For as much as they’ve come to mean to their respective franchises in recent times, it seems as if neither Baker Mayfield nor Sam Darnold is getting the cash amount that they likely believe they deserve.
For one reason or another, two of the NFC’s more productive quarterbacks have found themselves on the wrong side of an $80-million pay gap, one that they will hopefully bridge at some point this offseason.
As far as the reigning Super Bowl champion is concerned, his $100.5-million contract makes sense when you remember the state in which the Seattle Seahawks found him.
After years of ups and downs, Darnold was able to resurrect his starting career by leading the Minnesota Vikings to 1a 4-3 regular season record, only for that momentum to be wiped away by an embarrassing performance against the Los Angeles Rams in the Wild Card round of the playoffs.
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The Seattle Seahawks essentially saw him as a buy-low opportunity, and while it certainly paid off in terms of Darnold delivering them a championship, the situation with Mayfield, however, is a bit harder to comprehend.
The 30-year-old has managed to rattle off three consecutive winning seasons since he first arrived in Tampa Bay, and if it weren’t for a late-season surge from the Carolina Panthers, the same would be true for divisional titles.
Throw in the fact that his first two seasons with the franchise saw him throw for 4,044 and 4,500 passing yards, respectively, and it’s definitely worth wondering why the Buccaneers have yet to elevate his pay.
Nevertheless, both of them are arguably due for a raise, as their current contracts rank 16th and 17th in terms of total value.
As mentioned, there’s an $80-million gap between them and the 15th highest-paid QB, Kirk Cousins, who has yet to justify the value of said contract.
Given the fact that Darnold is two years younger than Mayfield, his potential contract extension will likely be for a slightly longer period of time, but in the end, fans can expect both signal callers to at least nudge closer to Cousins, if not outright pass him, with a pair of deals that are sitting around the $200 million mark.
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Factor in just how much both of them mean to their respective franchises in terms of winning, and it seems relatively safe to suggest that they’ll both find a deal that nestles them closer to the $212 million that both Jared Goff and Tua Tagovailoa received not too long ago.
That may sound like a lot, but when you look at the overly-inflated state of the quarterback market, it’s hard to argue against it, as neither of these two teams, especially the Buccaneers, can afford to lose their QB1 right now.
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