The cheat code to unlock a Super Bowl-caliber team in the modern NFL is to find a useful quarterback on a rookie deal. It has been clear going back to the early days of this collective bargaining agreement, when the Seahawks surrounded Russell Wilson with stars and nearly claimed consecutive championships. Last year, the Eagles built a team around Carson Wentz talented enough to win even after Wentz went down because of a torn ACL. Tom Brady is obviously not on a rookie deal, but the Patriots have made it to the Super Bowl four times under the current CBA with Brady on a below-market contract.

Teams have realized this, of course, which is why we've seen them go on a spending spree to surround their young quarterbacks with stars while they remain cheap:

The 4-0 Rams are a model to teams like the Bears and Browns, who are building around quarterbacks taken at or near the top of the draft. The Rams are structuring their extension schedule around Goff, who has two years and $16.5 million in cap charges remaining on his rookie deal. Los Angeles will have one more year of cost control in 2020 with Goff's unguaranteed fifth-year option, which comes to more than $25 million, though teams traditionally use that year to sign their star quarterback to a long-term contract extension.

Time is of the essence with these moves. Wilson eventually got a market-value deal, and while he has continued to play well, the Seahawks' roster has gotten worse around him. Joe Flacco signed a massive contract after playing out the fifth year of his rookie deal with the Ravens, who have been pinching pennies ever since. Cam Newton signed an extension with the Panthers before his 2015 MVP season and subsequent Super Bowl appearance, but his cap hit during that 2015 campaign was a relatively modest $13 million before jumping to $19.5 million and higher. He hasn't been back to the Super Bowl. Even Brady's cap hit -- which hadn't topped $15 million since 2010 -- jumped to $22 million this year, leaving the Patriots with what looks like a thin roster in spots during their indifferent start to the season.

Jared Goff has 34 touchdown passes and only nine interceptions in his past 18 starts, dating to the beginning of the 2017 season. Gary A. Vasquez/USA TODAY Sports

Unless your quarterback is married to a supermodel with a net worth stretching into nine figures, though, the bargain doesn't last forever. The best-case scenario is that you get four seasons of excellent play at a below-market rate before locking up your franchise passer and hoping to find arbitrage opportunities elsewhere.

Well, that's the current best-case scenario. As @DamonGilmour posed on Twitter a couple of weeks ago, what if you could have a cheap quarterback ... forever?

Some team's going to try it. If you're the Rams, do you trade Jared Goff after year 3/4 and use the picks you get to grab another cheap QB to work with Sean McVay? https://t.co/t1AnJCGnSw — Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) September 14, 2018

There's a fascinating idea here, and I think it deserves some thought. Is a talented quarterback on a rookie deal such a valuable proposition that an organization should get on a cycle of finding a quarterback in the draft before trading him once he gets expensive? Is that even a feasible plan? And if it is, which organizations could even realistically consider it? Let's run through a few reasonable questions about this theory and see what we find.

What if the new guy isn't any good?

This is the obvious question, and it's going to stop the most risk-averse teams from even exploring the possibilities. A general manager who trades away a useful quarterback entering his prime to draft a new passer who fails to win fans over is going to get fired. General managers do not want to get fired.

Of course, it's also fair to note that some executives are willing to be more aggressive. It's not an identical scenario, but the Chiefs were willing to trade up to grab Patrick Mahomes in the first round of the 2017 draft despite the presence of Alex Smith. Smith is older than the quarterbacks we're laying out in this scenario, but then-GM John Dorsey clearly felt as if the team had peaked with Smith under center and made the move to go after Mahomes. We're only four games into Mahomes' career, but the Chiefs look to have the scariest offense in football.

There's also the possibility that sticking on the current path with an expensive quarterback won't lead to further success. There was arguably no way the Ravens could have moved on from Flacco after he produced one of the best postseasons in league history during the 2012 playoffs, but the move has kneecapped Baltimore ever since. Flacco signed a six-year, $120.6 million deal that was structured to force an extension after three years. If the Ravens cut Flacco after the 2018 season as expected, they'll end up having paid him $124 million over six years for below-average play.

Baltimore also has been forced to restructure several deals to free up cap space and add talent as an aftereffect of the Flacco extension, so even after its longtime quarterback leaves, his impact will still be felt. The Ravens kept Flacco while moving on from Tyrod Taylor, who was a competent starter during his time in Buffalo, though he struggled in Cleveland this season.

The Ravens have won only one playoff game since Joe Flacco, Ray Lewis & Co. won Super Bowl XLVII in the 2012 season. AP Photo/Patrick Semansky

Flacco is an example of a quarterback who entered the league before the current CBA was signed, but among the current-CBA passers, seven have signed meaningful extensions with the team that drafted them: Andy Dalton, Colin Kaepernick, Andrew Luck, Russell Wilson, Ryan Tannehill, Derek Carr and Blake Bortles. Of those seven, only Bortles' team made the playoffs last season, and that was while he was still on his rookie deal before signing an extension this offseason.

In some cases, it's not even about the quarterback playing poorly. Wilson has continued to play at a high level in Seattle, but the infrastructure around him has fallen apart. The Seahawks took away the money they spent on Wilson from the offensive line, hoping that offensive line coach Tom Cable could develop athletes and draft picks into useful players. He couldn't, and when that plan failed, the next step was to spend on the likes of Luke Joeckel, Duane Brown and Justin Britt while saving money on defense, which led to Richard Sherman and Sheldon Richardson leaving town.

If you're thinking about this as if it's a question of quarterback vs. quarterback, you're doing it wrong. It's not, to pick a quarterback, four years of Derek Carr versus four years with a random rookie. It's four years of Carr versus four years with a rookie and whatever else you can get with the money you save by not spending a premium for a quarterback.

Imagine a scenario in which the Raiders didn't re-sign Carr and then traded him to the Jets before the 2017 draft for the sixth overall pick, which they then used on Deshaun Watson. Carr's contract is roughly $25 million per year. The sixth overall pick in the 2017 draft makes right around $5.5 million, leaving a difference of $19.5 million per year with which to work. Instead of Carr vs. Watson, it's a question of whether the Raiders would rather have Carr or, say, a trio of Watson, Calais Campbell and Dion Lewis, which adds up to $25.5 million in annual salaries. Alternately, an extra $19.5 million would have gone a long way toward paying Khalil Mack, whose new deal averages $23.5 million per season. Carr and Johnathan Hankins ($27 million), or Watson and Mack ($28 million)? The Raiders got back two draft picks for Mack, but they also would have picked up a haul for Carr last offseason, too.