49ers: Josh Allen extension with Bills justifies San Francisco’s QB plans
With Josh Allen receiving a six-year, $251 million extension, Niner Noise shows how this new contract justifies the 49ers offseason plan at quarterback.
In 2017, after trading for quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo and seeing him reel off five straight victories to end the year, the San Francisco 49ers decided to make him the highest-paid quarterback in the league with a five-year, $137.5 million contract extension.
The deal itself was team-friendly insofar as the number of outs and the absence of guaranteed money in the later years. But still, for a moment, Garoppolo had reset the quarterbacking market.
In spite of that, some people called it a bargain.
Niner Noise’s Peter Panacy explained the rationale back in the 2017-18 offseason, citing how quarterback contracts constantly reset themselves, driving the price upwards exponentially and making what was an expensive contract look like a relative bargain a few years later.
Now in 2021, Garoppolo’s average annual value means he’s the 11th-highest QB contract in the league, and that doesn’t take into account how currently, because the Niners front-loaded the deal, he’s much further down. Is Garoppolo the 11th best quarterback in the league? Most, if not all pundits, would say no.
But from first to 11th in just three years is a testament to that contract growth talked about.
This all matters when considering how Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen has come close to resetting the market again with a six-year, $251 million extension that places the contract’s AAV at $43 million.
That’s $2 million less than the Kansas City Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes, whose contract was to be considered an outlier, and $3 million more than the Dallas Cowboys’ Dak Prescott, the other big quarterback to recently sign an extension.
Let’s take a look at what the Allen contract extension means for quarterbacks overall, and how that might affect or even justify the 49ers’ current plan at the position with Trey Lance now in the fray.