FanHouse

The Cleveland Browns finally came to a contract agreement with quarterback Brady Quinn today, and on first glance, it looked like the Notre Dame quarterback got more money than he deserved, as the 22nd overall pick.

NFL contracts are complex documents, and the publicly available numbers are sometimes misleading, but here's a look at the contract numbers that have been reported for the players chosen with picks 18-22 (all players signed five-year deals):

18. Leon Hall, CB, Bengals: $13.6 million total, $8.2 million guaranteed.
19. Michael Griffin, CB, Titans: Total not available, $7.5 million guaranteed.
20. Aaron Ross, CB, Giants: $13 million total, $8 million guaranteed.
21. Reggie Nelson, S, Jaguars: $13.2 million total, $7.1 million guaranteed.
22. Brady Quinn, QB, Browns: $20 million total, $30 million possible with incentives, $7.75 million guaranteed.

If those numbers are accurate, that's a phenomenal base value, but I don't think the numbers are accurate. Pro Football Talk reports that given the amount of money the Browns had available in the rookie salary pool ($1.14 million), and the rule that the value of rookie deals can't increase by more than 25 percent a year, there's really no way the Browns could have given Quinn a base value of $20 million on a five-year deal.

Bottom line, it appears that Quinn got guaranteed money in approximately the range you'd expect for the 22nd pick. The figures reported on his base salary are so fishy that it's really impossible to evaluate them. Quinn may have gotten slightly more than the 22nd overall pick usually gets, but this isn't the Top 10 money that some suggested he could receive.