Brandon Scherff: Do the Right Thing, Redskins
June 25, 2019
by Steve Thomas
It’s not exactly news for me to say that Brandon Scherff is an important guy in the greater Ashburn, Virginia area. In fact, given the age, injury history, and recent controversy surrounding All-Everything left tackle Trent Williams, it’s not entirely foolish to say Scherff is the most critical player on the roster outside Dwayne Haskins. However true that is, Scherff is unfortunately only signed through the 2019 season. The Redskins need to do everything possible to keep Brandon in the burgundy and gold for the foreseeable future. Let’s discuss how that can be accomplished.
Background
Scherff was drafted with the fifth pick in round 1 of the 2015 draft out of the University of Iowa. A tackle for the Hawkeyes, he was universally considered to be the best offensive line prospect in the draft that year. Some analysts pegged him as a better guard in the NFL, but that year the Redskins were desperate for a right tackle and brought Scherff to Washington to fill that role. However, Morgan Moses (who was the teams’ third round pick in 2014) came out of nowhere in training camp to take a major step forward from a shaky rookie year and was able to take over the starting right tackle role, allowing Scherff to move inside to his more natural position of guard. With that, the future of the right side of the Redskins’ offensive line was born.
Since his arrival in DC, Scherff has played and started in 54 games in four seasons and was elected to the 2016 and 2017 Pro Bowls. His only serious injury was suffered this past season when he tore his pectoral muscle in week 9 against the Falcons. I’m sure Pro Football Focus probably reached into their bag of tricks and assigned him a high ranking in the same way a blind man picks a shirt, but I won’t entertain their brand of nonsense here.
Scherff’s rookie contract, signed in 2015, was valued at $21.125M over 4 years. The Redskins exercised their CBA-mandated fifth year option on Scherff[1], so he’ll play the 2019 season on a fully-guaranteed $12.525M.
The Options
First, the worst solution, by far, would be for the Redskins to let Scherff play out this year and then apply a franchise tag in 2020. There are three types of tags the team could use, the “Exclusive Tag”, the “Non-Exclusive Tag”, and the “Transition Tag”. I’ll go over what each of these mean in a second, but just so everyone understands: use of any tag on Scherff would be a mistake that means the front office has failed. I don’t want to turn this into a primer on franchise tags, so, briefly, the Exclusive Tag would mean that the Redskins pay Scherff the average of the five largest offensive linemen salaries in 2020. For 2019, that number is $14.067M. Application of this tag would mean that Scherff could not negotiate with any other team, and his choice would be to either play for the Redskins in 2020 or not play. The Non-Exclusive Tag would mean that Washington would pay Scherff the average of the five largest offensive linemen salaries over the last five years. The Transition Tag would pay Scherff the average of the top ten offensive linemen salaries for the prior year. Under both the Non-Exclusive and Transition Tags, Scherff could negotiate with other teams. If used in 2020, the Redskins could then apply two additional franchise tags for the 2021 and 2022 seasons, at enormous, quickly rising cost, and then could theoretically at least apply a Transition Tag after that. We’ve seen this movie before, and it’s a terrible plan (see e.g., Cousins, Kirk). Using the franchise tag normally doesn’t work out for the team and irritates the player. The Redskins front office knows this better than most. Washington should avoid this option at all costs.
The best thing to do is to just give Scherff what he wants. A team having a fifth overall pick turn out like Scherff, with potential to be a 10 to 12-year elite starter, is exactly what every team hopes for with a pick at that level. The Redskins pulling a Bruce Allen and screwing this up would be a monumental disaster. So, you may ask, what sort of contract might Scherff and Washington agree to?
First, Scherff is the prize of the 2020 guard class. The only other 2020 free agents who’ve been selected to even one Pro Bowl between 2015 and 2018 are the old and oft-injured Mike Iupati with the Cardinals and Andrus Peat from the Saints, and neither of them are in Scherff’s class as a player. Nobody else is even close.
It is likely that Scherff’s demand will be to become the highest-paid guard in NFL history, which in a practical sense means that his contract exceeds that of Andrew Norwell’s five year, $66.5M deal with Jacksonville and Zack Martin’s six year, $84M deal with Dallas. A reasonable and perhaps valid argument can be made that Martin plays at a higher level than Scherff, but that is negated by the fact that Martin’s contract was signed a year ago, and costs rise every season. Martin’s deal has an average annual value of $14M, and had $32M guaranteed at signing with total guarantees of $40M, which means that 47.62% of the total contract is guaranteed. Norwell’s $66.5M deal has an average annual value of $13.3M and $30M guaranteed at signing, which is 45.11%.
The only other guard contract in the NFL that is even close to those two is that of Cordy Glenn, who signed with Buffalo in 2016 for 5 years / $60M, $12M average annual value, $28M guaranteed at signing and $36M in total guarantees. It’s no accident that Norwell’s deal is slightly larger than that of Glenn by every measure.
The target, then, is Martin’s $40M guarantee and $14M average annual value. The good news is that the team can afford to sign Scherff without making any additional cuts. Right now, Washington has approximately $169M in cap space obligated in 2020 and less each successive following year, as compared to $183M under the Rule of 51 for 2019 at this moment. Also, the Redskins are clearly willing to do a six year contract under the right circumstances, because they just gave safety Landon Collins a 6 year / $84M deal. The smart move is to lock Scherff up for as long as possible, so let’s assume the target for both parties is six years.
Martin had a $20M signing bonus, and Norwell was given $15M, so let’s give Scherff $22M as a signing bonus.
Both Martin and Norwell had their first two years of base salary fully guaranteed at signing. I’m not going to say fully guaranteeing a third year at signing has ***never*** happened, because I haven’t researched this point thoroughly enough to give that kind of conclusion, but I can say it isn’t something teams do. It’s far more likely that Scherff would expect, and the Redskins would give, two years with either a partial guarantee or a guarantee for injury of the third season at signing. Let’s assume the more onerous of those two options and say the Redskins will partially guarantee year three.
So: what we have at this point is a $22M signing bonus, years 1 and 2 fully guaranteed, and year 3 partially guaranteed at signing and fully guaranteeing 5 days after the start of the second league year (that’s a pretty common arrangement).
With that in mind, and understanding that the goal is to make Scherff the NFL’s highest paid guard while preserving as much of the team’s flexibility as possible given the enormity of such a contract, here’s what I believe is a contract that is in the ballpark of what it will take to keep Brandon in Washington:
Year Age Base Salary Cap hit Dead Money
2019 27 $12.525M $12.525M $12.525M
2020 28 $10M $13.67M $47.5M
2021 29 $10M $13.67M $33.83M
2022 30 $11M $14.67M $20.16M / $25.66M
2023 31 $11.5M $15.17M $11M
2024 32 $11.5M $15.17M $7.33M
2025 33 $12M $15.67M $3.67M
This is a total of 6 years, $88M, $47.5M guaranteed at signing, $53M in total guarantees, and an average annual value of $14.67M, all league highs for a guard. The 2022 dead money has a double entry on the chart because it would increase once the rest of the 2022 base salary guarantees on the 5th day of the 2021 league year. The team might also tack on some easy to reach incentives, perhaps number of starts, that would add to the cap hit as “easy to reach incentives”, as well as some others like Pro Bowl and All Pro selections that would not add to the salary cap, but what I detailed above is the basic gist of a realistic Scherff contract. The Redskins could also pay out the signing bonus in multiple payments if the parties wanted to even out his annual cash somewhat. Both of those scenarios could have an effect on the salary cap and dead money; it’s beyond what I want to get into here; the point is, what I’ve presented here is the gist of it. The deal keeps him in Washington for the entirety of his prime, makes him the highest paid guard in the league by essentially every measure, and keeps the cap hit at levels that are at least not completely outrageous.
The downside to this contract proposal is that Scherff would be uncuttable under any scenario through 2021, and then in 2022 only with a post-June 1 designation that would spread significant dead money into 2023. But really, if you aren’t going to gamble on a 27 year old Pro Bowl guard without significant injury history before the end of the 2018 season, just who are you going to gamble on? Scherff is as sure of a bet as it comes, and he’s one of the very few for whom I’d be willing to risk this kind of arrangement.
If the Redskins aren’t willing to give Scherff a six year contract, then the move would be to reduce the signing bonus down to $18.33M, which would have the effect of essentially keeping everything else the same but would still keep the contract’s total value, $72.33M, over that of Norwell’s deal.
If the Redskins don’t care about exceeding Zack Martin’s contract, there would be a number of ways to reduce the contract values. That’s a dangerous game to play, though, with a guy who is so critical to the team. The Redskins also have a history of not giving evenly distributed contacts like I’ve designed – for example, Landon Collins’ deal is structured so that the first year cap number is very low, which means the deal is backloaded a bit, and Alex Smith’s deal is anything but an even distribution. Why mess with this, though? Just give Scherff a simple deal that keeps him a Redskin for life. I like my idea better.
There it is, kids: 6 years, 88M, $22M signing bonus, $47.5M guaranteed at signing. I think this is the ballpark of what it’s going to take to re-sign Brandon Scherff to a long-term deal. Let me know what you think in the comment section below.
[1] All contracts for first round draft picks have a fifth year team option.