Kolb is now the man and will expect to be paid as such.


Now that the Eagles have traded Donovan McNabb to the Washington Redskins (words I never thought I'd have to write), the next move for both teams will be to sign their new quarterbacks to extensions immediately.

Les Bowen of the Philadelphia Daily News isn't so sure that the Redskins and McNabb are making progress on a deal, but there's no doubt the Eagles will want to get Kevin Kolb locked up as soon as possible.

Both sides are ready to move on and look forward to next year, but they can't begin to do that until an extension is in place. The Eagles are quick to lock up their young players, so I would expect the Birds to have a deal in place with Kolb before the draft on April 22nd.

The numbers of the deal will probably be fairly unspectacular. Kolb will be paid like a starting quarterback, but he will probably only get middle-of-the-pack money since there's no past performance to work from.

The high-end quarterbacks are making between $10-15 million in base salary, so I would expect Kolb to receive $7-9 million annually in base salary with incentives and escalators woven throughout.

The length, on the other hand, would be almost impossible for me to guess. It wouldn't surprise surprise me if the contract is as little as five years, or as long as eight to 10 years.

One thing we can almost be certain of is that this will not be an extension, it will be a brand new contract. Kolb's current deal is set to pay him about $1.3 million in 2010, so there's no way he'll play for substantially less than what his backup, Michael Vick, will be making.

If the discussions lasted until even the draft, I'd be very surprised. The Eagles partially took care of the quarterback uncertainty, so now all that's left is to give Kolb the contract he deserves as the starter and look ahead to the draft and retooling the defense.

Perhaps, looking back on it now, Garry Cobb's source might have actually known something the rest of us didn't.