Denver Broncos linebacker Von Miller is the Super Bowl 50 MVP, after sacking Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton 2.5 times and forcing him to fumble twice. He also spent the 2015 season—one of Miller’s best—in a contract year. He’s about to get paid.
Miller’s rookie deal has expired after playing on a $9.754 million fifth-year option, and now he’s in the market for a high-value contract. It’s not likely that the Broncos will allow the 26-year old Miller to test the free agency market in a month’s time, but between now and then they will have to figure out what to pay him and how best to go about doing so.
Winning the Super Bowl MVP in a contract year can be a highly lucrative career milestone—just ask Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco. But it depends on a few factors, including the cash available to pay Miller and what his market value now is. There’s a good chance that Denver opts to simply franchise tag Miller, which is projected to be worth around $14.1 million for 2016. That wouldn’t be the ideal situation for Miller; while the tag does provide him with a large chunk of cash, it’s for just one year. There’s no job security wrapped up in the franchise tag, and if Miller falls injured while playing under it in 2016 or even regresses as a player, that could cost him a significant amount of future money.
The obvious benchmark for a contract is the one given to Kansas City Chiefs outside linebacker Justin Houston in July, worth a maximum of $101 million over six years, and including $52.5 million in guaranteed money, $20.5 million of that in the form of a signing bonus. The deal gives him total cap hits in the $19 to $20 million range from 2016 through 2019, with a $17.5 million cap hit in 2020. The deal, like most big-money contracts in the NFL, is front-loaded, with dead cap numbers of $32.5 million in 2015, and $27.4 million in 2016. It then drops to $12.3 million in 2017, $8.2 million in 2018 and $4.1 million in 2020—or only his guaranteed bonuses, worth $4.1 million per year.
Right now, the Broncos have a projected $16.7 million in 2016 salary cap space—not enough to give Miller that Houston-like contract. But if the Super Bowl truly was Peyton Manning’s last, that will free up considerable cash for the Broncos—$19 million, to be exact, giving the team around $35.7 million in total cap space. That could easily result in the Broncos paying Miller the $19 million that would have otherwise gone to Manning. Denver could then still preserve that other $16.7 million in cap space to pay other key free agents like defensive end Malik Jackson, linebackers Danny Trevathan and Brandon Marshall and, oh yeah, quarterback Brock Osweiler, who too is an unrestricted free agent in 2016 but also isn’t going anywhere, as he’s Manning’s clear and hand-picked heir.
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Doing this, however, could still put the Broncos right up against the cap, which is why the franchise tag remains a viable option. That difference in $5-6 million is a big one, when not only talking about the in-house free agents the Broncos want to retain, any street free agents they have interest in signing as well as paying their eventual 2016 rookie class. But that also could mean Miller may have to wait until 2017 to be a $100 million man, or potentially that he never gets that kind of payday depending on the quality of his upcoming season.
Another option could include restructuring the contract of receiver Demaryius Thomas, a move that could free up as much as $9.1 million by reducing his base salary to a veteran minimum and converting the difference into pro-rated bonuses. That could allow the Broncos to keep more of their free agents while keeping Miller happy.
Still, sacking quarterbacks—which Miller has done in double-digit numbers in every season of his career so far save 2013, when he served a six-game suspension to start the season and ended it with a torn ACL—is expensive business in the NFL. If Miller repeats his 2015 performance in 2016, even if Denver does not reprise its Super Bowl-winning ways, it may just be a matter of delaying the inevitable rather than costing Miller significant earnings.
