Newton’s pact? Cost of productive passer
Deal for $20 million a season in line with peers
Cam Newton was the NFL’s 26th-rated passer last season, ranking behind Mark Sanchez, Austin Davis and Shaun Hill. His record as the Carolina Panthers’ starter at quarterback is a game below .500, and he has one career playoff victory.
The Panthers nevertheless rewarded him Tuesday with a five-year, $103.8 million contract extension. Crazy? Not at all. That has become the cost of having a productive quarterback in the NFL.
Newton is not an elite NFL quarterback, not so far. Whether he ever will remains to be seen.
But he is a productive quarterback. He had a 4,000-yard passing season as a rookie in 2011. He topped 3,800 passing yards in his second season and 3,300 yards as a third-year pro, and he had more than 3,100 yards in 14 games last season. He has 82 career touchdown passes to go with 54 interceptions in his four seasons. He has been selected to two Pro Bowls, and he has gotten the Panthers to the playoffs twice.
If Carolina finds ways to put better players around him, particularly along his offensive line and in his receiver corps, Newton is a quarterback with whom the Panthers can win. Having such a quarterback is a necessity in today’s pass-first NFL. It has become exceedingly rare to be able to win big with a mere game-manager at quarterback.
A successful team’s quarterback generally must be highly productive at worst and a difference-maker at best, and the going rate to keep such a player around has become $20 million a year.
Look at other members of the $20 million-per-season quarterback club.
■ Aaron Rodgers, at $22 million a year, is a two-time league most valuable player, a Super Bowl winner and probably the league’s top player.
■ Ben Roethlisberger, with a deal worth as much as $21.6 million per season, has two Super Bowl triumphs.
■ Drew Brees, at $20 million a year, has crafted four of the eight 5,000-yard passing seasons in NFL history. Newton does not belong in their category, at least not at this point in his career.
But he’s much closer to one-time Super Bowl winner Joe Flacco, who cashed in for $20.1 million per season, and Matt Ryan, who has one career playoff win and a deal worth $20.75 million a year.
Newton’s contract is not a wait-andsee arrangement, as some analysts have labeled the deals signed by other quarterbacks such as Colin Kaepernick and Andy Dalton. The Panthers will pay him $67.7 million over the next three seasons. Newton receives $31 million in fully guaranteed money. The contract has another $29 million in money guaranteed against injury.
The Panthers struck the deal with Newton with one year left on his contract, the year that was added when the team exercised its fifth-year option in his rookie deal. Newton was to make about $14.7 million under that option year, meaning that he now is signed through the 2020 season to what amounts to a sixyear deal worth more than $118 million.
The terms of Newton’s contract extension undoubtedly will help to crystallize the market value for members of the NFL’s 2012 quarterback class.
One member of that class, Ryan Tannehill, has signed an extension with the Miami Dolphins that, combined with what was left on his rookie contract and his fifth-year option, gave him what amounts to a six-year, $96 million deal. The Indianapolis Colts’ Andrew Luck and the Washington Redskins’ Robert Griffin III are under contract through the 2016 season after their fifth-year options were exercised.
The Seattle Seahawks had no fifth-year option to exercise in Russell Wilson’s rookie deal because he entered the league as a third-round draft choice. So he is signed only through the 2015 season.
Wilson and Luck surely will push the bar higher for quarterback salaries when they strike new deals. At that point, $20 million per season might no longer be the market value for an ascending young quarterback.
But for now, it is.