Super Bowl 2023: Where will Ja...

PHOENIX — Jalen Hurts has nothing left to prove when it comes to his contract extension viability. But something left to earn? That’s a whole different matter.

There’s zero doubt that Hurts’ performance in the Super Bowl and whether the Philadelphia Eagles win or lose against the Kansas City Chiefs could creep into the granular details of his forthcoming extension talks. Heading into the final season of his four-year rookie deal and with no fifth-year option to exercise, Hurts will come off the most important game of his life (to this point), only to be confronted with the most important financial negotiation of his life (to this point).

What that will look like remains to be seen, but the two sides will have plenty of options to choose from when it comes to Hurts’ peers. The top question is what the appetite will be for the Eagles and their starting quarterback, and how the two sides reach a financial bottom line and structure that allows both to feel satisfied in the coming years.

The Patrick Mahomes team friendly deal (least likely extension)

Many NFL team owners would love to see elite quarterbacks go the “max control” route of Mahomes, who signed a 10-year, $450 million extension with roughly $141 million practical guarantees in 2020. The max value of that Mahomes deal can land over $500 million and it includes rolling guarantees that backload significant salary cap hits late in the contract. It doesn’t render Mahomes uncuttable at the tail end of the contract, but it can’t be exited without incurring some significant dead cap pains for Kansas City. The deal effectively guaranteed Mahomes a massive sum of very achievable salary in exchange for 12 years of control for the Chiefs, who tacked the 10-year extension on to the final two years of his previous deal.

The Deshaun Watson player friendly deal (second least likely extension)

Have NFL club owners colluded to shadow ban another Watson deal? It’s doubtful there was any real coordination on this, but it’s striking that Kyler Murray’s deal with the Cardinals (we’ll get to that later) and the current negotiating impasse between the Ravens and Jackson have effectively set Watson’s massive guaranteed contract to the side as an outlier. For those who might have been living under a rock in the past year, Watson signed the most one-sided player deal in NFL history in 2022 with the Cleveland Browns, locking in for five years and a fully guaranteed sum of $230 million. Other team owners weren’t upset about it — they were pissed. It planted a grenade into the middle of every high-end quarterback negotiation moving forward, with other quarterbacks (like Jackson) looking to pursue their own titanic deal.

The Josh Allen tradeoff deal (50-50 shot in extension talks)

The Allen deal is where you start to see quarterbacks finding some real traction moving forward. Allen signed a six-year tack-on extension that ultimately gave the Buffalo Bills eight years of control. The tradeoff for Allen was a deal that got him over $100 million guaranteed at signing and practical guarantees that will put his five-year cash earnings at nearly $165 million from 2021 to the end of 2025. The deal becomes more team friendly after that point, with Allen’s dead cap hit falling to essentially nothing after 2025.

The 5-year Kyler Murray sweet spot deal (most likely extension)

Many of these elite quarterback negotiations appear destined for five-year deals if the guarantees and structure are where they need to be. Teams typically want at least six years of control and players usually want to surrender only four. The compromise becomes the five-year tack-on extensions of Murray and Wilson. Murray is probably the most applicable player in this instance because his age is comparable to Hurts and it’s a scenario where he’s being re-signed to his current team rather than forcing a trade (like Wilson did) and doing a contract in the wake of it.

It did for Mahomes back in 2020, but he chose a lefthand turn and did a deal that left many dumbfounded. That alone shrouds this negotiation in mystery because there is still one other unknown element to Hurts: The fact that we don’t know how much he’s willing to compete in negotiations. Some players, like Murray and Watson, were unmerciful and walked away with landscape-impacting deals. Mahomes and Brady chose different routes and gave up something at the table. A multitude of other QBs settled in between.

For the Eagles, this will be the Super Bowl that comes after the Super Bowl. Unlike what happens Sunday, this game will have ramifications that shape the franchise for years.