Three years ago, after Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes signed his second NFL contract, he became the highest-paid player in league history, by a wide margin. In an instant, the bar was pushed to $45 million per year.
Now, Mahomes is $7.5 million per year behind the top of the market, and falling.
The challenge for Mahomes is to strike the balance between insisting on full and fair compensation for his skills, abilities, and efforts and his desire to have enough money left behind for the Chiefs to sign enough other quality players, in the hopes of remaining a high-level contender.
In comments to Albert Breer of SI.com, Mahomes mentioned Tom Brady’s habit of not grabbing every last dollar. That attitude contributed to Brady winning seven career Super Bowls. It also grossly suppressed the quarterback market.
“I’ve looked at Tom’s model and how he did it,” Mahomes told Breer. “That’s it — you want to make money for yourself and for your family. You want to keep pushing the market forward for other quarterbacks. You don’t want to be someone that they [use against other players]. But at the same time, I want these other guys to get paid. I want Chris Jones to be in training camp. I want Travis Kelce to always be making money. I want everybody on the team here.”
Currently, the balance is out of whack. Mahomes is underpaid. And it’s only going to get worse, unless and until the Chiefs rip up his ultra-long-term deal and give him a much-deserved raise.
While he’s indeed making good money, how close is he coming to getting what he deserves for what he brings to the table for the Chiefs, and for the league? Brady’s willingness to take less stagnated the market at the position, and it definitely was used by the Patriots against other players.
As to Jones and Kelce, neither had profited from Mahomes’s largesse. Both are currently woefully underpaid — with Jones being doing something about it, by holding out.
“I have a great offensive line,” Mahomes added. “It’s everything around me. It’s all about having open conversation with [G.M.] Brett Veach, Coach [Andy] Reid, [owner] Clark Hunt, and just knowing where that happy medium is. That will be out there throughout my entire career. To me, it’s not always about being the highest paid. It’s about making enough money for me and my family, and keep moving the game forward for everybody.”
But he was the highest paid three years ago, so it’s obviously a factor for him. What can he do to ensure that he’s getting what he should for what he brings to the game?
The right answer continues to be tying a quarterback’s compensation to a percentage of the salary cap, or in the alternative to guarantee a player like Mahomes that he’ll make as much as the average of the five highest paid players at the position, year in and year out. Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow could end up with one or the other of those options. If/when Burrow does, Mahomes should raise a hand and say, “I’ll have what he’s having.”
The other reality is that the truly great players should transcend the salary cap. Mahomes, Burrow, Josh Allen, Justin Herbert, Jalen Hurts, Lamar Jackson, Aaron Rodgers. We tune in to watch them, whenever and wherever they play. The NFL specifically configures the prime-time schedule based on which team they’re playing for. In addition to whatever they get from their teams, they deserve more from the league.
The salary-cap system keeps that from happening. And it creates a very real temptation for the best to take less in order to have more around them, so that they can win.
That’s one of the most toxic aspects of the entire owner-player relationship. The league routinely uses the players’ love of the game and their desire to succeed against them, over and over again. That’s why there will likely never again be an in-season work stoppage, it’s why Rodgers took $33.7 million less from the Jets over the next two years, and it’s why Mahomes won’t insist on getting every penny he deserves.
When a player doesn’t take every penny he deserves, where do those pennies go? Sometimes, they go to other players. Sometimes, they get stuffed into the owner’s piggy bank.
Ideally, every player should be paid for what he brings to the game. For Mahomes, whenever any player is ever making a penny more than him, he’s not getting paid what he should.