Breaking down Vic Beasley’s Tennessee Titans contract and the cost of sacks

How much is a sack worth?

When you sign a free agent to a new contract, ideally the contract reflects the market value of that player. So how do we figure out if a deal is good or bad?

For a DPR like Beasley, I think you are trying to make a deal that is based around the sacks. Getting to the QB is basically the job description, so why not use contracts from pass rushers around the league to judge value.

So, I looked at every EDGE in the NFL that had 10 or more sacks in 2019 then I removed players who were on their rookie deals. After sorting that out I had 11 players which feels like a good sample size.

While not perfect, I decided that the best thing to do next was:

-Add all of their sacks from 2019 together.

-Look at the AAV of the contracts of those players.

-Then I divided that the total sacks by the total AAV of those players and I came up with (insert drum roll here): $1.1 million per sack.

So in terms of a pure pass rusher, you should try to end up with a contract that fits that math, which is very easy when you are talking about a player like Beasley on a one year deal.