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The San Francisco 49ers new contract with Colin Kaepernick has opened the door to an assortment of reasoned analysis and hot takes. I think most people recognize that the 49ers are coming away pretty well, while Colin Kaepernick does in fact have a chance to prove he's worth a ton of money. It's a slightly complicated deal, but upon closer examination, it's fairly easy to figure out what's going on.
Enter the Baltimore Ravens:
LFW: Think Flacco is overpaid? Pundits say Kaepernick takes over title of most overpaid QB. http://t.co/3PPQyNBkAf pic.twitter.com/cf0uvyuUyG
— Baltimore Ravens (@Ravens) June 5, 2014
There are so many things about this that are pretty funny. The first is acknowledging that some might think Joe Flacco was overpaid. The second is how poorly researched the accompanying article is. The article was posted earlier this morning. Mike Florio posted Kap contract details late last night. The article did add in a brief addendum linking to Florio's article, but it still has the table with Kap at the top for guaranteed cash. And then it tries to compare the deals based on best passing season, "wins", and postseason wins. And of course, there's the Super Bowl MVP line. Good stuff.
Kap has a chance to earn a ton of money, but the 49ers can get out of this deal every year without the worst salary cap implications. How about comparing the dead money and cap savings each year of the deal? Over The Cap provides those details on their Joe Flacco page and Colin Kaepernick page. Here's a quick look at dead money and cap savings each year moving forward for the two quarterbacks:
| Kap dead $$$ | Flacco dead $$$ | Kap cap savings | Flacco cap savings | ||
| 2014 | $13,529,691 | $38,200,000 | -$9,762,400 | -$23,400,000 | |
| 2015 | $9,862,400 | $36,400,000 | $7,403,200 | -$21,850,000 | |
| 2016 | $7,396,800 | $25,850,000 | $11,368,800 | $2,700,000 | |
| 2017 | $4,931,200 | $15,300,000 | $16,434,400 | $15,850,000 | |
| 2018 | $2,465,600 | $4,750,000 | $19,400,000 | $20,000,000 | |
| 2019 | $0 | N/A | $21,200,000 | N/A | |
| 2020 | $0 | N/A | $23,400,000 | N/A |
Of course, the Ravens social media folks are the same to drop this gem during Ray Rice's train wreck of a press conference:
