2035 is not a real year
Dylan Brown will be in Newcastle until after the Earth collapses in on itself
I was kind of struggling to pick a topic for this week’s piece based on the round of footy we’d just witnessed. Punching down on the Eels is unbecoming, while I’m not going to go too early on the Roosters looking like Kurt Mann’s eye (although it might be one week away).
Then news filtered through on Monday evening about Dylan Brown accepting a historic contract offer from the Newcastle Knights, news later confirmed by the man himself in an Instagram story (players breaking their own news surely drove Adrian Wojnarowski to retirement).
10 years, $13M. What cost of living crisis?
On the face of it, it’s a monumentally…confusing(?) contract offer from the Knights. Paying a man $1.3M a season is a huge financial and roster construction risk, not least because it greatly inhibits your ability to then fill out the rest of the roster around the margins.
That would be true of a 4-5 year deal, not one that is A LITERAL DECADE LONG. There will be Tigers fans in their mid-late 20s in 2035 who haven’t seen their team make the finals (sorry low blow). A ten year deal is a period of time you rarely see in sports, even in leagues where maximum contract lengths aren’t inhibited1 (unless you’re Todd Boehly signing every south American pre-schooler to a 15 year contract to play for Chelsea).
Patrick Mahomes is ascending rapidly up the charts in terms of “greatest of all time” conversations in NFL circles (disappointing Super Bowl loss this season aside). He signed a 10 year extension back in 2020 for $450M USD according to Spotrac. Now ignore the ludicrous sum of money for a second, that’s not what this is about.
Mahomes is at worst the…third best player of all time in his league? A league that brings in billions of dollars in advertising revenue and hundreds of millions of fans worldwide. He is a large driving force behind the revenue boom the NFL has enjoyed, and even his ten year extension was met with mild surprise at the sheer length of it.
Anyway, back to Brown, the timing of this announcement couldn’t have been more fitting, coming off a majorly disappointing performance for the undermanned Eels in a 38 point hiding in Melbourne. Now, Melbourne never lose in round one, and the Eels were without Mitch Moses, but this was the grand stage for Brown to show the world *something*, especially with his very public contract situation.
He proceeded to show Parramatta that there’s absolutely no reason they should come close to matching a small fortune for his services.
Dylan Brown has been somewhat living off potential for the better part of two seasons now. After a breakout of sorts in 2022, where he helped lead Parramatta to the Grand Final, Brown has stalled as a footballer, willing to float in and out of games and hide behind a more dominant playmaker.
The decision to court Brown from Newcastle is founded in what I would deem sound logic. Newcastle have struggled with their halves for a few seasons now, failing to find a combination worth investing in for the long term, including several failed experiments to move Kalyn Ponga to the five-eighth role.
Guys like Jackson Hastings, Tyson Gamble, Jack Cogger and Will Pryce churned through the machine last year, while this year’s version of the wheel of fortune has spat out former winger Fletcher Sharpe to just run really fast at second receiver instead of really fast on the wing, so clearly they’re out of ideas.
Kalyn Ponga is a dominating force for Newcastle anyway, a player that receives the ball perhaps more than any non-half in the competition. While he may be named at fullback, his role is akin to that of a floating playmaker. Where he goes the team goes, he has the licence to roam both sides and kick when he wants (which should be never because he’s bad at it).
Newcastle’s reliance on Ponga therefore makes the outlay for Brown confusing. Like I mentioned above, I get chasing a premier half on the open market, although Brown hasn’t met that definition for two seasons now, operating on name value alone.
Surely the money set aside for Brown could’ve been used to hunt for a forward, given the Knights will see Leo Thompson exit the Hunter at season’s end for Canterbury. The problem though for Newcastle is that they’ve been left holding the bag with nothing to really spend it on. The list of free agents available for next year is uninspiring from the standpoint of their needs, and who knows what will still be available come November 1st for 2027.
The Knights have now committed, if you believe the figures reported, $2.5M a year (give or take) to Ponga and Brown combined for the next two seasons at least (Ponga is off contract after 2027). That feels like a real go-for-it move for a team that huffed and puffed to beat a plucky but undermanned Tigers outfit in round one.
Is Dylan Brown really the man to give the famous ten year deal to? The Cowboys were laughed at for giving Jason Taumalolo the decade all those years ago, and Taumalolo was the best player in the league at that time, a rare front rower capable of carrying a middling team to a victory off his own back.
Those are the guys you give $1.3M a season to. Those are the guys you give ten year deals to.
Brown doesn’t really fit either category, especially when you place him in the rest of the Knights spine. Ponga is world class, and will still be tasked to be the guy, but then you have Phoenix Crossland at hooker, who is playing above his station as a hard working battering ram, and Fletcher Sharpe should that experiment continue.
It’s possible Ponga re-signs with Newcastle and goes on to do great things with Brown. It’s also possible his dad marches into club HQ with a flamethrower and demands a trade to the Brisbane Lions or some shit.
The Knights have bet the house on Dylan Brown. The LA Dodgers are famous for paying through the nose for talent and figuring it all now later. Except the Dodgers did it with Shohei Ohtani, the rarest individual baseball player of all time, and the Knights did it with a meek secondary playmaker who’s never shown he can be an alpha.
The Knights have paid $13M for a guy who, without Mitchell Moses alongside him, deferred to Ronald Volkman, who spent 2024 being medically retired after failing a medical at the Dragons. Volkman kicked the ball 16 times compared to Brown’s three.
The only theory I will offer in the positive for the Knights is the case study of Jarome Luai last season. A three-time premiership winner entering his negotiations, his reputation was still that of a freeloader on the back of the best team of the modern era, a guy who fit in and who could never fit out.
The Tigers bet the house on Luai being that guy, and Luai bet on himself. With that massive chip on his shoulder, Luai ended up having his best season in first grade, large swathes of it with Nathan Cleary sidelined through hamstring and shoulder injuries.
Luai was able to step up and be the lead playmaker next to Brad Schneider or Jack Cole, while not sacrificing the ad-lib random generator football that makes him dangerous. The result was a fourth premiership, a brilliant State of Origin series for the Blues, captaining Samoa on a historic tour of England, and riding off into the sunset as a Panthers legend and a Tigers saviour.
That’s the blueprint the Knights have copied for Dylan Brown. Just…minus all the previous success.
It’s a lot to pay for a set of plans for a prototype that got rendered obsolete two models ago.
Ten years is a long time. Let’s hope the Knights don’t have to visit the patent office again.
**
Programming Note
An update or two of sorts.
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Baseball is the exception here with dozens of 10+ year deals, including a 15 year contract for Juan Soto to the NY Mets this offseason for more than $700M USD, the largest contract in sports history, but money isn’t real in baseball
Agree with everything said here. Brown has proven time and again he'll go missing when the best playmaker is out injured. And Newcastle's best playmaker takes his fair share of time off. Massive gamble that I think blows up in their faces.
Agree with pretty much all but I do think that Luai had shown glimpses of 'being the guy' in the way he led Samoa in the 2022 World Cup, I don't think Brown has shown anything to even suggest that it interests him.