Paul Dehner Jr.

pdehnerjr@enquirer.com

The contract signed by Colin Kaepernick and the 49ers on Wednesday left teams all across the NFL talking about structure.

This era of football places the onus on teams to find and develop franchise quarterbacks. If a coach or general manager can’t, people will be fired. The rise of importance of the quarterback and skyrocketing salary cap numbers have created interesting conversations between agents and teams. The dynamic undeniably lands at the center of the negotiations between Andy Dalton’s camp and the Bengals.

Signing mega-deals becomes a balance between money and structure.

The team wants to figure out a way to make the most risk-averse contract possible. Basically, they want a great answer to the question, when can I get out of this contract?

The player wants money and needs it guaranteed. Finding the balance between dollar amount and flexibility of the team to walk away without paying for it three to five years down the road is what makes these contracts complicated.

“Here’s how I used to phrase it as an agent,” said Joel Corry, a former agent who helped found Premier Sports & Entertainment, a sports management firm that represents professional athletes and coaches. “If I’m going to take your structure, you got to give me my number. There’s got to be some sort of interplay. The better the structure, the more flexibility I had on dollars because you can’t have your cake and eat it, too, particularly when you are under contract for years.”

The contract signed by Kaepernick offers $61 million in “guarantees,” but essentially doesn’t guarantee that much at all by allowing the 49ers a series of outs every year on April 1. When analyzing how this affects Dalton, it filters down to a data point for a team-friendly structure.

Most agents would pass at such a setup. They desire contracts as close to fully guaranteed as possible. In Dalton’s case, it would be one thing to give him $18 million a year in the range of Jay Cutler, Tony Romo and Matt Stafford; it would be another to recklessly do so without a structure that allows the Bengals to walk away scot-free in two to three years if they don’t believe Dalton can pull them over the playoff hump.

The only way a deal structured in such a team-friendly fashion as Kaepernick’s gets done in Cincinnati is with Dalton making a personal push.

“It’s going to be hard for (his agent) to take less than $18 million unless Dalton is the engine driving the train and saying, ‘Hey, let’s not try to break the bank on this one. I don’t need every last dollar. I just need to be paid fairly or have a reasonable salary,’ ” Corry said. “When you get a guy like that it’s easier to get a deal done.”

FINDING BURFICT’S PRICE RANGE: The other long-term contract currently being negotiated at Paul Brown Stadium is for Vontaze Burfict, recently rated the 52nd best player in the NFL for 2014 by his peers for a show on NFL Network.

Burfict ranks among the top linebackers in football, which on the open market today would place him in the $9 million per year range, according to Corry.

The linebacker would have to discount that number, however, in exchange for receiving his money now. He could play this year for his current number of $570,000, then the Bengals could place a first-round tender on him as a restricted free agent in 2015. The tender would cost about $3.3 million.

Without as much leverage his price drops down, but any extension would be a deserved, exponential raise from his current pittance of a rookie contract.

WATCHING BRYANT: There’s no reason for the Bengals to strike an extension with wide receiver A.J. Green this offseason since they have him under contract for 2014 and 2015 thanks to the fifth-year option for rookies under the new collective bargaining agreement.

None of the 2011 first-round picks have reached long-term agreements, nor are any expected to. Jumping the gun so early makes little sense, especially when teams can slap a franchise tag on that player to lock in a sixth year in 2016.

However, a negotiation both the Bengals and Green’s side will watch is where Dallas and Dez Bryant end up.

Both Bryant and Jerry Jones expressed interest in signing a long-term extension this offseason. Bryant, a first-round pick before the new CBA took effect in 2010, would set a helpful data point for the Bengals and Green whenever they do discuss numbers. ■