as things stand. That number is kind of fake—the team could clear up about $80 million in cap space by cutting or restructuring a number of big-name players on the roster, including Joey Bosa, Khalil Mack, and Keenan Allen. But it still doesn’t look great, given that L.A. finished 5-12 and last in the AFC West this season.
This is Harbaugh’s first big test, and it will tell us all we need to know about his ability to evaluate a roster. It’s easy to talk yourself into the case that the Chargers are one or two moves away from contending in the AFC. After all, they have plenty of star-level players, including the three potential cap casualties I named above. But former general manager Tom Telesco left behind a top-heavy roster with aging vets serving as the upper crust. There’s no real depth. The promising young players on the team were all hurt last season. The two most significant weak points are the offensive and defensive lines, which is where Harbaugh’s teams typically win. The Chargers need a major overhaul, and that will require more than a single offseason.
Fortunately, it sounds like new GM Joe Hortiz is ready for a long-term rebuild. During his introductory press conference, he cited “patience” as the key thing he learned while working under legendary Ravens GM Ozzie Newsome. He also called himself “a big fan of comp picks,” which makes him sound like a gigantic nerd but is also a nice departure from Telesco’s approach, which can best be compared to that of a teenager building a team in Madden’s franchise mode.
“No. 1, let’s create that chain,” Hortiz said last month. “Let’s create that cycle of comp picks. How do you do that? You gain as many picks as you can early, and then you draft, develop, and then make smart decisions on who you re-sign. Obviously, you want to extend your core players, but there are some players that you’re not going to be able to because of the cap, but you want to create that cycle of comp picks.”
The Chargers haven’t had this kind of philosophy over the past decade. Instead, they’ve relied on big swings at the top of the draft and in free agency, trying to build a winner quickly rather than crafting a program that can sustain success over the long haul. Now, it appears Los Angeles’s new brain trust has the proper vision for building a winner—but we’ll have to see whether those sound bites translate into action.
4. What will the Bengals do with Tee Higgins?
Every NFL free agency class appears to be stacked in February, but this 2024 class really is. Chris Jones! Tee Higgins! Kirk Cousins! Brian Burns! Justin Madubuike! They’ll all be available when free agency kicks off on March 13. Of course, that’s not actually the case. Most of the top free agents—Christian Watkins! Jaylon Johnson!—will be signed to long-term deals or hit with the franchise tag long before free agency starts, and you’ll be talking yourself into being OK with your team paying $25 million a year for Michael Pittman Jr. But because of cap conundrums, some of these star free agents could make it to the open market. And Higgins is the most interesting question mark.
Higgins is in a precarious situation because his team just broke the bank to sign Joe Burrow to a long-term deal and will have to do it again this offseason to keep Ja’Marr Chase. Higgins, who would be a clear WR1 on any other team, will be asking for top-of-the-market money, which may be unaffordable for the typically thrifty Bengals.
There are a few ways this could all work out. First: Cincinnati has more than enough cap space to put the franchise tag on Higgins for 2024 without moving money around. The Bengals currently have the sixth-most space in the league at $61.4 million, and extending Chase should free up some money in the short term. The tag for a receiver is projected to be around $21 million. Cincinnati can afford that, make one last run at a title with this offensive core, and then look to move on from Higgins next offseason. That would be a bit of a waste, as Higgins would almost certainly get to free agency and Cincinnati would get only a compensatory pick in return for him, but it’s a route the team could take. The second option is slapping the tag on Higgins, shopping him around the league, and getting a deal similar to those that Kansas City got for Tyreek Hill and Tennessee got for A.J. Brown.
And then there’s the third option: The Bengals work out a long-term deal for Higgins and build the entire plane out of the Burrow-Chase-Higgins triumvirate. It doesn’t appear that defensive coordinator and game-planning wizard Lou Anarumo will be getting a head job anytime soon, so the Bengals should be able to keep this current setup—which was derailed only by injuries in 2023—going for the next few years. That might be the team’s best path to a Super Bowl, even if it will make this offseason much less exciting for the other 31 fan bases.
5. Which 2021 first-rounders will get their fifth-year options picked up?
Before the 2020 CBA, the fifth-year option decision used to be more straightforward: If a player wasn’t a complete bust (think Johnny Manziel) or a walking injury concern (think Robert Griffin III) their fifth-year option got exercised. But the new CBA changed the rules: Previously, those fifth-year salaries—which are decided on ahead of Year 4—were only guaranteed for injury. Now, they’re guaranteed as soon as a team picks up the option, so teams have to be more judicious in their choices.
In some ways, that has made things easier for teams to rip the Band-Aid off when it comes to disappointing draft picks. The Bears, for instance, would have to guarantee Fields an eight-figure salary for the 2025 season this offseason if they wanted to use the fifth-year option on him. That doesn’t seem like a great course of action for a team that will presumably draft its next starting quarterback in April.
For the 2021 class, there are a bunch of black-and-white decisions. Guys like Lawrence, Parsons, and Chase should have their options picked up as a precursor to a longer-term deal. Failed picks like Zach Wilson, Trey Lance, and Mac Jones will likely not have theirs picked up. But there are some players stuck in the murky gray area, and those could create awkward and potentially messy situations across the league.
Kyle Pitts might be the most fascinating fifth-year option decision to track. The 2021 fourth overall pick hasn’t lived up to his pre-draft billing, and Atlanta would have to lock itself into paying him over $10 million in 2025 if it decides to keep this partnership going for at least two more years. If Pitts breaks out this season—under new offensive coordinator Zac Robinson, who was formerly with the Rams—that will look like a steal. But if we see more of the same out of Pitts, that decision will look like a mistake.
The Steelers have a similar choice to make regarding Najee Harris, who has been more of a contributor than Pitts but who also plays a position of lesser importance. Harris has been one of the better players on Pittsburgh’s punchless offense, but (a) that isn’t saying much, and (b) his lack of top-line production behind a shaky offensive line just goes to show that a running back can’t do it all on his own. The Steelers would have to pay Harris just over $6 million in 2025 on the fifth-year option. The smaller price tag may justify the move, but those dollars could be spent elsewhere on a roster that’s full of holes.
And then there’s Panthers cornerback Jaycee Horn, who might be the most complicated case of all. Horn has been a good (and sometimes even great) player when healthy. He’s the prototypical man cover corner, an archetype that’s becoming rarer by the day, and he seems to fit the profile new general manager Dan Morgan is seeking. “We need guys that are hungry to go out there and inflict pain on their opponents. We need guys with toughness,” Morgan said of the team’s needs in his introductory press conference. “We need physicality. We need those types of things, just to put it plainly.”
Read any pre-draft scouting report on Horn—or just watch his tape with the Panthers—and you’d think Morgan was talking about him directly. But Carolina has made a habit of letting homegrown talent leave the building. Christian McCaffrey almost won a Super Bowl in San Francisco this season after his post-Panthers glow-up. D.J. Moore is thriving in Chicago. Brian Burns is headed for free agency and was the subject of trade rumors last year. Those are the three most successful first-round picks the team has made in the past decade. Horn could be the fourth. At some point, you have to give fans players they can cheer for.
