In the NFL, a player’s value goes beyond what he brings to the field.
The looming specter of the league’s hard salary cap means teams have to balance frugal spending with superstar performances. Finding bargains, either in free agency or the draft, is generally paramount to building a contender. The New England Patriots’ dynasty supplemented Tom Brady with contributors on below-market rookie contracts and veterans who accepted inexpensive deals. The Kansas City Chiefs won a Super Bowl thanks in large part to Patrick Mahomes playing like a $35 million starter while on a contract that paid him $24 million … over four years.
There are two categories when it comes to players who provide excess value compared to what they cost against the salary cap. The first are the young players working through rookie contracts while emerging as the next generation of stars. The second are the faded veterans who weren’t priorities in free agency and signed to low-risk deals they quickly outperformed. There are considerably more of the former than the latter, since:
a) these rookies have a lot more potential to impress than someone who’s been in the league and hit free agency
b) the veterans who do exceed expectations are typically signed to one-year deals, positioning them for sizable raises the following offseason while a rookie contract lasts at least four years.
Trying to figure out exactly how much extra spending room those contributors created is tricky, but not impossible. We know how much every player in the NFL made last season. We can break those salaries into tiers, letting us know what a top five paycheck at a given position looks like — or a top 10, or a top 20, etc. We also know some positions are much more highly valued than others, creating a world where inexpensive quarterbacks, wide receivers, and pass rushers are much more useful to a scrambling general manager than a cheap running back or safety.
Who was the most valuable by virtue of exceeding the modest expectations of their contracts? We’ll compare the average annual value of their contracts — since cap manipulation can make a single-year snapshot misleading (Dak Prescott won’t be getting $75 million every season, for example) — to the annual average value of comparable players at the top of their position’s salary scale. And, since there are 32 teams in the league, that’s the arbitrary number we’ll use to determine who does and does not make the cut.