Joe Burrow will get a new contract from the Cincinnati Bengals soon. The superstar quarterback is entering his fourth NFL season, meaning he has just one season and his fifth-year option left on his rookie deal. This offseason is traditionally when top QBs get their first massive extensions, so a new Joe Burrow Bengals contract could be coming any time now. Ahead of that, let’s make a prediction about what that next deal looks like and if Burrow will become the highest-paid quarterback in the NFL.

Predicting Joe Burrow's next Bengals contract

The next franchise quarterback contract extension is usually the biggest franchise quarterback contract extension. Each superstar to get a new deal usually eclipses the player who got theirs before them, resets the market, and becomes the highest-paid quarterback in the NFL.

This happened with Dak Prescott, Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Jalen Hurts, and Lamar Jackson in recent years.

There are different ways to reset the market, though. QBs can set new marks in annual average value, signing bonus, or guaranteed money. When you are a top-10 signal-caller in the league, like Hurts or Jackson, the next contract often exceeds all others in one of those categories so the player and their agents can walk away touting a historic deal.

However, when you are a top-three QB in the league, the extension should set marks in multiple categories, if not all.

Currently, Burrow is a top-three QB in the league.

The former LSU Tiger is 24-17-1 as a starter with 11,774 passing yards, a 68.2% completion rate, and 82 passing touchdowns in 42 games. And that’s with a torn ACL just 10 games into his rookie season.

Most importantly, he is 5-2 in the playoffs, reaching the Super Bowl and the AFC Championship Game in the last two seasons.

All this means that Burrow is one of the three best QBs in the NFL right now. He’s not ahead of the Kansas City Chiefs Patrick Mahomes, who already has two Super Bowls. However, it’s fair to argue whether Burrow or the Buffalo Bills Josh Allen occupies the No. 2 spot.

As one of the best QBs in the league, Burrow should get a massive new deal soon. That said, there is an impediment to him getting the deal he deserves. That’s the Cincinnati Bengals organization and owner Mike Brown.

Most NFL teams are owned by billionaires or by the scions of great fortunes. However, Paul Brown, Mike’s father, was an NFL player and coach who fronted an ownership group that started the Bengals. And Mike basically went from college into the Bengals organization. So, he is not Jerry Jones, Stan Kroenke, or Walmart heirs-level rich. His money comes almost exclusively from the team, which gives the Bengals a lot less financial freedom than other teams.

In the past, Brown has been accused of being cheap — and some of that is fair, as he just built an indoor practice facility in recent years. However, some of that is just based on his financial limitation.

In recent years, though, the Joe Burrow effect has helped the team flourish financially. Just the excess playoff revenue alone is huge for the franchise. And as the team gets better new business opportunities are emerging. For example, in 2022, the team signed a 16-year stadium naming rights deal with Paycor for a massive, undisclosed sum.

This all adds up to the fact that the team, despite its penny-pinching history is set up to pay Burrow this offseason.

So, without further ado, the prediction for the next Joe Burrow contract is a six-year, $330 million contract with a $73 million signing bonus, $100 million guaranteed at signing, and practical guarantees of $190 million.

Now, let’s break this down.

The $330 million works out to a $55 million AAV, which is the highest number ever, surpassing Lamar Jackson’s $52 million and making Burrow the highest-paid quarterback. And the $73 million signing bonus also surpasses Jackson’s $72.5 million. The guarantees are where it gets interesting.

NFL teams have to put all guaranteed money into an escrow account to protect it for the player. The $190 million guaranteed will allow Burrow to slot in second, ahead of Jackson and only behind Deshaun Watson’s outlier $230 million guaranteed. However, at signing the Bengals will only do $100 million guaranteed, which will put Burrow eighth between Allen and Prescott (or if they guaranteed $100,038,597, he can jump $1 ahead of Allen).

Then, in two or three years, the parties can structure the contract so that the next $90 million of guarantees will kick in, and the Bengals will have no practical way to get out of the deal before that.

There are the numbers for the next Joe Burrow contract, so now the team must pull the trigger and make the deal. The longer they wait, the higher these numbers are going to go, and that’s not good for Cincinnati.