Questions of fair salaries have trickled into the NFL, which is a little odd because three of the top five paid players in the league are black.
Still, this is interesting. Let's actually talk about how complicated and subjective and impossibly complicated it is to determine what is considered fair pay for only 32 people in the world who are doing the same job on the same stage.
Now, this is already gonna be long; so, I'm not gonna cover all 32 presumed starting quarterbacks. Let's just deal with the top ten in terms of average annual salary. They are:
1: Aaron Rodgers
2: Kyler Murray
3: Deshaun Watson
4: Patrick Mahomes
5: Josh Allen
6: Derek Carr
7: Dak Prescott
8: Matthew Stafford
9: Kirk Cousins
10: Russell Wilson
So, why are these players ranked where they are in terms of salary?
The four quarterbacks who have won Super Bowls are ranked one, four, eight, and ten. The quarterback who has gone to a conference championship game without a Super Bowl is fifth. The GOAT isn't even on the list. The only active player other than the GOAT with a unanimous MVP isn't even in the stratosphere of the list yet. The second player on the list has had one playoff appearance that was an absolute disaster. The third player on the list hasn't played in a year and he's suspended for more than half of this season due to sexual misconduct allegations and he got the contract while all twenty-five lawsuits were still active.
So, how do we make sense of any of this?
Well, I don't know that we can.
If salaries were absolutely merit-based Mahomes and Allen would clearly be higher on the list right now. One can make an argument that Rodgers still deserves to be number one given the two consecutive MVP seasons; but, he's fallen apart in the post season for the last how many? years. Why is Kyler Murray linked to more money per year than Allen and Mahomes if this is based on merit? Well, it's because it's not entirely based on merit.
Why is it that Josh Allen is the only quarterback from the 2018 draft class with a new contract? Well, in comparison to Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold, and Josh Rosen, it makes perfect sense. How about Lamar Jackson? Jackson has an MVP and Allen doesn't. Allen has a conference championship appearance which Jackson lacks. Well, this is a funny thing because Jackson is serving as his own agent and he's been waiting to negotiate. Now that Watson's contract is on the books, I'm willing to bet that Jackson will jump to the number two spot in terms of salary soon.
Speaking of that, the Watson deal reset the market. Mahomes signed his ten-year deal two years before Watson signed his five-year deal and Allen signed his deal a year before Watson reset the market. If Mahomes and Allen have buyers remorse, they're not showing it; but, it's clear that they could have gotten a lot more money if they had pushed things along (although, given rookie pay scales, Mahomes wouldn't have had that option).
Kyler Murray is probably the biggest beneficiary of recent events aside from Watson. He's a good quarterback; but, his upside is highly questionable. He hasn't accomplished much. Still, he's the second highest paid player in the league because the timing was right.
Why wasn't Matthew Stafford elevated to at least the top five in the league after winning the Super Bowl? One can only speculate. I suppose it's mostly supply and demand with a component of Stafford just wanting to stay with an organization that isn't a dumpster fire. Stafford would be a huge upgrade for most teams in the league; but, he's not a Mahomes or an Allen that teams would trade the bank for given that he's older. Stafford also doesn't want to join a rebuilding team given that he spent the first thirteen years of his career with a team that was constantly rebuilding. He took a pay cut to have a chance at a legacy.
I mean...yeesh...I haven't even gotten into Derek Carr, Dak Prescott, Kirk Cousins, or Russell Wilson.
We're only dealing with 32 people doing the same job in the same league and the questions still abound as to why each player is getting a certain number of dollars as opposed to another.
Imagine trying to make proper judgements of fairness across a nation of 360 million people working in different locations and in different economies and making a judgement that in iniquity has happened in terms of wages. Imagine giving that power to a government bureau.
How about this? Anyone on any government bureau devoted to enforcing wage fairness, equality, or equity has to form and argument that he or she could reasonably take to court that one quarterback is getting too much by comparison to another quarterback and why it's unjustly happening. Otherwise, you don't get to make that judgement for millions of individuals.