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Brandon Marshall is not the “highest paid receiver in NFL history”

Back in early March, various members of the media (us included) got caught up in the notion that Antrel Rolle of the Giants had become the highest-paid safety in NFL history.

The only problem? He quite possibly isn’t.

So while we learned a valuable lesson via that exercise, there’s still a tendency by some in the media to trumpet a new contract as the biggest one ever paid at a given position. The latest example? New Dolphins receiver Brandon Marshall.

His four-year, $47.5 million extension carries a record average of nearly $12 million per year, but only as to the new years. Marshall signed on Tuesday a one-year, $2.5 million contract. So the full value of the contract is five years, $50 million.

That’s a $10 million average. And that’s the same average receiver Larry Fitzgerald generated more than two years ago on a four-year, $40 million deal.

Then there’s the notion that Marshall received $24 million in guaranteed money. But Fitzgerald got $32.1 million.

Breaking it down by year, Marshall gets $4.8 million per year in guaranteed cash. Fitzgerald gets more than $8 million.

So Fitzgerald’s deal remains superior -- especially since the 26-year-old Fitzgerald will be in line for a new contract after the 2011 season, when the 26-year-old Marshall is completing only the second year of his five-year commitment.

We realize that expressing contemporaneous skepticism regarding information spoon fed by an agent isn’t the best way to ensure that the agent will continue to spoon-feed information, but it’s definitely the best way to serve the folks who are reading this stuff and relying on it to be accurate.