Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports
How Broncos can Learn From Patriots' & Saints' Approach to Building Around a QB
It's no secret that quarterback salaries continue to rise in the NFL. And, so the argument goes, the Kansas City Chiefs are in trouble because they’ll have to pay $40 million per year to Patrick Mahomes and won’t be able to keep anyone else around.
Most people make this argument because they see other teams that are paying top dollar for quarterbacks and those teams haven't had the dynasty like, say, the New England Patriots, a team that got Tom Brady for multiple years on below-market deals.
However, just because the Chiefs will have to pay Mahomes a lot of money doesn't mean they have no shot at sustaining a dynasty. What one really needs to examine is how to build a team around a quarterback and maximize your situation.
Let's briefly look at what was really happening with the Patriots and Brady, then compare it to another team, the New Orleans Saints and their quarterback, Drew Brees.
Back in 2010, a few months before a new collective bargaining agreement took effect, Brady signed a four-year, $72M contract that made him the highest paid QB in the NFL at the time. It's true that he took a below-market extension in 2013 for $57M over five years, but that paid him $33M in guarantees, then was followed by a two-year deal in 2016 that paid him $41M. He then agreed to a renegotiated contract that paid him $23M, mostly in a signing bonus, and voided the one year remaining.
Now look at Brees. He signed a five-year deal in 2012, one year after Brady, for $100M. He played out that deal, then got a one-year extension in 2017 for $24.25M that included void years, then a two-year for $50M with more void years.
You can see the first difference right away — the Patriots didn't use void years while the Saints did. Void years aren't utilized because you are spending too much money. Void years are utilized when you are tight against the cap and need to spread out the hit beyond the end of the deal.
But there are other differences, too. The Saints were more aggressive than the Patriots in free agency, chasing after big names frequently. They continued to do this even when they didn't have much cap space, meaning they either restructured deals for players already on the roster or structured contracts for new free agents that kicked cap hits down the road.
Compare that to the Patriots, who were patient in free agency and looked for value. The Patriots didn't rule out big moves, as evidenced by the signing of Stephon Gilmore, who became one of the highest-paid cornerbacks in the NFL. Nor did they shy away from paying a player on their roster top money, because they made Rob Gronkowski the highest paid tight end in the NFL when they gave him a six-year deal in 2010.
But the difference was that the Patriots didn't push tight against the cap most years and, if they were, they sat out free agency rather than going 'all in' on that one player and thus having to manipulate cap numbers to fit that contract.
The Patriots' draft record in recent years hasn't been as good as it used to be, but they have hedged their bets when it comes to draft capital. They prefer to accumulate draft picks so they have more chances at players, or so they have capital available to make trades. They have moved up the board in the past, but don't do it often, and when they trade for other players, they prefer to buy low.
Compare that to the Saints, who have frequently traded up the board to get players they want, sometimes giving up more draft capital than they should. They also have been a bit more aggressive than the Patriots in trading for other players, though not as aggressive as other teams.
But when you look at the Saints' drafting record, it isn't particularly good, either, save for examples such as the 2017 draft class that put the Saints back into playoff contention. The point here is, if you go through years you aren't drafting well, you want to make sure you have plenty of draft capital in other years so you have the opportunity to make up for earlier misses. And the Patriots have had more of those opportunities than the Saints.
In other words, what really helped the Patriots was proper cap management, exercising patience in free agency (especially when cap space was tight) and accumulating as much draft capital as possible. The Saints have been overly aggressive at times and it's cost them, such as the brief period before the 2017 draft class in which they had multiple seasons hovering around .500 but didn't have a good team built around Brees, thanks to misses in the draft and free agency.
Perhaps the Patriots still would have made a Super Bowl if they got more aggressive in free agency, draft moves up the board or trades in which they gave up lots of draft capital. However, I suspect their dynasty might have ended earlier, because eventually it would catch up to them and they would have a hard time adding even low-cost free agents or drafting players who could help out sooner than later.
How it Pertains to Broncos
I bring this up as a word of caution to Broncos fans who are eager to go 'all in' for free agency in 2020 and/or making aggressive moves up the 2020 draft board to get players you want. It's true Denver has Drew Lock on a cheap contract for the next three seasons, but the team still needs to build with one eye toward the future.
Consider this; when it's time to extend Lock, the Broncos will also have extensions up for Bradley Chubb, Courtland Sutton, Noah Fant, Dalton Risner and Alexander Johnson. And that doesn't include veterans with expiring deals who you might want to keep a little longer, players such as Garett Bolles who aren't worth extensions right now but could change that if they show improvement, along with any young player who was quiet in 2019 but breaks out in 2020.
It doesn't sound like the Broncos can take advantage of the Chiefs having to pay Mahomes a lot of money, does it? Again, not necessarily. What's important for the Broncos, Chiefs or any other team, is to learn from what's really set back teams when they try to build around quarterbacks and how to do better.
When you look at GM John Elway, he's tended to follow the Patriots approach when it comes to draft capital. He likes to accumulate picks, buy low on trades for players and not move up the board too often. I know some will look at the trades up for Shane Ray and Paxton Lynch and say they didn't work out, but they are more about the player not working out than the trade itself.
With Ray, Elway traded two fifth-round picks when he had good depth and didn't need so many day-three picks, plus a player he wasn't planning to keep (OG Manuel Ramirez). With Lynch, Elway had 11 total picks, two in the third round, and could afford to give up one of them. In both cases, Elway still had plenty of capital left for other needs — and the point is that, like the Patriots, he had the capital, not that every pick worked out.
On the other hand, Elway has been more aggressive in free agency than the Patriots. That looks good when it works out (DeMarcus Ware, Emmanuel Sanders, Aqib Talib and T.J. Ward) but not when it fails (Case Keenum, Ja'Wuan James, Menelik Watson).
With that said, Elway has mostly been good at not kicking the cap can down the road like the Saints have. Von Miller was the only player he extended who he later restructured, but he stopped there.
He did restructure Joe Flacco's deal, but he knew he could always carry over the cap space gained if things didn't work out with Flacco, plus he had enough cap space in 2020 so that the dead money from releasing Flacco wouldn't cripple his ability to improve the team.
Now that the Broncos have a quarterback in Lock that looks like somebody the team can build around, Elway simply needs to learn not only from his mistakes, but also the mistakes that other teams have made when they found their quarterbacks and have tried building around them.
In the next installment, I will talk more about how the quarterback market really got out of hand and what teams really need to monitor closely when it comes to building a roster around the QB, whether it's the Broncos with Lock, the Chiefs with Mahomes or anybody else.
Follow Bob on Twitter @BobMorrisSports and @MileHighHuddle.
