MIAMI -- A franchise quarterback in the NFL might be the biggest Catch-22 in all of sports.
Teams would give whatever they need to acquire one. And they'll do whatever it takes to keep them.
But, the question that must be asked is if it is worth it?
History shows you need a franchise quarterback to win the Super Bowl -- or at least it makes it easier to do so. But the cost of having a franchise quarterback has skyrocketed in recent years.
For the Steelers, that means Ben Roethlisberger's $33.5-million salary cap hit could be the thing that keeps them from winning a seventh Super Bowl in 2020. But he also might be the player who best gives them the chance to get there, as we saw in 2019 when the team went 8-8 without him.
This season's Super Bowl combatants are a perfect example of two teams doing whatever it takes to acquire what they believe to be the perfect component to win a Super Bowl. And Sunday, one of them is going to be right. Either the Chiefs will have made the right move to trade up in the 2017 draft to get Patrick Mahomes, or the 49ers will have been correct in acquiring Jimmy Garoppolo from the Patriots.
The prices were much different. The Chiefs took the more risky road, sending their 2017 first and third-round picks, along with a 2018 first-round pick, to the Bills to move up to the 10th pick in the draft and acquire Mahomes as a rookie. The 49ers, meanwhile, had at least seen Garoppolo throw 94 career passes in three seasons with the Patriots before shipping off a second-round pick to acquire him in 2017.
But that also meant the clock had already started to run out on his rookie deal. That meant the 49ers had to sign Garoppolo to a new contract, which they did in 2018, giving him a five-year, $137.5-million deal based on the six games he had played for them in 2017.
The 49ers would now say that deal was worth it after reaching the Super Bowl. But getting to the Super Bowl and winning it are two entirely different things.
Garoppolo's salary cap hit is $19.85 million for this season, just under 11 percent of the team's cap. If he wins the Super Bowl, his cap hit would be the second-highest to win a Super Bowl behind Tom Brady's $22-million cap hit last season.
The only rub there is that Brady's $22-million cap hit in 2018 was 11th in the NFL among quarterbacks, with Garoppolo's $37-million hit leading the position. And Brady had already won five Super Bowls before that, famously taking hometown discounts to stay with the Patriots because his wife, supermodel Gisele Bündchen, was one of the highest-compensated people in her business.
Brady is a free agent this year and seems unlikely to be willing to take another discount deal with the Patriots.
Garoppolo also played a very minimal role -- at least in the playoffs -- for the 49ers reaching this point. Garoppolo has attempted just 27 total passes in San Francisco's two playoff wins, including just eight in the NFC Championship against the Packers.
"They have a top quarterback. They're paying him all this money," Chiefs defensive end Frank Clark said Tuesday of the 49ers. "They haven't had him throw the ball a lot, but I'm sure they want to."
Which brings us to Mahomes. Sunday will wrap up his third season in the NFL. He's already won a league MVP award, that coming last season when he led the Chiefs to the AFC Championship. Now, after leading the Chiefs to the Super Bowl for the first time in 50 seasons, he’s one year closer to a big payday.
And Mahomes has been the main reason why the Chiefs have been winning, leading them back from double digit deficits in each of Kansas City's two playoff wins.
"If I was in charge, he could have it all," Chiefs running back Damien Williams joked when I asked him Tuesday what he thinks Mahomes will get when he gets his second deal. "He deserves it."
Williams was referring to the Chiefs' entire salary cap. And he might not be that far off in what he's suggesting.
Some have suggested Mahomes, who has a 24-7 record as a starter, throwing 76 touchdown passes, will be the NFL's first $40-million-per-year quarterback. And given that the Rams' Jared Goff currently has the highest salary cap hit in 2020 at the position at $36.042 million -- Roethlisberger is second -- that seems likely.
But the league's highest-paid quarterback hasn't won the Super Bowl since Steve Young did so with the 49ers in 1994. And Young was making just $4.525 million on a salary cap that was $38 million for each team.
That means Young counted for just 12 percent of the 49ers salary cap that season. It's a big number for one position, but far different than the nearly 20 percent Goff will count against the Rams' cap in 2020 -- or the estimated 16.8 percent Roethlisberger figures to count against that of the Steelers.
But the Chiefs also won't balk at giving Mahomes a big deal because they know how important the position happens to be.
Still, there's a reason that of the past 10 Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks, just two have been among the league's top-10 highest-paid quarterbacks for that season. Eli Manning was fourth in 2011 with a cap hit of $14.1 million and Peyton Manning was sixth in 2015 at $17.5 million in his final season in the league.
The Super Bowl scene, Miami. - APBut those are the outliers. In the past decade, the average salary rank for the quarterback whose team wins the Super Bowl is 20th. That was affected greatly by Russell Wilson in 2013 (52nd) and Nick Foles in 2017 (47th), but recent history shows that teams who tie up too much cap space at the quarterback position make it difficult to win the Super Bowl.
Can the Steelers buck that trend in 2020? Perhaps.
While Roethlisberger will make a big chunk of the cap as he returns from an elbow injury, the Steelers have a number of young stars who are still working on their first contracts. Outside linebacker T.J. Watt will count just $2.9 million against the team's 2020 cap. Safety Minkah Fitzpatrick is at $1.975 million.
Both made the Pro Bowl this season and should be among the top 10 vote getters for NFL Defensive Player of the Year, which will be announced here Saturday.
If you're going to have a quarterback eating up a large chunk of the salary cap, you'd better have some bargains who are great players, as well. But, eventually, those players will need to be paid, as well.
That's what happened in Seattle, which broke up its Legion of Boom defense when it came time to compensate Wilson.
"I don't know what the answer is," Chiefs offensive tackle Eric Fisher told me. "It's all above my pay grade. That's for people above me to figure out."