I agree with all this. I think TH is also very appreciative and thankful that Rivera and the WFT gave him his big break. It’s all going to boil down to whether the team thinks they can ride with him for the foreseeable future and is willing to commit. Now if they don’t do a deal and draft a youngster, I think anything could happen.
As far as money goes, none of these QBs are ‘worth’ the money they are being paid. But you can’t expect Heinicke (if the team pursues him as a starter for the next contract period) to sign for some kind of ‘I’m not a legit starter’ compensation package. He is literally making chump change right now. That’s fine in a ‘prove it’ season. But if he continues to prove he’s starter material we will have to pay him the appropriate starting QB salary. Note I didn’t say crazy money, but average starter money would be expected.
Agreed with all of this. The thing is, just like any investment on two sides--
1) When the player takes all of the risk, they will expect more compensation. That's fair. The team makes the player take more risk, at the end, they want more compensation. Also, the market will determine the pricing in this case (usually), because the team waited for the investment to become more of a sure thing (proven commodity). This is approximately how the Cousins situation played out. He was overpaid by Minny, I agree personally, but he had better numbers than people tend to give him credit for, and he is a better QB than many people here think (understandably, with the history here). That said, I totally agree that he was overpaid, but I think the market generally overpays QBs and sets a lot of teams up to be perennial losers or perhaps short-term winners and mid to long-term losers.
2) When the team takes more risk, the team should be able to get a deal. Period.
That number 2 is nice and short. It just makes sense. The longer WFT waits, the more "proof" they get, the more Taylor's stock rises. All bad if they want to get a better value for him, I think. It's very true, there is still some element of risk and he is still unproven in some aspects, but at this point (and even one or two games ago), I would have really started to think about a longer-term deal. To be honest, I would have been looking for signs from the start of the season and probably would have wanted to be deep in negotiation. I don't want to overpay. This is a rare situation where you may get a long-term QB who can be a franchise QB. Top-tier? Maybe not, in pure talent terms. Winner? A guy who can lead your team to wins? I mean, at the end of the day, that is what's needed, right?
Man, I would love to lock him up for anything south of 15m / year. 10-12m would sound great. I haven't looked at the average salary for starters and backups, and seen the way the salaries play out though.
My current max would probably be in the 15-18m range, but that is still a bit naive about the current market. I mean, like in any business and job situation, the organization wants to pay as little as possible, and this is a commodity who came in without a pedigree. That implies more risk on the part of the employer as long as he remains relatively unproven in the industry.