Buffalo Bills not weighed down by Josh Allen contract

The old axiom that “a quarterback on a rookie contract is a cheat code” in the NFL is dead.

I miss myself with that. I don’t want to hear it.

The goal of every NFL franchise is to win championships, plain and simple. All roster decisions, all drafting, all contracts and everything that goes into putting together a 53-man roster is aimed at this single goal. But maybe conventional thinking needs to go.

During the 2013-2014 season, the Seattle Seahawks headed to the Super Bowl with Russell Wilson as their quarterback, still on a rookie contract. He was brought up by the Legion of Boom, a defense founded after a few years of incredible drafting by John Schneider, still general manager, that included Richard Sherman, Earl Thomas, Kam Chancellor and Bobby Wagner. It was a seemingly fairytale run, culminating in an absolute run by the Peyton Manning-led Broncos, 43-8. They had the necessary foundations to build a dynasty. Unfortunately, we know what happened on the goal line the following year, but I digress.

READ MORE: Updated Offseason Schedule for Buffalo Bills

Since that season, only one other quarterback on a rookie contract has won a Super Bowl – Patrick Mahomes, in Super Bowl LIII against the San Francisco 49ers at the end of the 2019-20 season.

Here’s a list of Super Bowl-winning QBs since Wilson won it in 2014, compliments of a tweet from me.

So here is. I don’t care about the rookie contract. It’s a great theory: sign a great quarterback to a rookie contract so you have money to spend elsewhere. But for such a good theory, it doesn’t seem to work very often.

For Buffalo, they appear to be in a similar position to recent Super Bowl winners. They paid their star quarterback, who seems to be worth every penny. Josh Allen, who signed a huge contract extension in 2021 to keep him in Buffalo through 2028, is set to make $43 million in 2024, which is only the 10th highest-paid quarterback in the league in terms of annual average. value.

Jared Goff, who got a new four-year contract with the Detroit Lions, will make $53 million this year, which ranks him second in the league behind Joe Burrow.

Buffalo knew they had a star, locked him up to a long-term deal and now have an MVP-caliber signal-caller under contract for significantly less than what the highest-paid quarterbacks in the league make. The contract will only get better as other quarterbacks get paid and the salary cap continues to rise year over year.

It’s a good day in Buffalo.