• We’ll start with Baker Mayfield—and where the Panthers are right now with their quarterback investments in general. And with the knowledge that they went into 2020, Matt Rhule’s first year, with the plan to have that be a bridge year at the position. We can start this in ’21, which is when the swings at getting a franchise guy started with offers made to try and pry Matthew Stafford from Detroit and Deshaun Watson from Houston.
Add together trades for Sam Darnold (2021 sixth-rounder and ’22 second- and fourth-rounders), Matt Corral (’22 fourth-rounder and third-rounder) and Mayfield (a conditional fifth-rounder in ’23), and using the draft value chart, you can actually put a number on all of these deals. If we’re putting the future picks in the middle of the rounds, and Mayfield plays 70% of the team’s offensive snaps (making that ’23 pick a fourth-rounder), the sum of the picks comes to 869 points. If Mayfield plays less than that, it’s 844 points.
The 19th pick on the chart is worth 875 points. The 20th pick is worth 850 points.
So the Panthers have spent about that on fixing their quarterback position, with financials taken out of the equation. The flip side of it? Not spending a first-rounder on a quarterback allowed Carolina to use top-10 picks on Derrick Brown, Jaycee Horn and Ikem Ekwonu.
There’s also what Carolina passed on. In ’20, they picked seventh, with the quarterbacks on the board being Jordan Love, Jalen Hurts and Jacob Eason, among others. This spring, they had all the quarterbacks on the board at No. 6, and really only passed on Kenny Pickett (they could’ve gotten the others by trading up like they did for Corral). Last year was the interesting one. My understanding is Justin Fields was very much a consideration (and they passed on Mac Jones, too).
All of that should illustrate how complicated this argument can get. Stafford and Watson more or less chose not to go to Carolina. Which really leaves us, realistically, with a number of questions we’ll need answers to. One is how good Fields will be. Another will be how good Brown, Horn and Ekwonu become. A third, and the most immediate one, is how much Carolina can get from the troika it’ll have fighting for playing time this summer.
Also, remember, the throwing-darts approach in Seattle a decade ago eventually landed Russell Wilson for the Seahawks. GM Scott Fitterer was there for that, and a whole lot of winning with the 2012 third-round pick under center.
• One more thing on Mayfield—for the right-now part of this—I think the Panthers’ logic was sound. At a baseline, he can give them average quarterback play. And if that sounds like a shot at Mayfield, it most certainly is not. The floor in Carolina was, clearly, much lower in 2022. If that floor is now at, say, having a quarterback who ranks in the top 20, and the roster has improved as much as the guys there think it has, the team can be pretty good.
For context, playing hurt last year and with all the injuries for the Browns at receiver, plus the Odell Beckam Jr. issues, Mayfield completed more than 60% of his throws for 3,010 yards, 17 touchdowns, 13 picks and an 83.1 quarterback rating. As a team last year, the Panthers completed 58.1% of their passes for 3,573 yards, 14 touchdowns and 21 picks.
Put that together with the fact that Mayfield does have, like Darnold and Corral, plenty of natural ability and untapped potential. Plus, they had to fork over only a Day 3 pick and a $5 million base salary. So the move, to me, was more common sense than most people realize.
• How much would you pay Jimmy Garoppolo? It’s an important question not just for teams that might be interested in the 49ers quarterback, but also for Garoppolo himself.
The 30-year-old, if you fold in $800,000 in per-game roster bonuses, is due $25 million this fall. But there’s a key difference in his situation from Mayfield’s—that number’s not guaranteed, so the Niners can cut him anytime between now and Week 1 without any financial penalty. That’s one reason why San Francisco’s has shown a willingness to allow Garoppolo’s camp to discuss financials with other teams to facilitate a trade.
The challenge for Garoppolo is not taking too little, but not pricing himself out of an opportunity to start this year, and setting up a long-term deal and starting opportunity after this year. The juncture of the offseason we’re at isn’t irrelevant, either. As of right now, the Browns are the only team that could absorb Garoppolo’s contract without any sort of adjustment. Fact is, most teams, from both a cap and cash, have burned through most of the 2022 budget at this point.
• While we’re on the Browns, Deshaun Watson’s situation obviously relates to all of this. One thing that could accelerate closure on it, maybe the only thing, would be a settlement. I just wouldn’t expect one. The most recent settlement talks, held before Watson’s late June hearing, broke down over the league’s insistence on a minimum of a full-season suspension.
The NFL, of course, is well aware that the public is going to judge the viability of Watson’s punishment by the number of games he misses. Because of that, I don’t see the league backing off its position on the quarterback missing all of the 2022 season. Likewise, based on precedent, and Watson’s own direction, I don’t see the NFLPA or Watson’s camp backing down, either. Which would mean Sue L. Robinson will have to rule, and then the league will have to make a decision on whether or not to change her penalty.
That decision, by the way, will be thornier for the NFL than most realize, if Robinson chooses not to suspend Watson for the whole season—mostly because it’d undermine a process the league negotiated with the players, and the owners wanted, during CBA talks in early 2020.
