Ben Roethlisberger's Contract Lays Groundwork for Eli Manning's Financial Future

Precedents make money move in the NFL. The machinery of contract negotiations will always spit out a comparison between similarly aged or skilled players, and that computing process could become quite profitable soon for New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning.

Manning is heading into the final year of his current contract. Few quarterbacks who have franchise arms attached to their bodies actual get to begin a season under that cloud, so an extension is expected sometime this offseason.

How soon?

“Nothing to report yet,” Giants co-owner John Mara said during a Thursday press conference (via Nick Powell of NJ Advance Media), needing four words to summarize the state of talks. Mara added that the Giants would like to give Manning a new contract at some point.

Often contract negotiations need a baseline. They need a starting point and model. They need a precedent set.

Or in Manning’s case, he needed Ben Roethlisberger to establish the current market for fellow mid-30s quarterbacks drafted in 2004.

Done. NFL Network's Ian Rapoport provided details regarding Roethlisberger's contract:

That’s from Saturday when the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback, who was also heading into the final season of his contract, agreed to a five-year deal. The base salary of $99 million leads to average annual pay that ranks sixth among quarterbacks at $19.8 million, and with escalators, it could climb to $21.85 million, behind only the Green Bay Packers’ Aaron Rodgers, per Spotrac.

But a clever element of the contract structure reflects the reality of Roethlisberger’s age (33). As NFL Network’s Albert Breer noted while passing along the finer details, only $31 million is fully guaranteed at signing:

Combine that with the front-end-loaded cash, and we’ve arrived at general framework that should appeal to both Manning and the Giants.

Or have we? The issue with paying Manning like Roethlisberger is simple, yet fundamental: trust.

The Good Manning is the McAdoo Version

Manning completed a career-high 63.1 percent of his passes in 2014, his first year in Ben McAdoo’s offense. There’s clearly promise ahead, especially with wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. doing otherworldly things while catching footballs with three fingers and slot receiver Victor Cruz set to return at something at least close to full health by training camp after tearing his patellar tendon in Week 6 of 2014.

McAdoo cut down on the option routes that were a staple of former coordinator Kevin Gilbride’s archaic thinking. There was especially a disconnect with wide receiver Rueben Randle in Gilbride’s system littered with routes requiring quarterback and receiver to see the same coverage and react the same way.

Randle was the target on seven of Manning’s league-leading 27 interceptions in 2013. That's why he came to this obvious conclusion (via NFL.com's Conor Orr):

McAdoo introduced an offense focused on short, quick-hitting passes within a system that stresses timing.

The difficulty, of course, was perfecting that timing, a painful process that came with plenty of turfed balls and face-palming throughout the 2014 preseason. But eventually both Manning and his offense clicked, which resulted in the Giants finishing with a respectable average of 23.8 points per game.

That number may not jump off this screen and smack you across the face at first. But consider it in the proper context: The Giants offense finished 13th in scoring, despite getting shut out once and posting 14 or fewer points in four games. More importantly, they averaged a mere 18.4 points per game in 2013 (28th).

The offensive reprogramming showed up significantly in every digit associated with Manning.

Year	Comp %	Yds/attempt	Yds/game	TDs	INTs	QB rating
2014	63.1	7.3	275.6	30	14	92.1
2013	57.5	6.9	238.6	18	27	69.4

That fills the mind with glorious images of Manning heaving footballs deep for several more successful years, while Beckham catches them with his feet or something.

But while it's indeed easy to get giddy about Manning and his new best buds, McAdoo and Beckham, we can’t embrace that excitement while completely shutting out the disastrous 2013 he needed to recover from.

The Giants' difficulty is looking past the Super Bowl rings and determining if the Manning we saw in 2014—the one who was paired with McAdoo for the first time and saw his interceptions decrease by 13 from the previous year—has longevity.

Answering that question will decide just how close Manning’s contract extension gets to the framework established by Roethlisberger’s shiny new money.

Put another way: Does one encouraging year entirely erase the far larger sample size of sputtering that came before it?

Forgetting about Manning Before 2014 Isn’t Easy

Championship banners hung from stadium rafters fly forever, and the twinkle from rings that are often the size of a human hand never really goes away either.

That’s why too often any criticism of Manning is pushed aside because of the Giants’ two championships in the relatively recent past. Both were secured with miraculous throws that required equally miraculous catches, one of which—though it’s blasphemous to say—was a borderline fluke.

A lot of wayward throws came with Manning's heroics and confetti dancing.

Quarterback	Interceptions
Eli Manning	127
Drew Brees	113
Carson Palmer	109
Jay Cutler	107
Philip Rivers	94

That’s a stretch of seven seasons in which Manning threw 14 more interceptions than any other NFL quarterback.

New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees sticks out at first as the one who doesn’t belong among that top five (bottom five?) until you consider his ridiculous volume of pass attempts. Brees threw 4,436 times during the period in question, meaning he chucked an interception once every 39.2 attempts.

Manning was second in attempts between 2007 and 2013 but still miles behind Brees with 3,732 throws. Compared to Brees the math on that doesn’t smell pleasant: Manning threw an interception once every 29.3 attempts.

Those seven seasons that include three 20-plus interception years from Manning weren't highlighted haphazardly. No, that period was the entire time Gilbride was Manning’s offensive coordinator. As dated as Gilbride’s approach seems now, it still takes some well-executed excuse-making to pin Manning’s mistakes entirely on his former coordinator.

Meanwhile, during those years Roethlisberger threw 79 interceptions or one every 41.9 attempts.

So when we give equal weight to the McAdoo Manning and the bad Manning, what should the structure be for his eventual contract extension?

It’ll Still Be Quite Roethlisberger-like, but with Fewer Dollars

At 34 years old Manning has been on this Earth one year longer than Roethlisberger, which matters as they both creep closer to the age of 35.

Both quarterbacks are clicking in their respective offenses. That’s especially true for Roethlisberger, who just had one of his best career seasons in 2014. His yards per attempt climbed from 7.3 in 2013 to 8.1, and he finished with career single-season highs in completion percentage (67.1) and passing yards (4,952).

He also had a particularly unfathomable two-game stretch in November with the kind of sizzle that made history, as noted by ESPN Stats & Info:

Like any contract extension, Roethlisberger’s is a statement on both what he is now and what he’ll become. Or more accurately in this case, what he won’t become.

By giving Roethlisberger a base salary that could make him the second-highest-paid quarterback if he meets certain incentives, at worst the Steelers are expecting his play to stay at its current level while he’s under contract until the age of 37. That’s an entirely reasonable approach with two young receivers (Antonio Brown and Martavis Bryant) along with an also youthful running back (Le’Veon Bell) as his supporting cast.

Another item that oozes with logic from the Roethlisberger contract structure: safeguards against aging and a sudden decline.

As Ed Bouchette of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported, Roethlisberger will earn over half of his contract’s total value (without incentives) over the first two years, pocketing $53 million. Only 31 percent of Roethlisberger’s money is fully guaranteed at signing. To compare, Brees signed his current contract when he was 33 years old, and it guaranteed 40 percent of his $100 million.

Following that framework for a similar incentive-based contract a rung or so below Roethlisberger’s annual pay still makes too much sense for Manning. An agreement with a base salary of around $18 million-$19 million feels right in the current market for a quarterback who’s made a promising career-course correction but still has uncertainty and inconsistency in his recent past.

Roethlisberger has charted the contract waters ahead for Manning and the Giants' ownership. Now negotiations become a matter of trust, how much longer the Giants want to stay in the same boat with their quarterback and exactly how much money is on board.