As a quartet of teams in need of veteran quarterbacks consider options that include a couple of Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks who were once the highest-paid players in the NFL, a third one who checks the same two boxes could end up being a prime fallback option for one of them.
Aaron Rodgers and Russell Wilson are getting the headlines. Joe Flacco is waiting patiently to see how it plays out.
Flacco recently visited the Giants. He’s in play, we’re told, for jobs with the Steelers, Browns, and Vikings.
The Super Bowl XLVII MVP with the Ravens, Flacco secured the best quarterback contract in league history in 2013. (The deal was later renegotiated to give Flacco that title a second time.)
Since his time with the Ravens ended, following the arrival of Lamar Jackson in 2018, Flacco has taken whatever he can get. He played for the Broncos in 2019 (eight starts), the Jets from 2020 through 2022 (nine total starts), the Browns in late 2023 (he won Comeback Player of the Year and pushed the team to the playoffs), and the Colts in 2024 (six starts).
Flacco is now 40, but he can still throw it. And since he was never a mobile quarterback, the aging of the legs (which always go before the arm) has been a non-issue.
He has shown that he loves football. He fully intends to take a job this season, somewhere. And he likely won’t be expensive; he made $4.5 million last year.
So while Rodgers stares into the ocean to carefully contemplate his options (at a time when dozens of players are making snap decisions) and while Wilson tries to convince the likes of the Browns and Giants that his repertoire consists of more than moonball left and moonball right, Flacco is content to wait.
Eventually, he’ll get an offer. Maybe more than one. And if the Steelers are looking to go cheaper than Rodgers at the position, Flacco could be their best move.
It also would bring Flacco back to the place where his college career began. Yes, Flacco was at Pitt until Tyler Palko arrived. He then parlayed three years at Delaware into a first-round pedigree and had a very good run with the Ravens.
Now, the Ravens could be seeing him twice in 2025, as the quarterback of their most hated rival.
Executives across the NFL can’t always be right.
In December, the reported belief throughout the league was that the Falcons would release quarterback Kirk Cousins before a $10 million roster bonus due in 2026 shifted from guaranteed for injury to fully guaranteed.
ESPN, which reported nearly three months ago that Cousins was expected to be released before the fifth day of the 2025 league year, now reports that the Falcons will allow today’s 4:00 p.m. ET deadline for cutting Cousins to pass.
There had been a misconception in some circles that the Falcons would immediately owe Cousins $10 million. That’s not the case. They owe it next year. And, if they cut him before it comes due in March 2026, they’d be entitled to offsets. And there’s no reason to think he’d make less than $10 million as a free agent. Which meant the Falcons weren’t worried about it.
In other words, the supposedly very meaningful guarantee ultimately meant jack squat. They paid him $62.5 million last year. They owe him $27.5 million this year. They’re not sweating the final $10 million of his $100 million in guarantees.
They can still trade him, if he’ll waive his no-trade clause. And while it was smart for him to take the position that he wouldn’t waive it, if he prefers to make $27.5 million this year and play (as opposed to making $27.5 million this year and not playing), he’ll possibly if not probably waive it if/when an opportunity comes along to be traded to a team where he’ll be the starter.
At this point, Cousins should wait until after the draft. If he’s traded to a team with a hole at QB1 (Steelers, Browns, Giants) before the incoming quarterbacks are selected, he could have the same thing happen with his new team that happened to him in Atlanta last April.
This is one of those stories that roughly two percent of you will care about. That two percent will find it fascinating.
For years, we’ve pointed out the fiction that is the “new-money” analysis for contracts. (To the dismay of plenty of agents.) The approach, pushed by agents and accepted without scrutiny by the insiders to whom the agents spoon feed scoops and signings, transmogrifies new contracts into something they’re not — all in the name of making the new contract look better.
Here’s how it works. Whenever a player who has one or more years left on his contract gets a new deal that lasts longer than the current one, it’s called an extension. It’s not an extension. It’s a new contract.
There are no extensions, in the technical or literal sense, of NFL contracts. In every case, the old contract gets torn up and disregarded. A new contract takes its place.
I know this assertion will be met with aggressive disagreement from some (especially in the cesspool now known as X, as in “X marks the spot of the cesspool”). The truth, based on hundreds of contracts I’ve seen over the past 25 years, is that there are no extensions. All contracts are new contracts that wipe out the old contracts.
Calling a new contract an “extension” bolsters the phony-baloney view that the “new money” added to the prior deal has meaning. Here’s an example, in the simplest possible terms.
Player A has a contract with two years left, at $5 million per year. That’s $10 million in what eventually will be called “old money.” He gets a new contract that covers four years, at $10 million per year. It’s now a four-year, $40 million contract with a $10 million annual average, right?
Wrong. The “new money” is the $40 million he’s due to make now minus the $10 million he was supposed to earn. (That’s $30 million for the math-impaired, like me.) And since the deal is two years longer, there are two new years. So with an extra $30 million on a deal that has two new years, the “new-money” average is $15 million per year. Which looks a lot better, obviously, than $10 million per year.
The problem is that contracts are reported, and thus ranked, based on new money. Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott signed in September 2024 a new contract with four new years and $240 million in “new money.” So the “new-money” average is $60 million per year. But it was really a five-year, $269 million contract, since he was due to make $29 million in the final year of his existing contract. The average of the new deal is $53.8 million per year.
Enter Josh Allen. He has a new six-year contract, with a total value of $330 million. The average is $55 million from signing.
But Prescott’s deal is listed on the APY rankings as having a $60 million annual value, and Allen’s is listed as having a $55 million annual value. That’s not an apples-to-apples comparison. Allen’s deal is worth $55 million per year from signing; Prescotts is worth $53.8 million per year from signing.
The “new-money” fiction pushes Prescott to $60 million per year. As Charles Robinson of Yahoo Sports has noticed, the “new-money” average for Allen is higher. Much higher. Much, much higher. It’s more than $87 million per year.
Here’s our full breakdown of the Josh Allen deal. At $55 million per year over six year he’s getting a $65.445 million boost over what he was supposed to make over the next four years, and $110 million for the final two. That works out to “new money” of $175.446 million. So with two new years and $175.446 million, that’s a “new-money” average of $87.723 million.
It’s jaw-dropping. But it hardly means that Allen should now be listed as having an $87.723 million per year contract. However, if we’re going to say Prescott is making $60 million per year in “new money,” we also need to say Allen is making $87.723 million.
Here’s the far better approach: Kill the “new-money” bullshit. A new contract is worth whatever the new contract is worth. Old contract is gone, new contract takes its place.
That’s how the Bills will surely try to explain this one. They tore up the remaining four years of Allen’s deal, and they replaced it with a brand-new, six-year contract. And that would make sense, if that wasn’t the same thing that happens for EVERY new contract with a longer duration than the one it replaced.
The same thing happened with Deshaun Watson’s contract in 2022. He was due to make, as noted by Joel Corry of CBS Sports, $136 million over the four years left on his deal with the Texans. After the Browns traded for Watson, they replaced the existing contract with a five-year, $230 million deal. That’s $94 million in new money with one new year on the deal — which translates to a new-money average of $94 million.
For some reason, certain contracts get excluded from the “new-money” analysis. Why? Because they cause the “new-money” fiction to collapse upon itself.
As it should.
So if Dak Prescott is making $60 million per year, then Allen is making $87.723 million per year — and Watson is making $94 million. If that sounds wrong, it should. And it’s because the “new-money” average is bogus. Instead, when it leads to extreme and outrageous results, it conveniently gets ignored.
Please, NFL, NFLPA, agents, reporters, and fans, let’s ditch the “new-money” analysis. If not, let’s fully embrace it. Including those situations (like Allen’s and Watson’s) where the numbers prove how meaningless the entire exercise is.
Two days, two visits, zero contracts.
Veteran quarterback Russell Wilson, a free agent for the first time in his career, went to Cleveland on Thursday and New York on Friday. He signed with neither team.
The Giants are, by all appearances, waiting to see what Aaron Rodgers does. When he reached out to the Giants during the week of the Scouting Combine, he had nothing else going on. Now, he does; the Steelers have reportedly made an offer, and the Vikings are still lurking.
For Wilson, it looks to be (for now) the Browns, the Giants, the Steelers, or nothing. It’s possible the Steelers have already moved on. He has no other visits scheduled.
The other issue will be money. How much does Wilson want? How much will an interested team offer?
If Wilson ultimately has no clear starting job in 2025, the question becomes whether he’d accept a position as a backup, or whether he’d not play. He also could wait to see whether a starter suffers a season-ending injury.
Now that Myles Garrett is firmly in the fold moving forward with the Browns, the defensive end was on hand to do a little recruiting this week.
Garrett was in the building on Thursday during quarterback Russell Wilson’s visit. Garrett said in his Friday press conference that he felt like Wilson’s visit went well.
“I mean him and I had a little bit of conversation at the Pro Bowl as well as here and I definitely think he’d be a valuable asset as a leader, as a mentor to those young guys,” Garrett said. “Veteran leadership can’t be understated. And I think he has definitely has some juice left at the position. He’s got plenty of arm left. He’s very smart and he knows what he’s capable of. So he’d be a valuable asset.”
And what is his recruiting pitch for Wilson?
“I won’t take him to the ground three or four times a year,” Garrett said with a chuckle.
After completing his visit with the Browns, Wilson headed out of town to meet with the Giants on Friday.
The Browns spent a fortune to make defensive end Myles Garrett happy after Garrett requested a trade, but one report suggests that Garrett hasn’t been the kind of presence in the locker room that great teams are built around.
The report paints Garrett as someone who acts entitled and doesn’t take the kind of responsibility for leading the team that a great player should.
“It’s well known within the Browns that Garrett is frequently late to the facility. He has skipped mandatory team activities on multiple occasions,” writes Jason Lloyd at TheAthletic.com.
If that fact is well known within the Browns’ facility, it has been kept surprisingly quiet outside the Browns’ facility. It’s also worth wondering why this is coming out right now, after Garrett signed a record contract that guarantees him $123.5 million and makes him the highest-paid non-quarterback in NFL history.
Garrett got that contract just a month after requesting a trade and saying he wanted to win a Super Bowl and didn’t think he could do so in Cleveland. Now he’s tied to the Browns, who apparently think his dominant presence on the field can be part of their franchise turnaround — even if he leaves something to be desired off the field.
Myles Garrett went public with his trade request right at the start of Super Bowl week and made it seem like he didn’t want to play another down for the Browns.
But now he’ll be in Cleveland for the foreseeable future after agreeing to a contract that will reportedly pay him an average of $40 million per year.
Garrett had a press conference on Friday to discuss the extension, telling reporters that the constant communication with General Manager Andrew Berry led him to get back on board with the franchise.
And given the result of the discussions, Garrett doesn’t regret requesting out.
“I think I had some frustration and I feel like that helped us grow and have conversations that were difficult, but needed to be had,” Garrett said. “And that created a little bit more discourse, helped build some relationships, and reaffirm them. And now I feel like we’re in a better place and now we can move on and grow from there.”
He also doesn’t regret the media tour he went on at radio row during the run-up to Super Bowl LIX.
“That created conversation between myself and AB, Jimmy [Haslam] — up and down the chain,” Garrett said. “And that kind of stuff became a main variable for this deal getting done, these conversations down the road. I think the fans will see that my heart is in the right place.
“It’s never been about money — it’s always been about winning. That’s where my frustration lies.”
With an unsettled quarterback situation, it doesn’t seem particularly likely that Cleveland is set to contend in 2025. So what happens if and when the club doesn’t have success?
“If there’s struggles, we go through it,” Garrett said. “We’ve went through struggles in the past. As long as we’re set on that being the goal, everyone’s main force has shown that it is, I continue to try to find a way to get the most out of my teammates, this organization. I feel like this isn’t just for me to be a player on the field. It’s for me to be a main focal point, an elevator for everyone in this building.”
The No. 1 overall pick of the 2017 draft, Garrett is entering his ninth season at the age of 29. His contract extension means he’s likely to end his career with Cleveland and he’s just fine with that.
“That’s always been my plan from the very beginning,” Garrett said. “I’ve wanted to stay with the team I was drafted with. I’ve always, like I said before, wanted to bring a championship here. So, that’s something that has meant a lot to me — even when I was coming up from high school to college, being that one-team guy, and having a place that feels like him. You ingrain yourself in the community.
“And the Canton part sounds great — players want to be in the Hall of Fame. That’s a tremendous individual award. But communities and cities remember championships and that’s what I want to do.”
After bringing in quarterback Gardner Minshew, the Chiefs are also bringing back a familiar face to their QBs room.
Per Tom Pelissero of NFL Media, Kansas City has agreed to terms with Bailey Zappe on a one-year deal.
Zappe, 25, was on the Chiefs’ practice squad for the first several weeks of the regular season last year after he’d been cut by the Patriots. He was not active for any games.
Zappe then signed with Cleveland’s 53-man roster and spent the rest of the year with the club. He started the Week 18 finale against the Ravens for his only action of the season, completing 16-of-31 passes for 170 yards with a touchdown and two interceptions.
A Patriots fourth-round pick in 2022, Zappe has appeared in 15 games with nine starts. He was 2-0 in his two stars with New England as a rookie but 2-4 in 2023.
Zappe has completed 62.1 percent of his career passes for 2,223 yards with 12 touchdowns and 14 interceptions.
The Giants are set to meet with Russell Wilson on Friday, but he’s not the only quarterback they are considering for their 2025 roster.
Field Yates of ESPN reports that they had Joe Flacco in for a visit on Thursday. Flacco spent last season with the Colts and he spent the 2023 season with the Browns, who hosted Wilson on a visit Thursday.
Aaron Rodgers is also believed to be a target for the Giants and the general consensus is that either he or Wilson is their top option, but Tommy DeVito is currently the only quarterback under contract for the NFC East team so it makes sense that they would be exploring every available option.
Flacco helped the Browns to the playoffs in 2023, but failed to impress in six starts for the Colts last year. He would give the team an experienced signal caller to pair with a rookie should the Giants wind up going that route. They could also see him as a capable backup option for one of the other veterans if the current regime’s shaky job security makes building for the future less of a priority this spring.
Right tackle Jack Conklin has agreed to a revised contract that keeps him in Cleveland, Jeremy Fowler of ESPN reports.
Conklin had a year removed and now becomes a free agent in 2026 instead of 2027, and the new deal pays him $10 million with an opportunity to earn another $2 million in incentives. He was scheduled to make $14 million in 2025.
Conklin, 30, has spent the past five seasons in Cleveland after four in Tennessee.
He has played 49 games for the Browns, missing 10 games in 2021 with knee and elbow injuries and 16 games in 2023 with a torn ACL, MCL, PCL and meniscus. Conklin played 12 games in his return in 2024.
He is a two-time All-Pro.
