Danielle Hunter and Trey Flowers are somewhat similar as players. Both have played three strong seasons for their teams, the Minnesota Vikings and the New England Patriots, respectively. Both have racked up solid sack numbers, with Hunter posting 19.5 over the past two years while Flowers finished with 13.5. Both are core defensive pieces for their team's future, and will naturally be expensive to keep around. Hunter agreed to a new contract on Wednesday worth $72 million over five years, with $40 million guaranteed according to Ian Rapoport of NFL Network. That might be able to serve as a nice template for the contract Flowers eventually signs.

Statistically speaking, Flowers holds an edge over Flowers, but that can be explained to a certain extent. Hunter broke out earlier, whereas Flowers had to fight his way into the lineup in his second season. He missed two games last year, and he does not share the field with another star pass-rusher as Hunter does with Everson Griffen. Teams are able to key in on him more than they do Hunter, which limits his sack numbers to a certain extent. Figuring out how valuable Flowers is compared to Hunter is therefore an inexact science, but we can at least estimate.

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If we just use the raw numbers and assume that they are relatively equal as run-defenders, Flowers has 69.2 percent as many sacks over the past two seasons as Hunter. Apply those numbers to Hunter's contract, and you get a five-year deal worth $49.8 million with $27.7 million guaranteed. Those numbers are slightly lower than what the market produced this offseason. If Flowers took this deal, he would be making $3.7 million per sack over the past two years. The biggest deal a defensive end earned this offseason came when Vinny Curry signed for $23 million. He had 5.5 sacks over the past two seasons, putting him at around $4.2 million per sack in that span. DaQuan Jones had five sacks in that span and made $21 million, which is $4.2 million per sack during that two-year period as well. That would suggest that Flowers and Hunter would be slightly underpaid here, but mid-market players tend to get overpaid. Besides, there is another element of the contract that would hold Flowers back even if he insisted upon money closer to what those players got.

That would be the Patriots discount. New England almost never pays market price for free agents or even their own players. At Flowers' own position, Adrian Clayborn just signed a two-year, $10 million contract. He has 14 sacks over the past two years, paying him under $1 million per sack in that span. Granted, six of those sacks came in one game against overwhelmed backup Chaz Green and the Dallas Cowboys, but even with eight sacks in two years he's earning only $1.25 million per sack.

Balancing those two competing factors would be difficult, so negating both of them and just giving Flowers the reduced version of Hunter's deal is probably the compromise that ends up occurring. A good pass-rusher who isn't quite elite should make somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 million per year, and now, Flowers has the math to prove that is where he belongs.