Big contract for Bob. Let’s hope he’s healthy next year. We all knew the risk at the time. We all said it was a good deal. No point in whining about it now.
When the average person thinks of the Indianapolis Colts, the first thing that comes to mind is quarterback Peyton Manning. When a cap guy thinks of the Indianapolis Colts, many of them associate the club with overpaying core players and filling the rest of the roster out with draft picks and undrafted rookie free agents. Consider that Peyton Manning‘s 2004 contract paid him $34.5 million guaranteed, and five years later, in a more lucrative salary cap environment, his brother Eli Manning got $35 million guaranteed. This shows how astronomical Peyton’s contract was at the time. In 2004, wide receiver Marvin Harrison received a contract that guaranteed him $23 million, well above the guarantee market for wide receivers at that time.
When one looks at the contract signed by tight end Dallas Clark in 2008 for $20 million guaranteed and $27 million over the first three years, they’ll see that no other tight end in the game approached these numbers. As a matter of fact, over the first three years of their deals, Clark was going to make as much as New England’s Randy Moss. The collateral beneficiary of Clark’s contract was Tampa’s Kellen Winslow, who signed a contract in 2009 also worth $20 million guaranteed, but with a three-year total that is nowhere near Clark’s.
At defensive end, Minnesota’s Jared Allen can thank the Colts and Dwight Freeney for setting the market for elite pass rushers at $30 million guaranteed, when no other defensive ends were making this type of guaranteed money. Freeney signed his contract in the summer of 2007. The following offseason, Allen was traded to Minnesota and signed a contract for just shy of $32 million guaranteed.
This trend of overpaying core players also applies to safety Bob Sanders, whose inability to stay healthy really makes one question whether the Colts are getting their money’s worth. That aside, the Sanders contract, signed in late 2007, took the elite safety market to another level from both a guaranteed and three-year total perspective. Sanders’ contract guaranteed him $20 million and paid him $24 million over the first three years when, at the time, elite safeties were getting paid in the neighborhood of $10 to $15 million guaranteed, with roughly $15 million over three years. Three months after the Sanders contract was executed, we then saw the Jets’ Kerry Rhodes get a $20 million guarantee at safety.
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