I'd definitely pass on paying a premium for a backup QB. I get the need & desire, but once/if he gets paid we're not gonna have the luxury to spend more cap space on that. Maybe you can do it in 2023 when he's in Year 1 of a new deal. I'll roll the dice on Lamar's health and spend that $5-10M of cap space on another position over spending it on whatever the performance difference is between Teddy Bridgewater and a minimum salary backup.
If Lamar is gone, then a higher priced backup who can be a bridge starter early in the season until a rookie is ready, and hopefully a mentor figure in some ways, makes perfect sense.
It's an interesting decision philosophically. What should you be paying the backup QB, the guy who you hope gets zero snaps during the year?
Previously I've been good with paying someone basically the minimum. If your QB gets hurt you are in big trouble if it's more than a couple weeks, so you just need a guy that can fill in for a week or two cause if it's longer you have big problems anyway. Case Keenum was 3.5M against the cap this year for the Bills, Chad Henne was $2M for the Chiefs. Can't expect much better than that so might as well not spend much. Especially if you are paying Lamar 15-20% or whatever, you need to minimize the QB outlay somehow.
Unfortunately Lamar has now missed a lot of time two years running. Does that mean you have to devote even more money to the backup because he's injury prone, and you need to ensure you can stay afloat if he happens to be out for 6 games? To me that's an underrated bad part about the Lamar injuries, now I want to spend more on backup QB and increase the QB outlay even more. But you want to get by with like a $2.5M at most backup if you can. I don't want to be spending $7M on a backup if I'm paying Lamar market prices, that's just a waste of a good player if Lamar is healthy.
Now is Huntley good enough to be that $2.5M guy? Mariota for example cost $4.2 this past year and $14 next year but he'll surely be cut. I think Huntley isn't as bad as he seemed this year. Last year he was alright, had them in position to beat two top contenders in the Rams and Packers. This year he wasn't nearly as good but still was good enough to win a playoff game IMO if not for the sneak, I don't think you can expect much more than that from your backup. Plus he was hurt, when you have marginal arm strength as is then you have a bad shoulder that really drops you out of being a capable NFL player, if he's healthy I think he could be adequate. Adequate not that I think he's very good, I think the bar is just pretty low for backup QB. I wouldn't consider him whatsoever as a starter. But as a backup he could be fine again if healthy and if pretty cheap ~2M. I mean as early as week 1 national people were suggesting the Cowboys trade for him to start, he wasn't thought of that poorly until the end of this season, when again he was hurt a lot of the time.
So I think I'd be alright with having Huntley back for cheap, assuming we keep Lamar. I think you aren't going to get enough better while spending more money. If Lamar isn't back it's a different story and you want some sort of vet presence with whatever young guy you get.