The Jaguars overpaid Josh Allen (and that’s okay!)

Josh Allen deserved the $141.25 million contract extension he signed, but it’ll be hard for him to live up to.

News broke Wednesday morning that the Jacksonville Jaguars signed star pass rusher Josh Allen to a contract extension. He is now the highest-paid Jaguar ever, and deservedly so.

Allen is also one of the highest-paid players in the NFL today.

His deal was initially described as a five-year commitment worth $150 million. A few hours later, Pro Football Talk revealed the true base value as $141.25 million. That ranks third among all non-quarterbacks behind only Nick Bosa and Chris Jones; Allen’s $28.25 million annual salary ranks fourth behind Bosa, Jones and Tyreek Hill.

Those rankings are partially buoyed by the recent jump in cap space from $224.8 million in 2023 to $255.4 million in 2024 — a record 13.6% increase. As Twitter user @djDELFONIK pointed out, Allen’s contract accounts for a smaller percentage of the cap than those of Nick Bosa, Joey Bosa, Myles Garrett, and T.J. Watt.

But rather than paying attention to the total value amount, it’s usually smart to check a contract’s guaranteed money, which can paint a clearer picture of how much a player may actually earn. And now, thanks to an app built by Arjun Menon and Brad Spielberger, we can go one step further.

Their model predicts the probability that a player plays each year of his contract, then multiplies that probability by the base salary for a player in that given year to calculate ‘expected base salary.’ That number is added to the player’s fully guaranteed salary to produce a total Expected Contract Value (ECV) figure.

Allen’s ECV is $118 million, compared to the reported value of $141.25 million. He’s expected to earn 83.54% of his contract.

That dwarfs the other contracts handed out this spring.

Note: Nick Bosa is expected to earn 72.26% of his deal; Chris Jones is expected to earn 77.28%.

Allen and Burns were each selected in the first round of the 2019 NFL Draft and have had similar production in their careers. It isn’t a coincidence that Allen’s reported contract numbers came in just above Burns’ — last offseason’s quarterback extensions are a good example of how the market sets prices more than anything else. What is surprising is how much more security Allen received.

While both signed five-year deals (with near-identical guaranteed money figures), Allen is expected to play on his contract for 4.07 years compared to 3.34 years for Burns. Allen’s ECV is also nearly $20 million more.

When you look at the raw numbers, Allen got a huge deal; when you dive deeper, it’s even better.

Allen makes an immeasurable impact on the field, in the locker room, and around the community. He deserves the money that’s coming to him. Yet he’s not quite worth the number he signed for.

It’s admirable that the Jaguars retained some of its homegrown talent, which is now a growing trend following 2023 extensions for Cam Robinson and DaVon Hamilton. And it’s vital to show a locker room that good players are rewarded. That said, the front office had to pay full value to keep a star player in town for the long haul, despite having the chance to extend Allen last offseason.

General manager Trent Baalke did not offer Allen a new contract following the 2022 season, per ESPN. Tony Wiggins of Locked On Jaguars said in February, “I trust my source when he tells me if they offered Josh Allen an extension last year that would be way less than what he’s going to ask for now that he would have signed it.”

Maybe the Jaguars and Allen’s camp did negotiate last offseason, but an official offer was never put on the table because the two sides knew they were far from an agreement. Either way, Jacksonville’s decision-makers did not view Allen as a top-tier pass rusher at this time last year.

He promptly shattered the franchise’s single-season sack record and finished top-three in the league in sacks (17.5) and quarterback hits (33) in the final year of his rookie contract. The team had no choice but to pay him top dollar this offseason unless it wanted to risk a holdout.

Extending Allen last year would have been wise. After recording 10.5 sacks as a rookie, Allen registered just 17 sacks from 2020 to 2022, which ranked 32nd among all edge defenders in that span. But his 47 quarterback hits — a better measure of pass rush production — ranked 24th.

Sacks can be a misleading stat because it’s impacted by so many factors, especially quarterback play. As Brandon Thorn wrote for his Trench Warfare newsletter, “Players can add a ‘sack’ on the stat-sheet in various ways, including after the quarterback handles the ball for too long (either due to great coverage or the QB failing to recognize the opening in the defense), as a result of a protection breakdown, by tackling the QB at the line of scrimmage, while still being blocked, or by soundly beating the blocker in front of them due to superior athletic ability and/or technique.”

To more accurately evaluate sack production, Thorn created a metric called Sack Score, which he calculates by watching game film and charting four categories of sacks: Rare High Quality, High Quality, Low Quality, and Coverage/Cleanup.

In 2023, Thorn charted Allen with 18 total sacks, more than every player bar T.J. Watt and Trey Hendrickson. But Allen had 0 Rare High Quality sacks and 5 High Quality sacks, and his 12.0 Sack Score ranked eighth among all edge defenders. Among 31 edge defenders with a Sack Score of 6.75 or higher, Allen’s pass rush snaps per High Quality sack ranked 21st.

Allen is very much a premier pass rusher, but he’s closer to a top 10 player at his position than top 3 (as his new contract suggests). Yet you could’ve said the same thing about him a year ago.

In 2022, Thorn charted Allen with 0 Rare High Quality sacks 4 High Quality sacks — nearly identical to his 2023 production — and a Sack Score of 6, 27th among edge defenders.

The difference in Sack Scores is because Allen had 2 Low Quality sacks and 0 Coverage/Cleanup sacks in 2022 before leading the league with 10 Low Quality sacks and 3 Coverage/Cleanup sacks in 2023.

In terms of raw numbers, Allen’s sack production jumped from 7 in 2022 to 17.5 in 2023. Thorn’s work helps us realize that the production wasn’t all that different, at least in terms of high-end play.

Allen certainly improved as a player last year, which he attributed to “onions” during the regular season and “figuring out life” during his Wednesday presser. He just didn’t improve nearly as much as his year-to-year sack numbers indicate. Allen is a little bit better than his 2022 production and a little bit worse than his 2023 production.

This article isn’t to say the team shouldn’t have offered Allen the contract he signed. It’s not even to say the team should’ve offered Allen a contract last offseason — while he was a better player than his 2020-2022 sack production suggested, nobody could have predicted such a contract-year campaign.

The Jaguars had a chance to buy low on Allen, passed, and then had to buy high. That’s it.

Again, Allen deserves every penny coming his way. I mostly just wanted to share the context provided by Menon, Spielberger and Thorn to demonstrate how well the process turned out for Allen as opposed to Jacksonville’s front office.

It’s fine to acknowledge that we’re unlikely to look back in five years and say, “He fully played up to his contract” — which would require Defensive Player of the Year and/or Super Bowl hardware — while also being thrilled for the player and the organization.

But here’s my closing thought.

Will the Jaguars choose to be proactive or reactive in extension talks with Trevor Lawrence?