Originally posted by irief:
I think Bosa's our best defender, but having a hard time with paying him more than Donald. AD was by far and away the best defensive player in the nfl when he signed. People were already discussing him as an all time great. Bosa's great, but not head and shoulders better than TJ Watt. In fact I feel they're neck and neck in caliber of DE's, which is why TJs contract was the right benchmark. As great as Bosa is , I don't recall him completely taking over and wrecking games on the level of AD. In fact he had 0 sacks in our last playoff run. Just my two cents.
What am I missing?
It's just the nature of NFL contracts. The latest guy to be signed almost always gets the highest average annual value (AAV) ever.
For example, we just saw Lamar Jackson sign for the highest AAV ever - $52M a year in April. A couple months later, Herbert signed an extension too - his for $52.5M a year. Obviously neither of those guys are better than Mahomes ($45M AAV).
It's basically just a product of the salary cap going up every year. On rare occasions you'll see a guy take a "discount" (Chris Jones reportedly only wants $28M a year); otherwise, the latest extension for a given position is usually the biggest ever.