Now that the full details of the Cutler deal have been unearthed, it’s time to make sense of it.
The easy, and thus likely the accurate, explanation is that the deal was driven by the franchise tag for quarterbacks, and not by the other contracts at the top of the quarterback market, which currently exceed $20 million per year.
With the franchise-tag number expected to by $16 million in 2014, the Bears and Cutler’s agent likely calculated what Cutler would receive over three years of the franchise tag (roughly $62 million) and applied a discount to account for the risk of injury and ineffectiveness that Cutler would be assuming if he opted to play year-by-year under the franchise tag.
In the end, they agreed that Cutler should get $54 million over three years, an $8 million reduction in his likely three-year franchise-tag take.
This development comes only weeks after G.M. Phil Emery publicly balked at the notion of devoting $16 million in cap dollars to Cutler under the franchise tag. Instead, Cutler will account for a whopping $22.5 million under the cap in 2014.
So why did the Bears essentially cry uncle on this one? If they hadn’t done a deal that reflected a fair discount to the $62 million Cutler would have earned over the next three years under the franchise tag, they would have had to use the tag — setting the stage for paying Cutler $35 million over the next two years and then walking away unless they wanted to give him $27 million in 2016.
And if they hadn’t used the tag, allowing Cutler to test the market, there’s a chance someone else would have offered more than $54 million over three years. There’s also a chance Cutler would have taken less with another team, just to prove to the Bears and every other team that the bird in the hand should not be given a chance to use its wings.