The 50 NFL coaches and executives who voted in 2024 Quarterback Tiers did not for one second confuse the Miami Dolphins' Tua Tagovailoa or the Jacksonville Jaguars' Trevor Lawrence for the best QBs in the game. They ranked Tagovailoa 15th and Lawrence 16th among 30 veterans at the position, placing them atop Tier 3 as win-with, not win-because-of quarterbacks. Good players. Promising. Not proven difference makers. The balance sheet cannot distinguish them from future Hall of Famers.
Awarding top-tier contracts to mid-tier quarterbacks wasn't always as common. From 2014 through '22, Kirk Cousins was the only Tier 3 quarterback commanding contracts with average per year (APY) values worth at least 15 percent of the salary cap allotment for individual teams in the years the deals were signed. Times have changed.
The deals for Lawrence and Tagovailoa carried APYs exceeding 20 percent of the cap. The Giants, Jaguars and Dolphins all could have waited to see more from their QBs. Instead, they entered into expensive long-term relationships.
When people weren't willing to make Daniel Jones play it out, that is when the world exploded, a contract negotiator from an NFL team said. We are not even talking Tua, who had huge production.
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