Getty Images

Here’s a word of buyer beware to teams planning to spend a fortune on a quarterback this offseason.

Over the last 10 years, the team whose quarterback had the NFL’s highest salary cap hit has missed the playoffs eight times, according to NFL Research. That includes Matthew Stafford, who had the NFL’s highest cap hit in 2019 as the Lions missed the playoffs, as well as Jimmy Garoppolo in 2018, Joe Flacco in 2017, Drew Brees in 2015, Eli Manning in both 2014 and 2013, Mark Sanchez in 2011 and Donovan McNabb in 2010.

The only two times in the last 10 years when the quarterback with the highest cap hit made the playoffs were in 2016, when Eli Manning had the highest cap hit, and 2012, when Peyton Manning had the highest cap hit. In both cases, they lost their first playoff game.

Why does the team with the highest-paid quarterback fare so poorly? Sometimes it’s injuries or bad luck, but it’s also part of the harsh reality of the NFL salary cap: The NFL’s hard cap means that every dollar spent on one player is a dollar that can’t be spent on other players. And teams that spend a lot of money on their starting quarterbacks therefore don’t have as much money to spend on the other 52 players on the roster.

If the quarterback is great, he’s worth every penny. In fact, great quarterbacks are actually underpaid, relative to their value to a team, because the rookie wage scale and franchise tag drive their salaries down. But some teams end up giving great contracts to quarterbacks who are merely good, or sometimes downright bad: That list of the quarterbacks with the highest cap hits is certainly not also the list of the best quarterbacks.

So this offseason, when several high-priced quarterbacks are set to hit free agency, it is worth remembering that no matter how happy fans are when their teams land those big-name quarterbacks, there is no guarantee that those free agent signings will be anything other than expensive mistakes.