So welcome to Inside the Huddle with Darren Fletcher and Neil Reynolds as we continue the state of the franchises.

Busy week though this one, Neil, because the teams have had to put the franchise tags on various players,

which has changed the landscape somewhat with regards to who are going to be free agents who aren't

and some of the potential deals that might occur because of it. We'll get to that in a second,

but you've got to start, I suppose, with Joe Flacco's contract, haven't you?

Which makes him the highest paid player in the league. He's just won the Super Bowl MVP award.

What's a great time to need a new deal. That's exactly right.

You know, it's all about timing, it's about leverage, it's about your value to the team,

and Joe Flacco has timed it to perfection. Six years, it's $120.6 million. They've managed

to spread that out quite nicely. I think they, because of the salary

cap, it's not a big hit in the first couple of years and then I wonder if they'll renegotiate. But,

you know, for Flacco, it was, you know, it was about proving yourself that they tried to get a contract

done last year and everything worked out for him. You could say maybe he's not worth that top

money right now. He's proven he's a championship winning quarterback. He can win on the road in the

playoffs. He can throw every pass in the book. It would have been very hard for the Ravens to argue

against him. And I think they knew that if they let him hit free agency or be a

restricted free agent or whatever it would have been there were teams out there the Cleveland

Browns had a lot of money to spend there were teams out there who probably would break the bank to

get Joe Flacco okay so let's have a look at what it actually means because when you see the gaudy

numbers to start off with 120 million dollars it's not actually that. I mean, how much of this is guaranteed

and what kind of financial impact is this likely to have on the short term, the medium term,

and the long term for Baltimore? Well, yeah, I mean, like you said, they've spread it out. I think the numbers for guarantees, was it about 50-odd million, I think, was guaranteed.

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