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Totally agree with the OP. QB is obviously a position where if you truly have a great one, you pay them whatever. For all intents and purposes, you can’t win a SB without a really good one, and it helps even more to have a great one. Mahomes is clearly headed towards greatness so he will be the top paid QB and that’s fine. He may also help us save some money elsewhere because FAs will want to come play with him just for the chance at doing great things. We saw it with Manning and the Broncos and Brady with the Pats. Those teams don’t hand out many top contracts, but got reasonable deals for some really good players because of who plays QB.
As for other positions, I think it comes down to how they impact other players on the team. The concept being that guys who allow you to get by with leaser talent elsewhere are more valuable and can be paid more because you save elsewhere. Hill is a good example. His speed and quickness draws a lot of attention away from other positions. When used as a decoy, he is very effective at affecting the defense. He is also able to produce even after teams started to realize his ability and game plan for it.
Affecting the opposing teams’ plans AND producing is a good indicator that a player is worth the money. Age and injury history should factor in and also trade value. If a player can be traded for multiple first or second rounders, then it really makes it harder to justify, in my opinion.
The Khalil Mack trade is one that I personally agreed with for the Raiders. I just didn’t see the kind of player that has the characteristics above. I think that in the end we will say that the Raiders will, or could, have gotten more talent with the picks than keeping Mack. They might screw up the picks, but I think good tenant will be available.
There is also the question of availability when handing out top contracts. How many games played do you get for your salary cap dollar? You are investing a lot of money in one player and when that one player is injured, 100% of that money is injured. If you have two players splitting that money and one gets hurt, only 50% is injured. You still have the other 50% working for you. If injury probability is the same risk for all players, the probability that one player will be injured is higher than the probability that two other players will both be injured at the same time. It puts the entire team at risk when huge amounts of cap space are tied up with a few star players. When those guys go out, not only are they replaced with less than average guys, but the previously average guys around them play worse than usual because they try to compensate but can’t and make mistakes as a result.
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