How to build a Seahawks Super Bowl winning roster
By Andy Excell
A QB on a rookie contract helps
Patrick Mahomes
The Chiefs won the Super Bowl in 2020 in the days before they gave Mahomes an average of $45 million a year, indeed he got just $4.5 million this year which was 4.4% of the total starting salary for the Chiefs.
Obviously, it is a huge benefit to have such a QB on a rookie contract that allows you to spend in other areas, and not all teams can be this fortunate with their draft picks.
But until natural inflationary powers bring the $45 mill a year the Chiefs will be paying Mahomes from 2022 onwards come down in terms of the percentage of the total roster salary, it could be argued they have significantly reduced their chances of winning another Super Bowl by paying him such a huge salary from that point onwards.
This prompts a question for the elite QBs in the league, do you want more money than you can ever spend on more Super Bowl rings?
Only they as individuals can answer that and they are entitled to go whichever way they see fit, but I am definitely arguing they hurt their franchise overall chances of success by taking these huge salaries.
After all, the GOAT (Brady) has never got paid in excess of $30 million in a single season, thus allowing the franchises he plays for to build a roster that can win everything.
Running backs
The Chiefs spent $4.7 million on their RBs or 4.6% of the total starting salary.
Pass receivers
This is where the Chiefs chose to spend big, 33% of the starters salaries were spent in this area.
Offensive line
Apart from on pass receivers, this was the other area of spend, 22% of total salary spend on starters cam here.
Defensive front seven
And a further 18.2% was spend’s on the defensive line and linebackers.
Defensive secondary
The Chiefs had 13.5% of their starting salary expenditure allocated to the defensive secondary.
Kicker and Punter
The final 4.3% of starting salary cam on these two guys.
In summary, by being fortunate to have an ultra-talented young QB on such a low starting salary, the Chiefs were able to fairly evenly spread 90% of their salaries across the receivers, offensive line and defense. Like the Bucs, this gave them an all-around strong roster with very few if any weaknesses opponents could exploit.