Time to extend Jason Campbell?

[Schneed10]

Jason Campbell is under contract for two more seasons, 2008 and 2009. His base salaries those years are $1.2 million and $800K respectively.

Deciding whether or not to extend him largely depends upon your opinion of him. Is he your franchise QB of the future or not?

I'd think right now he'd garner a deal similar to the one Derek Anderson just got from the Browns. He got 3 years, $24 million, with $13 million of it guaranteed. Campbell seems like a guy with a ton of promise who you can trust to lead your team, but he hasn't shown enough to commit to him for the long term. Hence the Derek Anderson comparison - a three year deal would seem to fit. I think that's a solid comparison in terms of value.

That said, we couldn't afford that contract on our cap right now. $24 million over 3 years, even if backloaded, is going to eat up too much space this coming season for us to still fit our rookies under the cap. So we'd probably have to wait until 2009 anyway.

But the Browns made that move because Anderson was a pending free agent. Since Campbell's under contract, and given our cap situation, it makes more sense to me that we let him play under his current contract this year. Then in 2009 we'll have one more season on which to judge, and at that point we can make the decision to extend him or move on.