Luck is over rated but not over paid.
If anyone on SB Nation has hit the "Luck is overrated" drum the hardest over the last three years, it's me. And I stand by that because there are still hundreds of media members out there who have a significant audience of readers, listeners, and viewers, who continue to anoint Luck as a top-five (usually top-three) QB mostly because, in my opinion, they're afraid to not parrot the norm. They're afraid to go against the narrative. They're cowards, basically. Throw an argument against Luck at them and they won't bat it back at you, they'll go play with somebody else. Or they'll talk about a different player entirely and hope you forget what the conversation started as. But they can't counter any anti-Luck sentiments with anything other than rattling off how many wins he got against the worst division in football, or how the problem is everyone in Indianapolis besides Luck, or just, well, "your an idiot."
Luck is overrated because he's not a top-five quarterback, let alone top-three, so why then would I say he's not "overpaid"? Because this is simply the going rate for the "franchise quarterback d'jour."
Last year, the
Seattle Seahawks signed
Russell Wilson to a four-year extension worth $87 million, which is $21.9 per year. It's less total money than Luck, it's less guaranteed money than Luck, and it's less per year than Luck, but he will be a free agent two years earlier than Luck. At which point, he will probably sign for more total money than Luck, more guaranteed money than Luck, and more money per season than Luck. That's just how it works.
Luck may not be the best QB in the NFL, but he's certainly one of the ten or so that a franchise must hold onto. Luck, Wilson,
Aaron Rodgers,
Philip Rivers,
Tom Brady,
Ben Roethlisberger,
Cam Newton ... I mean, I could write a 600-page book on why Wilson is better than Luck (and I'm sure that some of you would probably help me self-finance it) but I don't necessarily think that I'd rather have
Matt Ryan,
Joe Flacco,
Eli Manning, or Matthew Stafford. And Flacco
still has the second-highest APY in the NFL.
We pay more attention to Luck because he's a media darling, but especially do we pay him notice today because he just got paid today. If you think Luck is overpaid, don't hate the player, and don't even hate the game ... hate the economy. He just got his piece of the pie based on what consumers have deemed reasonable for what a football team's revenue stream is and how much of that should be going to a franchise quarterback.
It still won't make him a top-five QB.
http://www.fieldgulls.com/2016/6/29/12062868/andrew-luck-contract-colts-overrated-overpaid
