According to Ian Rapaport, Jets head coach — and now interim GM — Adam Gase was apparently unhappy with the amount of money ex-New York GM Mike Maccagnan spent to lure Le’Veon Bell to the team in March. Gase “just did not love spending that much money for a player at that position” according to Rapaport. Which, frankly, is a little silly.
For starters, other than Bell, all other Jets running backs are making less than $1M this season (the top three are Elijah McGuire, Trent Cannon, and Ty Montgomery). And the Bell contract is hardly debilitating: he will cost the Jets $9M in salary cap space. As a result, New York has allocated $12.4M in 2019 salary cap dollars to the running back position, which …. simply isn’t that much.
The two teams that have allocated the most 2019 salary cap dollars to the running back position are the Bills (LeSean McCoy, Frank Gore, and T.J. Yeldon) and 49ers (Jerick McKinnon, Tevin Coleman,Raheem Mostert), and perhaps you want to argue that those are not the teams one should emulate. But last year’s two Super Bowl participants are also in the top five in salary cap dollars spent at running backs. The Rams have the highest paid running back in the NFL in Todd Gurley and also are paying over $2M this season to Malcolm Brown. New England is spending $4.6M on James White, $3M on Rex Burkhead, $2.2M on Sony Michel, and $1.7M on Brandon Bolden. And in terms of capital spent, New England used a 1st round pick on Michel in 2018, have two higher paid backs on the roster, and then used a 3rd round pick this year on RB Damien Harris from Alabama.
Arizona (David Johnson) rounds out the top 5 in RB salary cap dollars spent, and the Jets are sixth. So while Gase may think the Jets overpaid for Bell, it’s hard to make the argument that this was a big mistake. The Jets are one of 10 teams that still have $25M of salary cap space available for 2019, and there are not many ways left to use that space. Maybe Gase thinks Bell was overpaid by a couple of million dollars, but that will have little practical impact on the team in 2019. In 2020, Bell’s cap hit will be $15.5M, but that is not going to hamstring the team.
One reason for that, of course, is the presence of Sam Darnold. In general, we do see an inverse relationship between how many 2019 salary cap dollars a team spends at RB with how many salary cap dollars a team spends at QB. Take a look at the graph below, with all data courtesy of Over The Cap.
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the graph is all the empty space. That’s because I have plotted both sets of data on the same scale, with each axis going from $0M to $35M. When it comes to quarterback spending, the Jets are 26th in the NFL for the 2019 season. When it comes to combined QB/RB spending, the Jets are … 22nd. And even next year, New York will be right around average, and likely still outside the top 10, in combined QB/RB spending.
If Gase viewed the Bell contract as a reason to hate his GM, he was probably looking for a reason to hate his GM.