Battle Red Blog
The Houston Texans face two of the biggest decisions in the history of their franchise this offseason. C.J. Stroud and Will Anderson will be eligible for extensions. Essentially, they can go down three different roads on both players. With a player like Anderson they will likely go through door number one and give him his extension. That would mean a contract with an AAV likely north of 40 million dollars a season. That would make him the highest paid Texan in history until Stroud gets his deal.
The second road is what I would lovingly call the “kick the can down the road” method. You would simply wait to extend Stroud until after year four knowing that you had the fifth year option as a buffer. If one were to label this one, it would be the Dak Prescott plan. The advantage of that plan is that you get another year of data to use to help you make a decision. The disadvantage is that the cost keeps going up each and every season.
The final option is obviously to move on. You would essentially be saying that we like Stroud just fine, but we don’t like him enough to give him top of the market quarterback money. What is interesting is that a number of clubs probably should have gone down this path, but did not because it is not a particularly popular one. Being without a quarterback is scary in the NFL. The line of demarcation between the have and have nots is pretty stark. Most teams would rather overpay a guy than take their chances.
With the Cardinals coming to town it would seem like the perfect opportunity to look at one of those quarterbacks. Kyler Murray signed a 5 year, 230 million dollar deal in 2022 that could run possibly through the 2028 season. For the math impaired, that amounts to a 46.2 million dollar average annual value. While he was one of the richest quarterbacks at the time, he has slipped to the middle of the pack in pay, but the Cardinals appear ready to move on from the former first overall pick. Let’s compare some numbers.
It would seem like Murray would be close to an elite quarterback based on the numbers. After all, if you combine the passing yards and rushing yards per game you would get 271.9 total yards per game. That would easily put him in the top ten among quarterbacks over that six year span. There are two ways to look at Murray. We can look at him on a per season basis. Let’s assume he played 17 games.
Passing Yards: 3998
TD: 24
INT: 12
PCT: 67.1
Rushing Yards: 624
Rushing TD: 6
So, if you had a quarterback combine...
