Dak was overpaid when he signed this current contract, is still overpaid, and will continue to be overpaid if he is extended or resigned to 60 million/year.
The main problem isn’t Dak in and of itself. I think every QB in the league is overpaid. The spiraling QB market is a distorted bubble that keeps inflating to absurd levels with every crop of FA QBs signing second and third contracts. Some outside the box thinking could possibly fix this current footbal economics paradigm by say, excluding a QB’s salary, or maybe a portion of it, from cap calculations. Doubt that ever flies but holy crap, something needs to be done. Teams find themselves in a postion where signing their guy at QB plausibly will make their team worse because of the cap hit and the overall reduction in talent that occurs as a result. Something like the “rookie window” shouldn’t be a thing in the NFL, but it is and it’s currently a viable strategy for a championship. QB is the obviously the most important position in the sport, maybe the most important position of any sport, and it’s having a negative selection pressure on contract negotiations that is leading to average and above average QBs getting wildly overpaid and elite QBs getting mildly overpaid relative to their actual production on the field.
I think Dak can win a SB. He’s good enough to do that, but he needs to realize that his contract is going to be a huge factor in whether or not he sniffs a championship. It IS possible for a person to have a critical self reflective moment and understand in real terms what they do and don’t being to the table and in Dak’s case, sign a contract commensurate with his goal of winning a title and making decent money while doing so.
Or…
Dak could maximize every cent possible in an overinflated QB market and instead of hanging a 7th SB banner, we could instead hang a banner celebrating Dak making 60+ million/year and little to no success on the field.
