Is there any chance of a Patriots QB competition?
They say a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, but when it comes to putting pen to paper, the Patriots continue to build player contracts that lean heavily on the “what-could-be” of incentives.
Cap space analyst Miguel Benzan shared a jarring statistic at the end of July: the Patriots account for more than 20 percent of Likely To Be Earned (LTBE) incentives worked into contracts in the entire NFL. Not only that, but at $8.18 million in incentives (calculated by Benzan July 30), they more than double the money offered in incentives by the runner-up club. The Jaguars have $4.05 million of their spending contracted through incentives.
Performance-based incentives are no new trick in Foxborough: Tom Brady famously had a meager $5 million in dangling carrots tacked onto his $15 million salary in 2018. Rob Gronkowski’s contract in his final season with the Patriots included some $3.3 million in incentives, added to his $8 million salary.
But the landscape of high-profile player contracts has changed dramatically in the last five years, and it’s worth wondering whether the Patriots are traversing that terrain in the best way.
Any bean counter worth their salt knows what player empowerment looks like in today’s NFL: guaranteed cash. Twitter (or X, or whatever it’s called today) may catch fire over Justin Herbert’s new contract, but the game flipped with Deshaun Watson’s $230 million in guaranteed money. That contract cemented the “real money” trend that had already started among football’s elite.
When we say “elite,” it’s not just quarterbacks: the Jets just made Quinnen Williams the highest-paid defensive tackle in the league in real money, guaranteeing him $66 million through 2027. In the same month the Giants made offensive tackle Andrew Thomas real in every sense, making him the highest paid player at the position per-year and in guaranteed cash, ($23.5 million yearly average, $67 million guaranteed through 2029).
According to reporting from ESPN, at the time of writing this article, the Patriots only have one player who qualifies as a top-three earner in real cash at their position: long-snapper Joe Cardona. He’s the highest-paid long snapper in the league, earning $2.6 million in guaranteed money through 2026.
Notably, when wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins recently chose the Tennessee Titans over the Patriots after free agency visits with both teams, Sports Illustrated NFL insider Albert Breer reported the deal from Foxborough was similar in total money but included a "far higher percentage of that total tied to incentives."
Did the Patriots really want Hopkins and misread the market, or did they only want him here on a prove-it deal, ensuring his production? On a larger scale, are the Patriots out of step with how the rest of the league spends now, or do they remain singularly shrewd in how, when, and where to spend their real cash?
One more note: those LTBE incentives first crunched by our friend Benzan? If a player doesn’t reach those incentives, the money doesn’t just disappear into thin air. It rolls back into cap value for the following season.
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