Drew Sharp

Detroit Free Press Columnist

Looking for reasons behind the NFL’s shrinking television ratings?

Don’t dismiss the possibility that the audience has tired of the league spinning mediocrity as magnificence. Too many teams and players look alike.

But as NFL revenues keep skyrocketing, the financial reward for mediocrity increases. Look no further than quarterbacks.

Matthew Stafford and Kirk Cousins epitomize what’s wrong with today’s NFL. They're more acceptable than exceptional. Both offer encouraging moments that look even better when compared to the pedestrian play of others. Neither performs anywhere close to an elite level. Yet both are looking at massive new contracts in the next year because “good enough” qualifies as great in today’s NFL.

And that doesn’t exactly excite the masses.

Stafford is drawing plenty of national praise recently. In his 14 games under the tutelage of offensive coordinator Jim Bob Cooter, he has led the league in touchdown passes (33) and completion percentage. But he remains average when measured against the only metric that matters: winning big games. No playoff wins. Only one road victory against a team that eventually advanced to the playoffs.

He’s hailed for becoming the rare Detroit Lions quarterback who isn't blamed for the continued failings of the franchise. And that’ll guarantee Stafford the largest payday in NFL history. The Lions have no choice. He’ll get a contract extension soon that’ll eclipse the $140 million Indianapolis gave to Andrew Luck last summer.

Cousins was a fourth-round draft pick out of Michigan State. He led the Washington Redskins to the NFC East title last season, but they remained hesitant about signing him to a long-term deal. Instead, Cousins inked a one-year franchise tag for just under $20 million, giving him a one-year audition.

Cousins ranks in the bottom half of NFL quarterback ratings, at 89.7, with nine touchdown passes and six interceptions. But the Redskins come to Ford Field on Sunday (1 p.m., Fox) on a four-game winning streak. Cousins will cash in -- if not with the Redskins, there will be a half-dozen other teams happy to invest megadollars in “good enough.”

He acknowledged in a teleconference with Detroit reporters Wednesday that it has been quite an NFL journey for him.

“If someone had told me when I was 17 at Holland Christian High School,” Cousins said, “as a junior sitting out with a broken ankle on a team that went 3-6 that, in a few years, you would be in the NFL playing for the Washington Redskins, starting for the second year in a row and starting the season at 4-2, I’d take it.”

Cousins admitted his career has “been all over the map.”

“It hasn’t been on an ascending slope,” he said.

But NFL quarterbacks are benefiting from one ever-ascending slope: the salary cap. It has grown close to 30% in the last three years. The current ceiling is $155 million. By 2019, the salary cap is projected to jump to $190 million. That cash has to go somewhere. If starting quarterbacks generally eat up around 15% of the cap, that would be around $28 million in 2019.

That’s a high price tag for a “good enough” quarterback. But that’s the price of doing NFL business today.

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