Are Peyton Manning and Michael Vick franchise QB material? (Part 1)
The Indianapolis Colts have placed a franchise tag on quarterback Peyton Manning and are ponying up $23 million for the 2011 season. Manning will be paid 120 percent of his 2010 salary because it’s greater than the average of the five highest paid quarterbacks
in the National Football League (NFL). Colts owner Jim Irsay said that Indy will continue to work on a long term deal with their best player.
Like the Colts, the Philadelphia Eagles also hit their quarterback, Michael Vick, with a franchise tag. Instead of being paid 120% of his 2010 salary of $3.75 million, Vick will be paid the average of the top five quarterbacks in the NFL. This comes out
to be just over $16 million for the 2011 season instead of $4.5 million. Eagles’ president, Joe Banner, said that they will also continue to work on a long term deal with their star quarterback. This is good news for Vick, who said on his Twitter account that
he is “proud to be an Eagle.”
So let’s back up to Manning for a second. Should the Colts be more concerned with making Manning the highest paid player in the NFL or spreading the money among the team? No matter what they do, they should prioritize bringing Manning back into the fold
next season because you play to win and Manning goes out and wins football games. In his 13 years with the Colts, they have made the playoffs in 11 of those 13 years. They also made the postseason in ten consecutive seasons.
Simply put, Manning delivers. He has the ability to fill up a stadium with cheering fans. He is the franchise quarterback for the Colts and he meets all of the requirements that let you rest easy knowing that you made a fine investment. Even though Manning
has a pretty inexperienced group of offensive lineman around him, he still goes out and wins games, which is a show of his determination.
Manning should be the highest paid player in the league. There is a slight problem with the $23 million being paid to him during the 2011 season but we’ll have to wait and see how the Collective Bargaining Agreement’s salary cap affects him. Just picture
this for a second, if the Colts do not make the playoffs next year, Manning will be paid $1.4 million per game if he plays in all 16 games of the regular season. That comes out to almost $24,000 per minute if there are no overtime games.
That’s pretty good seeing as the average minimum wage in the United States of America is around $7 an hour. So a normal person working on minimum wage would have to work almost 3.3 million hours to make $23 million.
To see the rest of the details about Peyton Manning’s franchise tag with the Colts and what they plan to do with him in the future, as well as the Eagles placing their franchise tag on Michael Vick and if he deserves a long-term contract or not, check out
the next article.
To be continued in Part 2…
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own and in no way represent Bettor.com's official editorial policy.
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