The Jacksonville Jaguars and starting quarterback Trevor Lawrence have agreed to a new contract extension that will tie him with Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow for the highest-paid player in the NFL.
The deal is a five-year extension worth $275 million — $55 million per season — and more than $140 million fully guaranteed.
It is an important deal for the Jaguars because it keeps their starting quarterback in place for the foreseeable future and takes care of a big question mark.
But that does not necessarily mean it is a good or productive deal for them. At least not right now, and it shows the biggest problem with the current quarterback market — there is no middle-ground salary-wise for the second-tier players.
There is nothing wrong with having Lawrence as your team’s starting quarterback. He is a fine player — probably a very good player — and has helped turn the Jaguars into a competitive football team. They certainly do not want to lose him because the chances of them finding an upgrade are not high based on what is typically available each offseason or in the draft.
The problem is that they are not paying him like he is that quarterback.
They are paying him like he is one of the elite players in the NFL.
He is not. He might not even crack the top 10 or 12 quarterbacks in the NFL at this moment.
Unless he dramatically improves throughout the duration of that contract, it is an overpay — perhaps a severe overpay. That can be extraordinarily damaging to teams in a hard salary-cap league and significantly limit their flexibility in building a full roster.
The Jaguars might soon be living that reality.
The lack of a middle-ground for quarterback salaries makes it so you either need an absolute stud quarterback (like a Patrick Mahomes) to justify the top-tier money, or get lucky and find a young franchise quarterback who is still on their rookie deal (C.J. Stroud, Brock Purdy) and still relatively cheap against the salary cap to win. If you have to start paying players like Lawrence (and in the coming months Jordan Love and Tua Tagovailoa) among the highest-paid players in football, it is going to make winning an even bigger challenge than it already is.
The Jaguars had no choice but to sign Lawrence. The market dictates this is the salary it had to be. That does not necessarily make it a win for the Jaguars.
