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Joe Flacco’s Contract Impacting Other Baltimore Ravens Futures

By Joe Serpico

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The Baltimore Ravens players and coaches are prepping for next week’s upcoming organized team activists (OTAs) that will take place from May 26-28 at the Under Armour Performance Center in Owings Mills, Md. The front office, however, has part of its focus on how to keep the core of this team in tact for the next few seasons.

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Sarah Ellison of BaltimoreRavens.com wrote a piece yesterday in regards to the possibility of Ozzie Newsome losing patience in two possible contract extensions. The two players in question are guard Marshal Yanda and kicker Justin Tucker.

The Ravens also have Kelechi Osemele set to become a free agent. There have been a lot of questions on whether or not Ozzie will be able to afford to keep both guards at a premier price. Yanda is arguably one of the top-five guards in the NFL. Osemele isn’t too far behind. The front office has a lot of decisions to make in the upcoming months.

All three players have a significant impact on this team and are key cogs to the future of the Ravens. Each could have a career year in 2015, and it might not make a difference. Their fate could hang in the balance due to the main man on this team: Joe Flacco.

Flacco hit the financial jackpot by winning a Super Bowl in the final year of his rookie contract. Flacco threw 11 touchdown passes and no interceptions in the postseason and led Baltimore to a 34-31 Super Bowl win over the San Francisco 49ers.

Flacco signed his six-year contract worth $120.6 million in June of 2014. He received a $29 million signing bonus, $52 million in guaranteed money and $51 million over the first two years of the deal. At the time of the signing, we all knew that come the 2016 season that the contract would have to be restructured.

His 2015 cap number is within the league average of most quarterbacks at $14.55 million. Drew Brees is the only quarterback with a cap hit of over $20 million a year, and his number is a whopping $26.4 million for this season. The 2016 season gets interesting because there is a plethora of quarterbacks who hit the $20 million mark.

Flacco is set to count for almost double the money in 2016 with a $28.55 million cap value, the highest in the NFL. In fact, Flacco is one of seven quarterbacks who will have a cap charge of over $20 million. The other quarterbacks set to hit over $20 million are Brees, Ben Roethlisberger, Tony Romo, Matt Ryan, Matthew Stafford and Peyton Manning. 

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    • The numbers in 2017 are even more astronomical, with a scheduled cap value of $31.15 million, but there is no chance that number stays the same. The Ravens must get something done with Flacco, and the quicker they get that done, the quicker they can come up with the necessary funds to potentially resign Tucker, Yanda and Osemele.

    Say what you want about Tom Brady and his deflated balls. The weight of the balls have nothing to do with making the right throws and working defenses like he does. He still executes at a high level and is one of the best quarterbacks in the league. What he is not is one of the top paid quarterbacks in the NFL.

    Brady’s 2014 cap hit was 11th best in the league at $14.8 million. Most deals go up in value over the life of the contract, but Brady actually will count for just $14 million against the cap this season. There is a slight bump at $15 million next season, but his cap hit will rank in the bottom half of the starters in the league. Let me tell you some of the other signal callers who will have a higher value than Brady: Alex Smith, Jay Cutler, Robert Griffin, Colin Kaepernick and the recently extended Ryan Tannehill. It goes with out saying that Brady is better than almost every name listed. Personally, I feel there is only one field general in the NFL that is better than Brady and you find him slinging it most Sunday’s on the Frozen Tundra.

    What the Ravens can hope is that Flacco follows in Brady’s footsteps and sacrifices a few dollars for the sake of another championship. Flacco is still in the prime years of his career and you can’t expect him to take the same pay cut that the older Brady and Manning have taken over recent years. He still deserves a good chunk of change for his past accomplishments in Baltimore and to keep him happy in the future.

    What he cannot do is take too much for the sake of the team. Two of the players looking for new deals protect Flacco from getting steamrolled play after play. Tucker is the most accurate kicker in NFL history. Flacco taking a few million too many could change the future makeup of the Ravens.

    There is no denying that Flacco is one of the best at his position. He is everything and more that the Ravens wanted when they selected him in the first round out of Delaware. His record speaks for itself.

    What he is not is the top quarterback. Nor is he a top-five quarterback. His value is somewhere near the current contracts of Alex Smith and Matt Ryan at an average between $17 to $20 million over the next few years.

    That $8 to $11 million dollars could be the difference between keeping or losing one of the three potential free agents.

    All the financial information used is courtesy of OverTheCap.com

    Next: Five Free Agent Options Available for Ravens

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