Jake Delhomme just got a $20m. guarantee. And Jerry Richardson may have just crippled his franchise for years to come.

This move is eerily similar to George Shinn handing $100m. to Larry Johnson back in the heyday of the Hornets. The message the owners sent to the rest of their rosters, “This is my guy. The rest of you, not so much.”

There is a quaint bit of boldness in such moves that you admire, as well as the loyalty it displays in a normally cut-throat biz. But overpaying for talent — and not just by a little atta-boy number — kills any chance of working within finite salary caps to field the best team you can.

Besides, if you don’t think there isn’t more than a little Southern passive-aggressive “bless his heart” directed at Julius Peppers in Jake’s outsized deal you just do not get the role massive egos and damaged psyches play in this world. This coulda been you, the Big Cat is saying.

Right now the immediately impact is that the Panthers will likely have to shed talent and contracts elsewhere to be able to make Jake’s deal work. Yes, by putting more of his money in a signing bonus rather than salary the Panthers get short-term cap relief worth $2m. or so. But it is a five-year deal.

That’s why I wouldn’t be surprised to see Josh McCown move on. The guy now knows he’ll never start ahead of healthy Jake, no matter what. McCown got paid $4.5m. last year. You know who got paid less? Bills QB J.P. Losman.

See, this is why Charles Chandler and crew at the Uptown paper and Pat Yasinskas at S-PIN are foolish to dismiss a report from the official Bills site that the Panthers were sniffing around Losman. Losman was paid $3.3m. last year.

Should McCown, who has 31 starts under his belt, make it clear he wants out, Carolina might have another cheaper veteran option out there in Losman, or will have at least started the process of setting the market value for backups who know they sitting behind a $20m. incumbent. Matt Moore I think they can string along at very low cap number for another year, particularly if they open up the #2 slot for competition with a new guy.

This is just one bit of the potential fallout from over-paying for Jake. DL and OL depth could be impacted down the road as well.