DeShazier price index

If we take John DeShazier's headline "New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees is worth his weight in gold" literally, then this whole contract negotiation should just be a matter of plugging numbers into a formula, right?

Let's see, this afternoon gold is trading at about $1830.00 per ounce.



Drew Brees is listed at 209 pounds. Putting on our Glenn Beck thinking specs..



...and getting out our Windows calculator app, we'll just punch that up and... okay so the Saints owe Brees about $6,119,520.00. Let's get his agent in here and... oh wait a sec.

It also seems logical that the new deal will average somewhere around $18 million per year. That was the average of Tom Brady's four-year, $72 million extension with the New England Patriots in 2009. And it was the average of the new five-year, $90 million deal Peyton Manning signed with the Indianapolis Colts this summer.

Of course, there is still a lot of wiggle room in the finer details. For instance, Manning's deal averages $23 million per year over the first three years. And Brady's deal actually amounted to a five-year, $78.5 million contract since it included the final year of his previous contract. That brought the average down to $15.7 million per year.

DeShazier might need to re-work the headline there. Or at least come up with a new, more precious baseline for calculating Brees' worth. Happy's gift cards, maybe?