Bill Barnwell
It’s time to bestow a new honor on a handful of NFL legends. While many of these players do great work on the field, I’m happy to finally give them the credit they deserve for what they’ve done in fighting some of the most penurious people on the planet: NFL team owners. It’s time to induct the inaugural class of players into the Bag Hall of Fame (BHOF).
Now, I need to be very clear here. This isn’t an attempt to honor players who were overpaid or didn’t deserve the money they made during their time in the NFL. I’d reject that concept in principle: Just about every player, past or present, was or is underpaid relative to the risks they take by playing professional football. There’s no fun in poking at backup quarterbacks who were able to collect checks while rarely stepping on the field.
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Instead, I want to reward the players who did the best job of maximizing their leverage and getting paid for their ability. Players who pushed holdouts to the next level. Players who bet on themselves and were handsomely rewarded for doing so. Players who even managed to represent themselves in negotiations and pocket millions of dollars that would have otherwise gone to an agent.
For this first class, the selection committee (me) is inducting eight players into what will surely one day be a physical Hall of Fame. Most of the players are still active, but they’ve already done enough to earn their way into the BHOF without a five-year waiting period. Many of them have won Super Bowls, and a handful are either in the Pro Football Hall of Fame or should end up in Canton someday. That Hall of Fame, though, won’t be the only institution honoring them for their work. Here’s our first class of players:
Jump to a Bag Hall of Famer:
Kirk Cousins | Joe Flacco
Dak Prescott | Jalen Ramsey
Darrelle Revis | Deion Sanders
Matthew Stafford | Laremy Tunsil
Calling card: Making the front office so mad it refused to call him “Kirk”
If you explained this concept to an NFL fan and asked them who they thought was worthy of induction, they would probably name Cousins first. About to become the most expensive backup quarterback in NFL history, Cousins has earned more than $294 million in his career and has another $37.5 million in guaranteed money coming from the Falcons before the 2026 season begins. He has been underrated as a reliable passer for most of his career, but it’s also fair to say he has never been the best quarterback in football, either.
From 2016 to 2024, nobody took home more cash from NFL teams than Cousins, whose $291.3 million earned was $21 million ahead of the second-place passer (more on that player later). In part, that’s because Cousins didn’t emerge as early as most quarterbacks. Taken 100 picks after fellow Washington quarterback Robert Griffin III in the 2012 draft, he wasn’t much more than an injury fill-in early in his career. He threw 10 picks on 203 pass attempts over his first two seasons. While he was better over an extended stretch starting early in 2016, he finished his third season with a below league-average 50.4 Total QBR.
With the Commanders benching Griffin in 2015 to avoid triggering his $16.2 million fifth-year option (when those options were only guaranteed for injury), Cousins’ path to the starting job was cleared. In the final year of his rookie deal, he posted a league-best 69.8 completion percentage, cut his interception rate from 4.7% to 2% and led the Commanders to an unexpected division title. The run ended with a home loss in the playoffs to the Packers, but he had suddenly proven he was an NFL-caliber quarterback.
Team owner Daniel Snyder & Co. weren’t as convinced. After briefly negotiating with Cousins before the 2016 season, Washington broke off talks when their offer of a multiyear deal worth $16 million per season was rebuffed. Instead, it used the franchise tag, paying Cousins just under $20 million. It was a reasonable decision given that he had been a solid quarterback for only one year, but it couldn’t have helped the relationship between the team and their signal-caller.
Cousins responded with a Pro Bowl campaign, throwing for 4,917 yards with 25 touchdowns while finishing sixth in QBR. Now, one year away from what would have been unrestricted free agency given the outlandish cost of a potential third franchise tag, the two sides seemed to entrench themselves even further. Washington tried to negotiate in public, suggesting that its best offer guaranteed Cousins $53 million. In sharing that information, executive Bruce Allen repeatedly referred to his team’s starting quarterback as “Kurt,” a slight that would have been inexplicable for every other organization but this one.
Cousins signed a second franchise tag for just under $24 million. After the year, Washington traded for Alex Smith, signaling the end of the Cousins era. It netted a third-round compensatory pick and turned that into running back Bryce Love and guard Wes Martin, who started a combined 10 NFL games. Thirteen different quarterbacks started at least one game for Washington between Cousins’ departure and the arrival of Jayden Daniels last season, a stretch in which it went 36-62-1.
Quarterbacks in their 20s with a track record of above-average play and no significant injury history almost never hit free agency, which gave Cousins the ability to dictate terms on the open market. With significant interest from multiple teams, he chose the Vikings over the Jets on what was a massive deal at the time — three years and $84 million, $82.5 million of which was fully guaranteed. Cousins also landed a no-trade clause and a no-transition tag clause, allowing him to hit free agency again unless the Vikings franchised or extended him.
The Vikings chose to extend Cousins in 2020, giving him another $31 million in guarantees for an additional season in 2021. The following year saw the new Kwesi Adofo-Mensah-led regime pay him $35 million for another year, using the new deal to reduce what had become an onerous cap hit for the signal-caller. Only after 2023, when Cousins tore his Achilles during one of the best seasons of his career, did the Vikings finally extricate themselves, replacing Cousins with Sam Darnold and first-round pick J.J. McCarthy.
Given one more shot at unrestricted free agency as a viable starter, Cousins quickly inked a four-year, $180 million deal with the Falcons. Atlanta’s aggressive decision seemed bizarre when it used its first-round pick on Michael Penix Jr. the following month, but Cousins was well-protected. His deal was essentially a one-year pact for $90 million, a two-year deal for $100 million or a three-year contract for $135 million.
With the Falcons promoting Penix to the starting job amid Cousins’ struggles last season, it seems likely they’ll choose the two-year option. I wouldn’t be surprised if Cousins landed some guaranteed money from another team in 2026 if he returns for another season, but even if he retires, he has become the best-compensated free agent in league history. Most of the highest-paid players ever — such as Aaron Rodgers, Matt Ryan and Russell Wilson — earned the majority of their money from extensions with the teams who drafted them or signed new deals after being traded elsewhere. Cousins, currently the sixth-highest-paid player in league history, will finish this Falcons deal having earned more than $285 million from teams that signed him as an unrestricted free agent.
While the salary cap will eventually grow to the point where that figure is topped, the only other player in the same stratosphere in terms of earning money as a free agent (and the extensions that followed) is Drew Brees, who made more than $256 million after signing with the Saints. The only other players who topped $100 million in earnings from teams that signed them as free agents are Ryan Tannehill ($123.4 million) and Ndamukong Suh ($104 million). Is Cousins going to be a Hall of Famer like Brees or Rodgers one day? No. Does he belong in the Bag Hall of Fame? There can be no doubt.
Calling card: Getting one or two over on Jerry Jones
Like Cousins, Prescott is a former fourth-round pick who wasn’t his team’s first choice as its quarterback of the future. During the 2016 draft, the Cowboys were reportedly interested in drafting Paxton Lynch or Connor Cook, only to be beaten to the punch by the Broncos and Raiders, respectively. Team owner Jerry Jones & Co. settled for Prescott with the 135th pick, and after Tony Romo went down in preseason with a back injury, the door was opened for the rookie.
While Prescott proceeded to go 13-3 and lead the Cowboys to two division titles in his first three seasons, the front office wasn’t exactly eager to pay him when he became eligible for an extension in 2019. The Cowboys prioritized Ezekiel Elliott, who signed a six-year, $90 million contract. Prescott played out the final year of his rookie deal and waited.
That decision probably has cost Jones nine figures in terms of lost leverage and extra money for Prescott. In 2019, the Cowboys reportedly offered him an average of $33 million per year on a new deal, albeit with no real details on the guarantee structure. He asked for $40 million, and the Cowboys balked. He played out the final year of his rookie deal, and after being one of the biggest bargains in football between 2016 and 2019, he got the franchise tag for $31.4 million in 2020.
While that season was shortened by a serious ankle injury, a disappointing year meant little in terms of his negotiating leverage. Instead, the ticking clock on Prescott’s path to free agency was more meaningful. With the Cowboys having little choice but to offer him a second franchise tag for $37.7 million and run the risk of losing him the following season for nothing in free agency, the time for coy negotiating was up.
Prescott got everything he wanted and more. He received a four-year, $160 million deal with that $40 million average annual salary. By never signing the tag and limiting his new deal to four years, he got a chance to hit free agency again after his age-31 season, still firmly in the peak years for quarterbacks. And crucially, his new deal had no-tag and no-trade clauses, meaning he would potentially have even more leverage at the end of this contract.
Sure enough, after Prescott finished second in MVP balloting in 2023, the Cowboys had little choice but to give their long-term starter a record-setting deal. Prescott’s next four-year deal was for a whopping $240 million, with records for average annual salary ($60 million), most single-season cash ($86.3 million), cash over the first three years ($174.1 million) and the largest signing bonus ever ($80 million). Again, he was able to negotiate no-trade and no-tag clauses, giving him added leverage at the end of this pact.
It seems telling that other teams haven’t even been willing to match this Prescott deal for their own quarterbacks and, at least so far, have treated it like an outlier. Josh Allen’s 2025 extension with the Bills, while it consists entirely of new money and erases his old contract, averages $55 million per season, despite the fact that he has been a more productive and successful quarterback than his Cowboys counterpart. The 49ers’ Brock Purdy, who was similarly underpaid as a late-round pick, signed a deal with an average salary of $53 million. At the moment, Prescott’s deal stands alone as the richest in all of football.
Between 2021 and 2024, Prescott took home a staggering $212.3 million, nearly $47 million more than any other player. We can (and often do) debate whether he’s that caliber of player, but it’s only a small factor in how and why he has gotten paid. The Cowboys haven’t been willing to face a future without him, and after playing the franchise tag game with their quarterback at the end of his rookie deal, they’ve been operating from a position of desperation during their negotiations. After being an afterthought and the league’s biggest bargain for four years, Prescott has turned the tables on Jones and the Cowboys.
Calling card: The last of the great previous-CBA quarterbacks
One of the most important changes in the NFL over the past 25 years came in 2011, when the league locked out its players before eventually agreeing to a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) in late July. As part of the deal, the league instituted a rookie scale for draft picks, essentially locking in each player’s compensation at a below-market rate for the first four (or five) years of their career. That move created what quickly became a new philosophy of building around rookie-contract quarterbacks while almost entirely eliminating rookie holdouts in the process. (Never doubt the Bengals’ ability to make something old new again!)
Overnight, first overall picks took a significant financial pay cut. Sam Bradford, the last No. 1 overall pick before the CBA changed, inked a six-year deal for $78 million with $50 million guaranteed. Cam Newton, the top pick in 2011, signed a four-year deal worth just over $22 million, all of which was guaranteed at signing. Even now, with the cap more than double what it was in 2011, first overall pick Cam Ward didn’t get as much guaranteed money ($48.8 million) as Bradford did in 2010.
Bradford wasn’t able to parlay his rookie riches into a significant second contract, although he did take home a very respectable $130 million for his nine NFL seasons. But nobody might have benefited more from the league’s open-ended contracts before the rookie scale than Stafford, who will top the $400 million mark in career earnings after coming back to the Rams for the 2025 campaign.
Taken with the first overall pick in 2009, Stafford’s rookie deal was particularly eye-opening. When he agreed to terms on a six-year, $72 million deal with the Lions, the $41.7 million in guarantees was the largest figure for any player in league history, topping the $41 million defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth had been guaranteed by Washington earlier that offseason. You can understand why NFL owners didn’t love the idea of guaranteeing an inexperienced unknown quantity like Stafford more than the experienced, proven veteran Haynesworth.
Of course, the Stafford deal turned out to be a much better than the Haynesworth pact. In fact, the Lions ended up being victims of their own success in the draft. Detroit landed a big three of top-five picks before big threes were a thing. In 2007, they used the second overall pick on Calvin Johnson. Two years later, after their 0-16 season, the new Martin Mayhew-led regime drafted Stafford. The following year, the Lions took defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh with the No. 2 selection.
In the modern NFL, the Lions would have put themselves in position to thrive by being blessed with three superstars on rookie-value deals. Under the old CBA, they were paying three (very talented) players about $34 million per season — about 28% of the salary cap back then. It would be the equivalent of paying those three players approximately $79 million today. And under the league’s old CBA, those contracts were large enough to essentially prevent the Lions from franchise-tagging Stafford or Johnson at the end of their deals, limiting their leverage in negotiating new deals.
In a difficult cap bind because of the deals and their spending elsewhere, the Lions repeatedly restructured Stafford’s and Suh’s deals to create short-term cap space. After Stafford’s fourth season, he signed a relatively player-friendly extension (three years, $53 million deal). Most teams lock their quarterbacks up to longer deals, often with meaningful amounts of unguaranteed money and years at the end of the contract, which serves to both lock in security at the most important position in football and provide negotiating leverage down the line. Just over $41 million of Stafford’s deal was practically guaranteed when he signed his first extension.
Four years later, with Stafford one year away from free agency, he got another record-setting deal. Despite just one Pro Bowl appearance and zero playoff wins over his first eight seasons, his leverage pushed Detroit to give him a five-year, $135 million contract, making him the highest-paid player in league history at the time. The deal paid him $93 million over three years, $12 million more than what any other player was set to earn over the first three years of their contract at the time, and his $50 million signing bonus was also a league record.
But after the 2020 season, the Lions moved forward without their quarterback and made a fateful trade. In sending Stafford to the Rams for two first-round picks and benched signal-caller Jared Goff, both sides can feel happy about the result. Stafford won a Super Bowl in his first season with Los Angeles. Goff rebuilt his career in Detroit and became a building block.
After his postseason breakthrough and winning a title with Los Angeles, Stafford was paid accordingly. He signed a four-year, $160 million extension with the Rams, including what was the third-largest signing bonus ($60 million) in league history at the time. He might have actually left some money on the table with this move to help keep the Rams competitive, although a disappointing season led the organization to go on a more aggressive retooling.
What got Stafford over the hump as a Bag Hall of Famer, though, was his work over the past 12 months. Before the 2024 season, the Rams moved most of his guarantees forward by one year. Having already earned more than $364 million in his career and $27 million in (mostly) unguaranteed money coming in the 2025 season, he decided the Rams needed to pay up for him return at age 37.
It’s one thing for a veteran to justify that he needs a certain amount of money to play at all late in his career, but Stafford was reportedly open to a trade to the Giants or Raiders if they were willing to pay him what the Rams would not. Forget trying to play for a winner to eke out one more ring: He threatened leaving for one of the worst teams in the league, while downgrading his offensive coordinator and offensive line, if the Rams weren’t willing to give him a raise. That is Hall of Fame dedication to the bottom line.
In the end, the Rams and Stafford found common ground. While Stafford didn’t get a multiyear guarantee, he stuck around in Los Angeles for $40 million in 2025. Would he have really gone to play for the Giants? Some people would call that a bluff. Bag Hall of Famers would call that smart negotiating.
Calling card: Turning one playoff run into two contracts
No player might have done a better job of parlaying his leverage into an unexpectedly large contract than Flacco, who turned one playoff run into two contracts with the Ravens. In his case, timing was everything.
Like the other quarterbacks in the Hall, Flacco bet on himself. With four consecutive playoff appearances and two trips to AFC Championship Games across his first four seasons, he had done just about everything short of taking the Ravens to the Super Bowl. Given that they ranked third in scoring defense in each of those four years, though, it was fair to say plenty of NFL fans believed he was being carried to those deep playoff runs. While Flacco had just produced a solid performance and come within a Lee Evans drop of beating the Patriots in the 2011 AFC Championship Game, he had thrown a combined seven interceptions in the four losses that had ended Baltimore’s four seasons with him at the helm.
With that in mind, maybe it shouldn’t have been a surprise that there was a disconnect between how the Ravens viewed Flacco and how the 27-year-old viewed himself. Heading into the 2012 season, he and the Ravens came close on a contract extension before those talks fell apart. ESPN’s Adam Schefter described Flacco’s attitude toward a long-term deal as “indifference,” a term rarely used in regard to anyone procuring life-changing money. Schefter noted that Flacco was more concerned with keeping up his level of play from Week 1, when he threw for 299 yards and two scores in a blowout win over the Bengals.
Flacco wasn’t that good for most of the season, but he got white-hot when things mattered most. With the Ravens battling defensive injuries, they eventually landed the 4-seed in the AFC. From there, he went nuclear. Running off one of the best playoff stretches in league history, the 6-foot-6 quarterback threw for 1,140 yards with 11 touchdowns and no picks. After a home win over the Colts, the Ravens won in double overtime in the Rahim Moore game over the Broncos, then beat the Patriots at home in Foxborough before winning a shootout over the 49ers in the Super Bowl.
As a quarterback entering the prime of his career with a Super Bowl ring in his pocket, Flacco was suddenly in the driver’s seat. After their prior Super Bowl win in 2000, the Ravens had let starting quarterback Trent Dilfer leave, replacing him with Elvis Grbac. They cycled through future starters over most of the next decade before eventually landing on Flacco. Even with franchise icon Ed Reed simultaneously hitting free agency, the Ravens needed to prioritize Flacco.
Flacco and his representation were able to extract what was, at the time, the richest deal in NFL history. The Ravens signed Flacco to a six-year, $120.6 million contract. Before the season, the ceiling for Flacco’s negotiations was two franchise tags, which would have paid him about $33 million for two years. Instead, after his Super Bowl success, they paid him $51 million over two seasons and practically guaranteed another $11 million.
Even that undersells how great of a deal this was for Flacco. Because the Ravens were in rough cap shape, the structure of the contract kept the cap figures low before the accounting jumped from $14.6 million in Year 3 to $28.6 million in Year 4. As a result, Baltimore was always likely to be in a position in which it would need to hand him a second contract after three seasons. And indeed, before the 2016 season, Flacco signed a three-year, $66 million extension, guaranteeing him another $44 million.
Between 2013 and 2018, Flacco ended up taking home $124 million in cash, the fourth-most money of any player over that time frame. (That’s the equivalent of about $240 million relative to the current salary cap.) Over that run, he made just one run back to the postseason, winning a total of two playoff games and going 42-41 during the regular season. His 53.6 QBR ranked 20th out of the 26 quarterbacks who threw at least 1,500 passes over that six-year stretch. Coach John Harbaugh nearly lost his job after the 2017 season and was on the hot seat in 2018 before Flacco went down with a hip injury and the Ravens were forced to turn to first-round pick Lamar Jackson. You know what happened next.
Calling card: The best cover corner — and market-setter — of his generation
I’m not sure any player was able to concentrate more significant contracts in a shorter period of time than Revis, who was essentially finished as a pro player before turning 32 years old. After spending the first three years of his career on a rookie deal, he managed to sign four significant deals in a six-year span, including three multiyear pacts and a one-year contract for what amounted to a franchise tag with the Patriots in 2014.
Revis was able to push the envelope because of his audacious ability at cornerback. After an uneven rookie season, he made the Pro Bowl in his second season in 2008 and was arguably the best cornerback in football by his third. With the Jets built upon Rex Ryan’s blitz-happy, hyper-aggressive defense, Revis became an essential component on the back end. Quarterbacks knew they shouldn’t throw at him, but with limited time and Revis perpetually in one-on-one coverage, there simply weren’t any alternatives. He turned the 96 targets thrown his way into six picks in 2009. Using coverage metrics produced by Football Outsiders, I found that Revis was a historic outlier at cornerback that season, every bit as good at his position as the best quarterbacks were at theirs.
Understandably, Revis wanted to get paid. As was famously depicted on that year’s “Hard Knocks,” he held out and drove a hard bargain with then-Jets general manager Mike Tannenbaum. The two sides eventually agreed on a four-year, $46 million deal, with Revis making a combined $32.5 million for the 2010 and 2011 seasons. While there was no salary cap in 2010, that’s roughly the equivalent of a cornerback taking home about $75 million in cash today. No corner in the league comes close to that on their current deal.
The other key concession Revis received in the deal was a guarantee that the Jets wouldn’t franchise-tag him after the 2013 season, when his contract was set to void. The contract had a clause that would add multiple seasons to the end of the deal if he held out during training camp, but he was willing to bet that he could bargain his way through those concerns. After the first two years of the new deal, Revis hinted at a holdout before the 2012 season. Once that campaign was shortened by a torn ACL, a Jets team with little leverage responded to the threat of losing their franchise cornerback for nothing by trading him to the Buccaneers for a first-round pick. (New York used that pick on defensive tackle Sheldon Richardson, who won Defensive Rookie of the Year but was traded away after four seasons.)
With the Bucs, Revis got the sort of deal we haven’t seen from a star player since. Wanting to reset the market with a standout salary at the time, he signed a six-year, $96 million deal with the Buccaneers. It was a massive salary at the time (and the equivalent of a $36.3 million annual salary for a cornerback today), but the deal contained no guaranteed money. While that gave him the ability to potentially renegotiate if he exceeded expectations, it also gave Tampa Bay complete flexibility to move on from him.
After one year, it did, releasing Revis with five (unguaranteed) years remaining on his existing deal. It was a rare misstep from the legendary defensive back, but things worked out fine for him. He signed a one-year, $12 million deal with the Patriots, placing one of the best man-to-man cornerbacks of his generation on a Bill Belichick defense that relied heavily on man coverage. This was essentially a one-year franchise tag, given that the corner tag in 2014 was $11.8 million.
Revis proceeded to win the Super Bowl and was named a first-team All-Pro. With the structure of the deal preventing the Patriots from franchise-tagging him, the four-time first-team All-Pro got one more chance to hit free agency before turning 30. He returned to the Jets, with a five-year deal making him the highest-paid cornerback in the league and guaranteeing him $39 million. The contract paid him $16 million per season over the first three seasons on paper.
Instead, the Jets paid Revis $39 million for two years, as the organization decided to move on after an excellent return in 2015 gave way to a disappointing second season. He parted ways with his agents in May 2016 and signed with the Chiefs late in the 2017 season, but after an underwhelming performance in a playoff loss to the Titans, he was cut. He retired in July 2018.
In all, between signing that first extension with the Jets in 2010 and finishing his career with the Chiefs in 2017, Revis took home more than $101 million — nearly $26 million more than any other cornerback in the league over that span. The only non-quarterback who made more money over that stretch is Ndamukong Suh, who might be part of the 2026 BHOF class next offseason. As good as Revis was as a player, he might have been an even better negotiator.
Calling card: Backing up the truck
While Ramsey hasn’t been quite as aggressive as Revis in terms of pushing for new contracts, there’s a certain style and panache to his negotiations that needs to be rewarded. It’s one thing to hold out and another, as Terrell Owens famously showed, to do sit-ups in your driveway for the media.
After emerging as an upper-echelon cornerback during his first three seasons in Jacksonville, Ramsey was eligible for a new deal in the summer of 2019. The guy on the other side of the negotiating table? Veteran coach Tom Coughlin, whose old-school approach as the lead executive in Jacksonville eventually led to the Jaguars being responsible for more than 25% of the grievances filed by players with the union in 2019. The Jags had a remarkable habit of taking money out of their players’ pockets with fines; how was Ramsey going to get that money back from the organization?
He might have felt a need to push the proverbial envelope. That June, Ramsey revealed that the Jaguars didn’t intend to offer him an extension, a surprising move given how aggressive teams usually are with locking up their young superstars. While he publicly said he wasn’t angry or upset with the decision, what happened next suggested that he was willing to prod the front office to do something.
Audaciously, Ramsey showed up to training camp in an armored truck with a hype man, who finished his introduction by announcing that it was time for Ramsey to get his money. One of the ways you know I’m not a member of the Bag Hall of Fame: I would have happily paid $1,000 to experience Coughlin’s reaction to this video for the first time.
That move didn’t work, but Ramsey’s next play did. Two weeks into the season, a conversation with an unnamed member of the organization that Ramsey characterized as “disrespectful” led the star corner to request a trade. He then played one more game with the Jaguars before he began to miss time with a nagging back injury.
I don’t like suggesting that a player was faking an injury, as every NFL player deals with meaningful aches and pains throughout the season. In the annals of medicine, though, few doctors and scientists have explored what appears to be a salve for back injuries: going to Los Angeles. Ramsey missed three games with a back injury that wasn’t “debilitating” before the Jags gave into his request and traded him to the Rams for two first-round picks. He stepped right into the lineup and played eight consecutive games before missing a meaningless Week 17 game with a knee injury.
Ramsey wasn’t shy about his happiness in Los Angeles; he called the day of the trade “probably one of the best days of my life.” The Rams were more motivated to keep their new addition around. Ramsey waited to negotiate his extension with the Rams until after his fourth season was completed. Just before the 2020 season began, he inked a five-year deal worth $100 million, making him the highest-paid cornerback in league history. The Jags turned the first-rounders they got for him into pass rusher K’Lavon Chaisson and running back Travis Etienne Jr.
After playing out three years of the new deal and winning a Super Bowl in Los Angeles, Ramsey was eager to get another deal done. With just $12.5 million in guarantees remaining on his existing contract, he prayed for another trade and got his wish, with the Rams sending him to the Dolphins for a third-round pick and backup tight end Hunter Long. As part of the deal, the Dolphins guaranteed the rest of his $17 million salary in 2023 and $14.5 million in 2024, adding $19 million in guarantees to his existing deal.
While Ramsey missed half of his debut season in Miami with a knee injury, the Dolphins’ defense soared after his return to the lineup. One year after adjusting his deal as part of the trade, the Dolphins locked him up on a larger contract: his three-year, $72.4 million extension made him the league’s highest-paid cornerback for a second time, topping the deal that Pat Surtain II had signed days earlier. The deal came with more than $50 million in practical guarantees for Ramsey, who was locked in to earn just over $25 million in 2025.
Ramsey is going to get his money, but it won’t be in Miami. Just one year after giving him his second contract in two years, the Dolphins and their star cornerback decided that it would be best to part ways. They made this decision in mid-April, long after the Dolphins had paid him $4 million and the rest of the league had spent the vast majority of their budget in free agency. Even if they did, with Ramsey turning 31 in October, there weren’t many teams that saw a $21 million investment in a veteran cornerback as great value.
As a result, the Dolphins dealt Ramsey to the Steelers earlier this week in a fascinating challenge trade for veteran safety Minkah Fitzpatrick. Given what happened in Jacksonville, the Dolphins probably didn’t want to face a regular-season scenario in which they were relying on Ramsey to be a part of the lineup with a trade request on the cards. And Ramsey, to his credit, reportedly landed a $1.5 million bonus to sweeten the deal.
Ramsey has played his cards well. He has been able to repeatedly maneuver to different organizations and get significant guarantees in the process. He signed two deals to be the highest-paid cornerback in football. He has repeatedly left struggling teams for more competitive ones, which is even true about his move this offseason. And I don’t think any NFL player has ever made an executive more angry with a novelty car rental. He’s a great player and a spectacular negotiator.
Deion Sanders, CB
Calling card: The ultimate free agent addition
Looking a little further into the past, we have to honor one of the greatest players — and negotiators — in league history. Sanders obviously found a way to do something virtually nobody else in the NFL (short of Bo Jackson and Brian Jordan) did during his athletic prime: play baseball. In addition to his earnings from the gridiron, Sanders took home just over $13 million for his work with the Braves, Giants and Reds between 1991 and 2000, a sum which required both supreme athletic gifts and the ability to leverage his success as a football player into the sort of arrangement no NFL organization would prefer their star cornerback to enjoy.
Early in his career, Sanders didn’t have to travel far to play both sports, given that he was a cornerback for the Falcons and an outfielder for the Braves. Before the 1992 season, he held out before signing a one-year deal for $2 million, making him the highest-paid defender in league history at the time. The contract also allowed him to leave the Falcons during the MLB postseason before returning to the team, although he would have been fined game checks if he missed regular-season NFL games to play in the World Series.
After playing out an option year, Sanders left the Falcons in free agency. He spent 1994 playing baseball and going on an extended free agent tour, conducting “impromptu press conferences” at various stops. After the baseball season was waylaid by the players strike, he turned down a multiyear deal from the Saints and signed a one-year deal with the 49ers in mid-September, two weeks into the season. He promptly picked off six passes, returned three for touchdowns, won Defensive Player of the Year and added two more interceptions during San Francisco’s Super Bowl playoff run. Not bad for $1.3 million.
According to Sanders, the 49ers never offered him a deal to stay in San Francisco. He was instead forced to settle for their archrivals, who made him the highest-paid defender in league history. Again, he waited until after the season started to sign with the Cowboys. His seven-year, $35 million deal included a record $12.99 million signing bonus. For reference, the salary cap in 1995 was just $37.1 million; this is something like an elite cornerback signing a seven-year, $263.4 million deal with a $97 million signing bonus under the current cap.
The move inspired reverberations around the league. Teams complained to the league that Sanders’ deal and its large bonus circumvented the salary cap. Jerry Rice went on a tirade about how Sanders hadn’t won the Super Bowl for the 49ers. Emmitt Smith’s agent tried to use the Sanders contract to prevent the Cowboys from using the franchise tag to keep their star back. And Sanders delivered the goods. While he was limited to nine games in his debut season with the Cowboys, he suited up in the postseason and helped bring the Cowboys a Super Bowl title, his second in two years.
Four years later, Sanders signed another massive deal with the Cowboys; this time, a five-year pact for $51.4 million. This deal didn’t last quite as long, with the Cowboys cutting Sanders after one year to avoid triggering $23 million in guarantees for the 2000 and 2001 seasons. He then signed a seven-year, $56.1 million deal with Washington. But after earning $8.5 million for his first year in Washington (modern equivalent: $38.1 million), he chose to retire from football, returning $2.5 million of his signing bonus in the process.
While Sanders later returned to the NFL and made $1.5 million per year with the Ravens in 2004 and 2005, the vast majority of his earning was done. We don’t have exhaustive data on salaries for players in the mid-1990s, but he was likely the highest-paid defender of his generation or somewhere very close. He was able to bend owners who might have scoffed at the notion of their star cornerback playing baseball to his will. (Sanders also convinced the Cowboys to let him play wide receiver, catching 36 passes in 1996.) He was arguably the best one-year addition as a free agent in NFL history for the 49ers and then signed a market-altering deal with the Cowboys to bring them another ring. He’s an easy Hall of Famer on and off the field.
Calling card: Doing it his damn self
One of the few active players who has already done enough to earn consideration for the Bag Hall of Fame, Tunsil deserves extra credit for doing all of the work off the field on his own. He has served as his own agent for each of his negotiations, and frankly, other players should hire him for their own deals. After proving himself to be a very good left tackle, the 30-year-old has been able to parlay one team’s desperation into a series of player-friendly contracts. I wouldn’t be surprised if another one was on the way.
Tunsil famously fell in the 2016 NFL draft when a leaked video revealed him smoking marijuana out of a gas mask, which likely cost him millions of dollars given his expected landing spot in the top 10 picks. While he went to the Dolphins with the 13th pick, that very specific landing spot paid off in the long run.
Three years later, the Dolphins were preparing to tank for their quarterback of the future. In a matter of weeks, they traded their two young cornerstones in Tunsil and Minkah Fitzpatrick, who went to the Steelers for a first-rounder. As I documented back in 2022, a series of unrelated decisions that started with reports of then-owner Bob McNair likening players to “inmates” and the promotion of coach Bill O’Brien to take over the team’s personnel department left the Texans in a vulnerable position.
The organization traded away veteran left tackle Duane Brown after he held out early in the year and pushed back against McNair’s commentary. After the season, they tried to fill the position by signing oft-injured tackle Matt Kalil before attempting to draft Washington State left tackle Andre Dillard in the first round, only for the Eagles to trade up and beat them to the punch. With Kalil struggling in camp and no other viable alternative on the roster, O’Brien went all-in to try and protect young quarterback Deshaun Watson.
The Texans traded two first-round picks and a second-rounder to the Dolphins as part of a package to acquire Tunsil. One of those picks became the third overall selection in the 2021 draft, which the Dolphins used to acquire three more first-round picks from the 49ers in the Trey Lance deal. Miami ended up landing Jevon Holland, Jaylen Waddle, Tyreek Hill, and Bradley Chubb with some of the picks from the Tunsil trade.
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Riddick praises Commanders offseason: ‘This offense is rolling’
Louis Riddick and Dan Orlovsky break down how Laremy Tunsil’s move to the Commanders positively impacts Jayden Daniels.
Crucially, Tunsil didn’t sign a contract extension as part of the trade deal. By the time the two sides sat down after his first year in Houston, he was already through his fourth season in the league and one year away from unrestricted free agency. O’Brien struggled with overpaying players during his time in charge of player personnel, and after paying so much to acquire Tunsil, he wasn’t going to be operating from a position of strength in negotiating his left tackle’s new deal.
Tunsil signed one of the best deals I’ve seen for a player’s second contract. His three-year, $66 million extension pushed the top of the offensive line market forward from $18 million per year to an average annual salary of $22 million. Going year-to-year, paying him his fifth-year option and using two franchise tags, would have cost $47 million over three years without any long-term guarantee. Instead, the Texans paid him nearly $58 million over that time frame without many unguaranteed years on the back end to use as leverage.
As he was 25 at the time, the short length of Tunsil’s extension ensured that he would get another crack at free agency in the absolute prime of his career. With one year left on his existing deal in the 2023 season and the Texans wanting to protect their new long-term QB in C.J. Stroud, Tunsil negotiated another player-friendly deal. This time, it was a three-year, $75 million extension that practically guaranteed $60 million at the time of signing. And again, he put himself in position to hit free agency at age 32, which is still within the peak time frame for NFL tackles.
After two years, the Texans traded Tunsil to the Commanders for a pair of draft picks, clearly targeting him as a long-term left tackle to protect their own sensational young quarterback in Jayden Daniels. Now, with two years and $42.7 million left on his existing deal, guess what he’s in position to do again? He can sign another extension from a team that implicitly committed to him with a trade. It will be his third significant extension by virtue of the fantastic deal he negotiated with the Texans several regimes ago.
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