How the Quarterback Contract Decision Either Defines or Sinks General Managers

The supply of NFL starting-caliber quarterbacks doesn’t come close to meeting the demand.

You hear that so often it can become white noise. It begins to sound like an excuse to the beleaguered Cleveland Browns fan who had to sit through Josh McCown starts, or the guy who meticulously painted his face in Houston Texans colors only to watch Brian Hoyer throw four interceptions during a playoff game.

Worse, it starts to sound like the “we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas!” school of quarterback thinking. What a team has isn’t working, but what it wants likely isn’t out there, or at least not in abundance.

So what’s next? In this era of rapidly rising quarterback salaries, what’s the best recourse for a general manager greeted with uncertainty at the position in 2016 and beyond?

Washington Redskins general manager Scot McCloughan has a radical idea: wait.

“The market’s the market, and some teams will do certain things that throw the market off,” McCloughan told SiriusXM Bleacher Report Radio’s Ty Schalter and Jason Cole. He was asked about the franchise tag, and why the Redskins stuck to it when dealing with quarterback Kirk Cousins ($19.95 million for 2016).

“So then you’ve got to step back and say, ‘OK, who do we have next year? [Are] there three to five to seven guys that we want to extend prior to the last year of their deal, or do we want to go after one and know we’re going to lose three or four next year?'”

That question and line of thinking isn’t a new or sudden shift for McCloughan. As Brian McNally from 106.7 The Fan recently noted, he’s been saying some variation of those salary-cap thoughts for a while:

“I’d love to do a long-term deal with Kirk. But I’m not going to ruin the organization financially to do it.” Scot McCloughan on Feb. 25

— Brian McNally (@bmcnally14) July 19, 2016

His thinking is different from the status quo, but it’s not extreme. We’re so accustomed to an NFL universe where dollars are heaped upon even marginally talented quarterbacks. Any other approach feels foreign at first.

Although eventually every GM has to find and pay a quarterback, the process should come with equal doses of restraint and creativity. Too often the exact opposite—urgency and fear—are the primary motivations, which results in poor, hastily made decisions.

The Texans, for example, grew weary of watching Hoyer waste defensive end J.J. Watt’s prime years. Their solution? Giving Brock Osweiler $72 million over four years, $37 million of which is guaranteed.

Osweiler has made all of seven career starts, and Peyton Manning replaced him during the Denver Broncos’ playoff run in 2015. At that point, Manning was a legendary quarterback in name only; he threw 17 interceptions over 10 regular-season games.

Then there’s Jay Cutler, who the Chicago Bears rewarded with $54 million in guaranteed cash in 2014. He then threw 18 interceptions the following …

continue reading in source www.bleacherreport.com