ESPN Reporter: NFL Owners Discussed a Separate QB Salary Cap

ESPN NFL reporter Jeremy Fowler gave us a very interesting tidbit of information on Thursday morning's edition of Get Up. While discussing if Patrick Mahomes should be thinking about giving the Chiefs a discount on his next contract to make it easier for Kansas City to put good players around him, Laura Rutledge brought up the idea of a salary cap for quarterbacks that's entirely separate from a franchise's standard salary cap.

Fowler said that very idea had not only been discussed by NFL owners, but had even been brought to the players in CBA discussions.

"It's been discussed," said Fowler. "The owners brought it to the players, and said, 'Look, the money's crazy, let's separate it.'"

"I was told there was not a lot of optimism that it would get passed, because it's very complicated, but it has been discussed for this very reason," Fowler finished.

Mahomes' new deal will be absolutely gigantic and will make it very difficult for the Chiefs to retain talent and recover from missed draft picks in free agency. This is a problem that every team with a good-to-great starter other than New England has encountered in recent years; QB salary is so inflated relative to other positions that even only above-average (at best) quarterbacks like Jared Goff receive record deals. But as quarterback salary has gone up, other positional salaries have remained the same, and so has the salary cap.

A QB-specific salary cap would reflect the monetary value of the position without obliterating a team's flexibility in the coming years. While it doesn't seem likely to come to fruition, it's an interesting idea, to say the least.

If money isn't an issue, teams with elite quarterbacks would be at a massive advantage in free agency. As it stands, teams with very good quarterbacks have to sell prospective free agents on the benefits of winning and playing with said quarterback, because the vast majority of the time, the salary cap numbers are too tight to outbid other suitors. But if these teams can offer the opportunity to play with an elite quarterback and present a competitive offer in terms of salary, how many players would say no?

An interesting thought exercise for your morning, even if we probably won't see it become reality.