Salary caps will keep going up.

There's been enough talk about quarterback salaries that there's even been news of a separate salary cap for quarterbacks.

I have even expressed disbelief in how the market is going. Still, my views have changed.

I think that there a lot of blind spots that people are displaying when it comes to talking about the market. Yeah, there are plenty of teams who have buyers remorse. I'm sure the Browns are going to regret everything regarding DeShaun Watson for a while now. Of course the Broncos got fleece by the Russell Wilson deal. But, almost all of these contracts that seemed shocking at the time have come to look like bargains pretty dang fast. The Chiefs and the Bills certainly aren't regretting what they paid their quarterbacks.

The reality is that the salary cap keeps going up. It's expected to keep going up. Every position group except for running backs are projected to make more money. A large component in the explosion of players salaries is legalized gambling which has made the NFL even more profitable.

But, I think its even simpler than that. Quarterback has always been an important position; but, it wasn't until 2006/2007 that offense became so focused on the passing game. It wasn't until after the new century that teams started running more than half of their snaps out of the shotgun. Rules changed to try to increase the amount of points scored. If the NFL is a passing league, as I think we all agree that it is, it shouldn't surprise us that the person throwing the ball is immensely important.

It's a supply and demand problem. There are fewer franchise quarterbacks than their are franchises. It's a lot easier to get a lot worse at the quarterback position than it is to get marginally better.

I think that a lot of people are only looking at the dollar amounts and missing other market elements. Yeah, the Browns paid DeShaun Watson a lot of money; but, look at what they paid for him in terms of other resources. Of course you can say that it's illadvised to give up three first round draft picks for a guy with more than two dozen sexual misconduct lawsuits; but the Browns weren't the only team bidding.

If there were breaking news tomorrow that the Bills traded Josh Allen, there would be no haul that I could imagine that would make it a good trade. It's pretty well known that there's no amount of draft capital that a team could offer to pry Mahomes away from the Chiefs. If a player is so valuable that you know that you'd hang up the phone on any trade offers, it stands to reason that the player is financially valuable.

Now, all that said, I can see some teams tapping the breaks in the near future. There are some players like Josh Allen who you know that, if he team he's on won't pay him, someone else will. But, there are lower tier guys. I wouldn't be surprised if the Dolphins let Tua test the market after this season, and he'll find that he's not gonna get a better deal from another team.