Joe Flacco (6 years, $120 million), Tony Romo (7 years, $119.5 million), Aaron Rodgers (7 years, $130 million), and Matthew Stafford (5 years, $76.5 million) are all NFL quarterbacks who signed hefty extensions this offseason. The way salaries are skyrocketing, it makes the days when franchise QBs like Ben Roethlisberger and Eli Manning signed deals at or less than $15 million seem far gone.

While Roethlisberger and Manning's contracts are still enormous, quarterback salaries are only increasing every year with no end in sight. And as these quarterback contracts get bigger and bigger, the value of having a starting quarterback still on his relatively tiny rookie deal, predetermined by the most recent NFL collective bargaining agreement (for example, 2012 first overall pick Andrew Luck signed a 4 year, $22 million contract), becomes larger and larger as well.

It's not just the elite of the elite who are getting these enormous contracts. Even average (some may say below-average) quarterbacks like the aforementioned Romo and Stafford, as well as Philip Rivers (7 years, $98 million) are signing for huge sums. Teams are willing to pay whatever it takes to acquire or keep a quarterback capable of winning games, because it is evident that teams need them to succeed. Just ask the Bills, Browns, Dolphins, Redskins, Raiders, or multiple other teams whose failures over the past decade have coincided with their struggles to find a winning quarterback.

Compare Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson, who is still on his rookie contract, to the veteran Rivers. Wilson is slated to make $681,085 this year, while Rivers will make $17.1 million. In case you're wondering, that's a difference of about $16.5 million. And some (maybe even most) would argue that Wilson is at least just as good as, if not better than, Rivers.

But the point is, that's $16.5 million extra that the Seahawks have at their disposal because of the new league policy on rookie contracts.

This cap flexibility is an advantage that teams with young quarterbacks (assuming these quarterbacks play well of course) have over teams with older quarterbacks. Even if a veteran like Roethlisberger is better than Wilson right now, many if not most would rather have Wilson simply because his small salary allows the Seahawks to sign more better players via free agency, theoretically making them a better overall team. So the question essentially becomes: Would you rather have Roethlisberger and run-of-the-mill players like Larry Foote, David Johnson, Matt Spaeth, Plaxico Burress, and William Gay, or Wilson and the opportunity to sign high-profile talents like Percy Harvin, Antoine Winfield, Cliff Avril, Michael Bennett, and Kam Chancellor? If your answer is the latter, then you're a fan of the Seahawks' offseason moves, allowed to them by their cap space, compared to Pittsburgh's, a team hindered by Roethlisberger's $102 million contract. The hindering effect of these quarterback salaries on teams is recognized by Tom Brady, who signed an extension in the offseason that will pay him $27 million over three years. That's a far cry from the $20+ million per year most quarterbacks are fetching nowadays. But thanks to Brady's paycut, the Patriots will be free to sign more higher-quality players in the near future. 

Basically, any team with a young winning quarterback should be looking to maximize this financial advantage. The specific teams this situation applies to will probably differ based on personal opinion, but the Seahawks, 49ers, Colts, Redskins, Dolphins, Panthers, and Bengals all come to mind as teams with this inherent advantage.

Therefore, to have the best chance at winning the Super Bowl, these teams would be well-advised to take advantage of the flexibility afforded to them by the quarterback rookie wage scale to create the best overall team possible. Using the Seahawks again as an example, the next two to three years might be the most talented overall roster they have out of the next ten years even if Wilson isn't currently at his peak yet. This is because of players like Harvin, Zach Miller, Sidney Rice, Chancellor and Red Bryant, who Seattle can afford to pay now but probably won't be able to once Wilson signs a significantly larger second contract.

The Seahawks ($3.7 million in cap space), 49ers ($5.4 million), Colts ($6.9 million), and Redskins ($1.4 million) are all doing a reasonably good job of using their cap flexibility to its full advantage, while the Dolphins ($17.6 million), Panthers ($9.7 million), and Bengals ($15.6 million) still have large amounts of cap room and should think about spending more if they want to maximize the window before their young quarterbacks are due extensions. And these teams don't just have to spend in free agency, they could follow suit like the Seahawks did when trading for Harvin, then signing him to a new contract. (Whether that big investment stays healthy, which Harvin is already unable to do after having hip surgery last week, is another article within itself.)

Unless legal measures are taken to hinder the growth of quarterback salaries, there could very well be a point within the next decade where the majority of a team's salary cap is eaten up by the contract of one quarterback. NFL analyst Ross Tucker has another take, suggesting that as quarterback salaries get bigger and bigger, it may be in the best interest of teams to draft multiple quarterbacks every year, hoping at least one of them will turn out to be a good player. All in the name of salary cap flexibility. At the point the NFL is at now, Tucker's suggested route looks not only like a possibility, but a probability. And as this time becomes nearer, the teams with quarterbacks still on rookie deals will have bigger and bigger advantages over teams who don't. 

If salaries grow too astronomic, we may even see a shift away from the quarterback position as the focus of most teams altogether. But for 2013 and the near future, teams with young quarterbacks should take advantage while they still can.