LeSean McCoy cannot get over the Jaguars giving Trevor Lawrence a top-market deal

NFL teams are shelling out big money to keep their quarterbacks. Just recently, Jordan Love and Tua Tagovailoa got top-market deals to remain with the Green Bay Packers, and the Miami Dolphins, respectively. Before that, the Jacksonville Jaguars made Trevor Lawrence one of the highest-paid players in the league, something that former running back LeSean McCoy still cannot fathom.

McCoy made an appearance on the Up & Adams Show and said that he still cannot believe Jacksonville gave Lawrence a top-market extension, pointing out that he isn't thrilled with the discrepancy in quarterback and running back salaries.

"For example, a guy like Trevor Lawrence, who's really not that good. How the hell does he set the market up? You get what I'm saying?" McCoy told host Kay Adams. "It's like they play with the quarterbacks. We live in a real world where Daniel Jones is a starting quarterback and he's making, like, what? $80 million, something like that."

McCoy continued, "Like, how does that even happen? And then your best player, Saquon [Barkley], you get rid of them. We gotta just turn the narrative with the quarterbacks thing because it's like it's getting out of hand."

Kay then points out that replacing a quarterback isn't just that simple. "Shady" tries to counter by saying that Lawrence isn't that much better than Gardner Minshew, citing the latter's traditional stats to back up his claim.

Lawrence, the first overall pick in 2021, got a five-year, $275 million deal in the offseason. While he's coming off a somewhat underwhelming season, he's also played well enough over the last three years to make the Jags believe he's the long-term answer at behind center.

Meanwhile, Minshew has had somewhat of a nomadic career since Jacksonville traded him to the Eagles in 2021. A sixth-round pick in 2019, the Washington State Cougar flashed as a rookie but struggled in 2020. That led the Jags to draft Lawrence first overall.

Apart from spending time in Philly, Minshew played for the Indianapolis Colts in 2023 and is currently competing with sophomore Aidan O'Connell for the starting job with the Las Vegas Raiders.

It's also important to point out that this isn't the first time McCoy takes a shot at Lawrence. He's routinely said that he doesn't think the former Clemson Tiger is that good and has gone as far as saying that the Jacksonville offense revolves around running back Travis Etienne, not Lawrence.

McCoy is right that salaries at other positions should continually go up, and it's true that there are 11 players on the field at any given time, and it takes all of them to win. That said, quarterbacks have the biggest impact on the outcome of a football game. That''s why they get paid more. Simple.

Add the fact that the demand outweighs the supply at quarterback, and they're going to get disproportionately higher than let's say kickers or running backs, who have a short shelf life, compared to other positions. Here's the full exchange between Adams and McCoy.

LeSean McCoy's argument about Jaguars QB Trevor Lawrence falls apart under scrutiny

The whole debate started because LeSean McCoy believes that the New York Giants should've prioritized keeping running back Saquon Barkley, who signed with the Philadelphia Eagles in free agency, over quarterback Daniel Jones. The issue is that Shady is conflating two different arguments.

You can most definitely make the case that letting Barkley walk and giving Jones an extension were poor decisions. On the other hand, his displeasure with quarterbacks getting top-market money is another, different issue.

Teams will pay quarterbacks because it's hard to find one. For example, out of the five drafted in the first round in 2021, only Trevor Lawrence remains with the team that chose him. You could point out that the San Francisco 49ers found Brock Purdy in the seventh round but there are two flaws with that argument.

First, if clubs thought he was a franchise quarterback, he wouldn't have lasted until the seventh round. Two, if there were an abundance of quarterbacks in the later rounds, you would see more clubs finding their starting signal-callers at that point of the draft.

In the end, though, McCoy has seemingly made his mind up about Trevor Lawrence, and the only thing he can do is perform like a top-10 quarterback to silence him and any of his critics.

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