QB market value

Contracts: Over The Cap's contract data as republished by nflverse, joined to our QB pages by player ID. Training uses open-market signings and extensions only, one per player per signing: no rookie deals, practice-squad call-ups, or the first short deal a quarterback signs after being released partway through a big contract (those are priced around money the old team still owes).

Inputs: the Margin QB Grade over the last 18 league weeks and the 18 before that, current form, plays in each window and in the last 5 weeks, games missed injured, age, and whether it would be a second contract. For a past deal the window ends with the season before he signed; for a current quarterback it ends with the latest week.

Two models averaged: a gradient-boosted model and a linear one, each predicting a deal's APY as a share of the top of the QB market when it was signed: the average APY of the five biggest QB contracts signed in the three years before it. Market rates come out in dollars for a deal signed this offseason. We measure the market in dollars rather than as a share of the cap because the dollar version tracked the most recent top deals far better in testing (on the 4 top deals signed in 2025 and 2026, $0.7M high on average, against $7.8M), and three years is recent enough to follow the cap's growth while deep enough not to depend on the two or three big deals signed in any one year.

Injuries: the NFL's weekly injury reports, 2015 on. A missed game counts as injured if he was listed Out or Doubtful, or was listed Out earlier in the same run of missed games (players on injured reserve drop off the report). Past deals and current quarterbacks are treated the same way.

Not priced: a quarterback with fewer than 60 plays in the last 5 league weeks and no injury listing (he isn't playing), a quarterback on a rookie deal who missed 4 or more games with no injury listing, and a quarterback on the short deal he signed after being released.

What a verdict compares: his contract's APY as signed, the figure Over The Cap quotes, against his market rate. Old deals aren't restated to today's cap, and the cap hit and remaining cash aren't used because they swing with how a deal is built. A deal signed this year gets no verdict, because the market set that price months ago.

The range and the calls: the range is how far real deals landed from the model in testing (see "How well it prices real deals"), with a floor because the test rests on few top deals. A verdict says "paid above market" or "paid below market" only when the gap is bigger than the range, otherwise "within range". Below the market-rate tier shown in that section the model ran high in testing, so there it never says "paid below market" or "within range"; anything short of "paid above market" is "no call".

Games: the last 18 league weeks, the same window for every quarterback. Games missed while listed Out or Doubtful on the NFL injury report don't count against him: his plays are measured per healthy game. The table also shows his cap hit this season and next season's cash for context; "not guaranteed" marks money a team could walk away from.

What it doesn't know: injured-reserve stints that never appeared on a report, guarantees and contract length, the supporting cast, team need, and how many starting quarterbacks are on the market.