Dear Ozzie Newsome and Pat Moriarty, YOU lock it up!

Let me just preface this article by saying that if you aren’t on the Joe Flacco bandwagon yet, you might as well hop aboard now. Joe’s going to be our starting quarterback for a long, long time. Those of you who refuse to embrace that fact are destined for a maddening decade-plus of Baltimore football. (To our fanatics with masochistic tendencies—I know you’re out there; I’ve heard you calling local sports talk radio—you may disregard this warning).

I digress.

The agents for Joe Flacco and Ray Rice are in the thick of contract negotiations with general manager Ozzie Newsome and chief financial officer Pat Moriarty. Both Joe and Ray have far outplayed their initial rookie contracts, and both have earned a substantial payday.

We have a problem that a majority of teams around the league wish they had. We draft entirely too well. The situation with Joe and Ray is a direct result of Ozzie finding the two guideposts for our offense in the same draft, and now we have to pay for it.

Here are the contracts that Flacco and Rice have been taking us to the playoffs under for the last few years:

Joe Flacco— 5 years, $30 million

2011: $4.485 million

2012: $6.76 million (plus $2.1 million Flacco earned in incentives)

2013: Free Agent

• 4 straight playoff appearances
• 2 AFC Championship games
• QB record for wins in first 4 seasons
• Career 61% completion percentage
• Career 80 TD/ 46 INT
• Career 215 yds/ game

Ray Rice— 4 years, $2.8 million

2010: $470,000

2011: $555,000

2012: $7.7 million (this is the franchise tag number—a one-year guarantee that is the bane of every NFL star’s existence)

To give you a frame of reference, I’m listing a few other quarterback and running back contracts from around the league for players comparable (and often less valuable, in my opinion) to Flacco and Rice.

QUARTERBACKS:

Philip Rivers— 7 years, $98.25 million

2012: $10.2 million

2013: $12 million

• One postseason appearance (Loss to the Jets) since 2008 

Tony Romo— 6 years, $67.4 million

2012: $9 million

2013: $11.5 million

• Impressive career regular season stats:
• 64.5% completion percentage
• 149 TD/ 72 INT

• However, only one playoff appearance, one win since 2008
• Injuries in 2008 and 2010; sat out significant number of games in those two years

Matt Schaub— 6 years, $48 million

2012: $ 7.15

2013: Free Agent

• No postseason appearances since 2008
• Injuries in 2010 and 2011 seasons showing downward trend

Matt Cassel— $62 million

2012: $7.15 million

2013: Free Agent

•  One postseason appearance since 2008 (Loss to the Ravens)
• Career 59% completion percentage
• Career average 169 yds passing/ game

Mark Sanchez— 5 years, $58.25 million

2012: $3.25 million

2013: $8.25 million

2014: $9 million

2015: $12.5 million

• 6 postseason games (4-2) since 2009
• Career 55.3% completion percentage
• Career 55 TD/ 51 INT

Kevin Kolb— 5 years, $63 million

2011: $4 million
2012: $10 million
2013: $13 million

•  28 total starts
• Career 59.4% completion percentage
• Career 144 average yds/ game
• Career 20 TD/ 22 INT

RUNNING BACKS:

Arian Foster— 5 years, $43.5 million; $8.7 million/ year

Chris Johnson— 6 years, $55.26 million; $9.21 million/ year

Adrian Peterson— 7 years, $96 million; $13.7 million/ year

Marshawn Lynch— $31 million; $7.75 million/ year

Murice Jones-Drew— 5 years, 30.95 million; $6.19 million/ year

Steven Jackson— 6 years, $44.8 million; $7.46 million/ year

Darren McFadden— 6 years, $60 million; $10 million/ year

Michael Turner— 6 years, $34.5 million ; $5.75 million

DeAngelo Williams— 5 years, $43 million ; $8.6 million/ year

Among comparable quarterbacks, only Tony Romo and Philip Rivers could make an argument for being a better all-around quarterback, but between them they have two postseason appearances and one win in four years. Obviously, football is a team sport but I’d rather have a bunch of playoff wins attached to my quarterback’s name than impressive regular season performances and nothing to show for it. Sanchez is, of course, on the other end of the spectrum, having impressive postseason results but showing very little that would indicate he has a very high ceiling as a reliable signal-caller.

 As far as running backs are concerned, we’ve all witnessed Ray Rice become an utter superstar over the last four seasons. It would be easy to make the argument that he’s the best in the game right now—he led the league in yards from scrimmage with 2,068 yds and posted 12 total touchdowns receiving and rushing (and one passing!) last season.

Since his rookie year (2008), Rice has logged a staggering 6,612 regular-season yards from scrimmage, 30 touchdowns and has only fumbled six times in 61 games. Even more impressive is the fact that he amassed those numbers despite playing second fiddle to Willis McGahee in 2008; Rice didn’t score his first touchdown as a Baltimore Raven until the 2009 season.

Ozzie Newsome and Pat Moriarty need hurry these negotiations up. Joe and Ray are both entering the prime of their careers, and they deserve to get paid as such. Keeping in mind that I’m not in the least an NFL salary cap expert, here are the contracts I would give them.

Joe Flacco— 7 years, $94.5 million

Yes, I can already hear you calling me an idiot for this one, but hear me out. The Ravens need to back-load Flacco’s contract and give him a “holy sh*t”-sized signing bonus. They shouldn’t be worried about dropping serious guaranteed money on him because, number one, he’s done nothing but progress as a quarterback since day one (the topic for another day) and number two, and more importantly, he hasn’t missed a single regular-season or postseason game in his entire career. Usually the concern with giving players guaranteed money is that they get hurt and you end up spending money without getting production.

The other reason you give Flacco that type of contract is that if you structure it so he’s making between $6 and $9 million in the first few years, your salary cap won’t reflect that his salary averages to 13.5 million per year, which is what Joe thinks he’s worth. Everybody wins.

(Flacco may actually end up getting a contract bigger than the one I just suggested; look at the insane amount of money that the Giants gave Eli Manning a few years ago when the entire sports world was still on the fence about how good he actually was.)

Ray Rice— 6 years, $64.5 million

I actually feel like I’m slighting Ray a little bit with that contract. The kid is 25 years old and doesn’t warrant the type of caution teams are generally taking with RBs. He’s not a typical feature-back in that they don’t run him up the middle, in between the tackles all game; he’s a legitimate threat as a receiver, hauling in more passes last year than any of our WRs; and his body type and dedication to working out suggest he won’t have nagging injury concerns like some of the heavier, bruising backs or smaller, scat-backs.

Just for kicks, here is a comparison of Ray Rice’s totals from his first four years compared to Marshall Faulk’s totals from his first four years (Note: Marshall Faulk was a full-time starter as a rookie):

Rushing Yards—

Faulk: 4,001

Rice: 4,377

Rushing Touchdowns—

Faulk: 36

Rice: 24

Receiving Yards—

Faulk: 1,896

Rice: 2,235

Receiving Touchdowns—

Faulk: 5

Rice: 5

(Note: in the three years Rice has been the feature back—2009-2011—he’s recorded 29 rushing and receiving TDs; in Faulk’s first three as the starter, he recorded 29 rushing and receiving TDs.)

Total Yards from Scrimmage—

Faulk: 5,897

Rice: 6,612

Fumbles Lost—

Faulk: 13

Rice: 6

I think Ray and Joe are worth every penny. Making a monetary, long-term commitment to both of them is tantamount to making a long-term commitment to winning.

Finally, the sooner we can get these deals finalized, the sooner we free up legitimate salary cap space to go after remaining free agents and fill the holes we still have after the draft (which will be next week’s article, in case our 7 dedicated readers were curious).