The Bears and Dolphins get it.
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What is “it,” exactly? Well, the power of that oft-discussed concept of the cheap, rookie-deal quarterback.
While outsiders keep suggesting their teams should consider dumping their young quarterbacks and either replacing them with veterans or “resetting the rookie clock,” Chicago and Miami have done the opposite: invest in their young quarterbacks, who each showed growth going into their third seasons, with better coaching, weapons and overall rosters.
Rather than trade Justin Fields and start anew with another rookie quarterback, the Bears traded the No. 1 overall pick to the Panthers for a draft haul that included the No. 9 and 61 picks this season, future first- and second-round picks and D.J. Moore, Carolina’s top pass-catcher.
In doing so, Chicago followed the trend of Miami and Philadelphia, giving their talented young signal-caller a bona fide No. 1 receiver to speed up his development in a crucial third season. Throw in the fact that the Bears also have the most cap space in the NFL heading into free agency this week, and they could be one of the league’s more improved teams in 2023. (It’s hard to go anywhere but up from the No. 1 overall pick.)
Meanwhile, the Dolphins just made their third blockbuster trade in less than a year, grabbing cornerback Jalen Ramsey from the Rams for nothing but a third-round pick (No. 77) and tight end Hunter Long, just days after picking up Tua Tagovailoa’s fifth-year option.
So much for Tom Brady or Lamar Jackson taking over for Tua. The Dolphins seem to be all-in on him after he put up a monster campaign with new-favorite toy Tyreek Hill (acquired last year via trade).
At least until the end of their rookie deals, anyway. Therein lies the interesting way these situations are being built.
Miami has crazy money invested in Hill, Ramsey, Bradley Chubb and Xavien Howard with future deals on the horizon for guys like Jaylen Waddle. At some point, the bill will come due.
But right now, almost all of that money is on the same timeline as Tagovailoa. All of those big contracts have outs after 2024, whether they come in the form of cuts or trades. If this experiment fails, the Dolphins can simply slash the big money or deal it to another team and start from scratch with a new quarterback while ostensibly not being in utter cap hell.
Similarly, Chicago has Moore on a wildly affordable deal for such a good player which, again, puts him on the same track as Fields’ final year of rookie contract control. Meanwhile, the Bears are about to use their metric ton of cap space to build up a roster that was intentionally bad in 2022 and give Fields more support as Miami did for Tagovailoa and the Eagles did for Jalen Hurts.
But if Ryan Poles plays it smart, he’ll make sure most of the guaranteed money on these deals is paid up front while Fields is set to count no more than $6 million against the salary cap.
That’s what it means to maximize a rookie deal.
The idea of ditching your young quarterback for another high draft pick early in his development is fine when you know the former guy just can’t play — e.g. Josh Rosen getting replaced by Kyler Murray or Zach Wilson being jettisoned for TBD.
But if you’ve seen enough to think beefing up the team around a young quarterback can get you to a Super Bowl on that rookie deal— take the Eagles example — why not shoot your shot? Young quarterback lottery tickets miss more often than they hit, every all.
That finally brings us to the New England Patriots and their depressing purgatory as they try to figure out if they’re in or out on winning with Mac Jones.
Getting Bill O’Brien is a necessary addition, but coaching isn’t going to be the reason they beat the Bills, Dolphins and Jets if New York can swing a trade for Aaron Rodgers. They need personnel upgrades that move the needle meaningfully, and they could use a big swing to help Jones — much bigger than trading a Day 3 pick for 30-year-old DeAndre Hopkins or signing 32-year-old Adam Thielen.
New England has already constructed a roster that has a floor of about eight wins. But can it push that total to 10 or 11 and compete to win the division?
That’s the way the Patriots should be thinking of this. They have about $27 million in free cap space to use on free agents and should add a free-agent tackle as well as some secondary pieces defensively with cornerback and safety become question marks. Use every dollar.
Then, if you’re not going to pull off a big trade of your own for a Tee Higgins, Brandon Aiyuk or Jerry Jeudy, get a young offensive weapon in the draft for your quarterback that can dominate in this system from Day 1 and be a guy defenses plan for. Because that’s what’s going to determine the ceiling for this team, not an offensive tackle.
If you’re the Patriots, being “good” shouldn’t be good enough. You should be aiming for great.
Even if all the other teams in your division are better than you on paper, you still have to play the games. If the Patriots upgrade their talent level enough to stay competitive within this division, which could shape up to be the toughest in football, why can’t they steal a game or two within the division they’re not supposed to?
Though the jury is out on whether New England has “the guy” at quarterback, the team can still wield the power of that cheap contract to explore the other avenue to win: load the team up as much as you can while you can.
If it doesn’t work, at least you gave it a shot. But punting on Jones after two years because he couldn't salvage last year's burning building would be poor resource management unless you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt the alternative was better, and you just don't at this point.
Jones has already proven he can play in the NFL. It's now up to the Patriots to put him in a position to see if he can go beyond that.