Jimmy Garoppolo setting up the market for Kirk Cousins

The San Francisco 49ers have reportedly agreed to a monster contract extension with quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, setting up Kirk Cousins’ market…

The San Francisco 49ers have reportedly agreed to a new contract with quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, making him the highest paid player in the NFL on an average per year basis.

The deal was expected unless the 49ers were forced to franchise tag Garoppolo, but this works out well for both parties.

The 49ers have long-term stability at quarterback, and Garoppolo gets his guaranteed money now instead of spreading it out like Kirk Cousins and the Redskins did two years ago.

Here’s the reported figures, according to Mike Garafolo of NFL Network:

This contract would certainly seem intimidating at surface level. Quick math on this contract puts this deal at an average of $27.5 million per season, and like Garafolo says, that is the highest in NFL history.

The bigger impact here is guaranteed money. The 49ers are basically guaranteeing Garoppolo three years of this deal, according to a San Francisco beat writer.

The 49ers guaranteed Garoppolo roughly 54 percent of that contract. So how does that impact free agent and Denver Broncos target Kirk Cousins?

Well, Cousins is in line to make a lot more in guarantees.

Andrew Luck received $87 million in guaranteed money. Matthew Stafford received $92 million in guaranteed money. Derek Carr received just $70 million in guarantees from the Oakland Raiders, so obviously Garoppolo landed on the more ‘modest’ end of things when you look at quarterbacks that have recently received big extensions.

I think Cousins is going to be more on the high end, probably at least over $80 million in guarantees.

As a matter of fact, I would be willing to bet that Cousins ultimately gets about $90 million in guaranteed money, likely on a five or six year deal. The average money per year might not be much more than Garoppolo’s, but the guaranteed money could be significantly more.

With Cousins, he may even be willing to take a little bit less against the cap in 2018 to sign with a team like Denver if they can spread that kind of guaranteed money out over a four or five year deal.

The Broncos have done something like this in recent history.

When they signed Peyton Manning to a five-year, $96 million deal back in 2012, that deal was essentially fully guaranteed, though Manning had to pass an annual physical for the salary to be guaranteed.

This sets the Broncos up to make a pretty obvious offer to Cousins, at least in terms of reported figures. How it’s constructed is where Broncos cap guru Mike Sullivan comes in.

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I’m guessing the Broncos will have to offer Cousins a deal of around five years, $145 million with about $90 million in guarantees.

Personally, I don’t know how they would construct such a deal, but that would put Cousins among the highest paid players ever, and it would put him among the quarterbacks to receive the highest guarantees up front in a contract ever.

That’s about where we’re at in the quarterback market right now, and the prices are only going to go up. Just wait until the Packers have to re-sign Aaron Rodgers.

That’s going to draw some media attention…

This Garoppolo deal impacts John Elway and the Broncos but I don’t think it changes much in terms of what we already knew. The wild card at play here was that Garoppolo could have possibly been franchise tagged, but that’s obviously no longer the case.

Now that we’ve seen the APY on his reported contract, we know sort of where to expect Cousins to land, even though it was expected he would get a deal worth about $26-30 million annually anyway.

This is just another step toward that happening.