The lowest salary for a National Football League (NFL) player is $480,000 per year. This amount is for players in their first year of service, and it increases every year based on the number of years that player has been in the league.
Lowest Salary For Nfl Player
Lowest paid player, Tyrone Swoopes, does not quite cut it on the NFL active roster, but makes more than the minimum average salary of a practice squad player.
In professional sports, a salary cap is a wage cap that imposes a limit on the total amount of money a team can spend on their players’ salaries. It serves as both a per-player limit and a total limit, or either. The NFL’s cap is a hard cap, meaning that teams are forbidden from going above it, and the salary floor is also a hard floor. Contract cancellations, loss of draft picks and fines of up to $5 million are all penalties inflicted if caps are violated.
NFL Salary Cap
The NFL salary cap increases every year, with 2021’s floor set at $180 million; a $5 million increase since last year’s previous agreement between the league and the NFL Players Association. Since 2012 the addition has been at least $10 million per year. Read more on NFL 2021: salary cap space, highest players salary and contracts here.
How much is the average NFL player paid?
According to overthecap.com, a site that tracks NFL contracts, 34 NFL players currently make $20 million a season in average annual salary.
To top it all, the highest paid player in the league right now makes a $45 million ‘per season’ in average annual salary. And to no one’s surprise, that would be Patrick Mahomes, the Kansas City Chiefs QB.
A respectable amount for a player with Mahomes’ caliber. But not every player is Patrick Mahomes or Tom Brady. There are still a great deal of players who are not making it big on salaries this season, even with the increase of the NFL minimum salary through TV contracts.
The NFL’s minimum player salary
As per the league’s Collective Bargaining Agreement established in March 2020, NFL players’ minimum salary measured up to $660,000 in the 2021 season. Since 2011, salaries have risen by nearly $300,000 in 10 years, according to Statistica.
As of Sept.10, 2021, over 41 players are making the minimum salary, which went up from $610,000 last year.
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Some of these players include Cleveland Browns defensive lineman Malik McDowell, who was a 2017 NFL Draft second-round pick and who also had multiple run-ins with the law. There’s also second-year undrafted running back Adrian Killins. However, the lowest-paid NFL player award goes to the Seattle Seahawks’ tight end Tyrone Swoopes.
The Lowest-paid NFL player: Tyrone Swoopes
2017-2019 Seattle Seahawks
The 26-year-old former Texas Longhorn quarterback was drafted by the Seahawks in 2017 as an undrafted free agent. He was continuously bounced on and off Seattle’s practice squad, and he only earned $27,353 with them in 2017. He slightly earned more in 2019, jumping up to $38,000.
Between 2017 and 2019, he only managed two receptions for 28 yard on 109 offensive snaps in all his seven regular-season games. He was making $174,706 with the Hawks before he parted ways after the 2019 season.
Philadelphia Eagles
Roster Moves: #Eagles have signed TE Tyrone Swoopes and waived/injured WR Rob Davis. pic.twitter.com/qgtjKtpGg9— Philadelphia Eagles (@Eagles) August 25, 2020
Swoopes became a free agent on March 18, 2020. He had tryouts with the Arizona Cardinals and with the Jacksonville Jaguars, but ended up signing with the Philadelphia Eagles on August 23, 2020. He was then waived on September 3, 2020 and shortly after signed with the Washington Football Team in December. Swoopes spent a few weeks on Washington’s practice squad in 2020, but was not called up to the active roster. He was making $16,800 in 2020.
Why is Swoopes not making the NFL minimum salary?
It might seem confusing as to why Swoopes is not making the minimum NFL salary, but he actually is, only as a practice squad player.
This title refers to a player who trains, prepares and practices with the 53-man roster, but is just not on the active list. A squad player usually falls under one of two categories: a rookie with no accrued season of experience, or a player who was on the active list for less than nine regular-season games during their only accrued season(s). In Swoopes’ case, he falls under the second bracket.
How many players are on an NFL practice squad?
NFL teams benefit from practice squad players as they allow them to be more flexible with their roster, and help better prepare younger or less experienced athletes with the system. Teams are allowed to carry up to 16 players on their practice, as of 2020.
How much are NFL practice squad players paid?
Rookies and players with two or fewer accrued NFL seasons make at least $9,200 a week. ‘Accrued’ stands for when a player is on full-time pay status for a minimum of six regular-season games. This means that these players would be making what’s equivalent to $165,600 for 18 weeks spent on the practice squad.
On the other hand, players who have accrued at least three seasons make a minimum of $14K per week and $252K for the whole season. As opposed to practice squad players, a rookie on an active roster would have a minimum salary this season of $660K.
For Tyrone Swoopes, being the least paid NFL player could seem like an unfortunate title. Nonetheless, he is actually set to make $780,000 in 2021 as a free agent, and he is making more than the average salary for a practice squad player. The only bad news for him is that he has yet to receive any of that salary.
It slightly gets worse. Throughout all his five NFL seasons, Swoopes has not been guaranteed any of the salaries he signed for on his contracts.
Based on stories in the press, you might believe all NFL players are getting paid millions of dollars and retiring rich. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Sure, the star quarterbacks receive contracts in excess of $15 million per year, but the rest of the players are not so fortunate. So, which positions get paid the least? First, a little background.
Job Description
The NFL has a total of 1,696 active players and 32 teams. Each team plays 16 regular-season games over a 17-week period, plus four preseason games. Spring training begins in mid-July for all rookies and veterans.
Education Requirements
Although the NFL does not require a formal education, all of the players eligible for the draft did attend a college.
According to the National Collegiate Athletics Association, approximately 73,000 students play football in college. In its most recent draft, the NFL offered contracts to 253 players. This puts the likelihood of coming out of college and playing in the NFL at 1.6 percent. The odds of a high school player making it to the NFL is only 0.2 percent.
Industry and Salaries
The usual practice of quoting the average salaries of NFL players is misleading and does not reflect the earnings of most of the players. An example will help to clarify this: Let’s say you’re in a bar with 10 football players. One of the players has a contract worth $20 million per year. The other nine guys are not so fortunate; they each earn a salary of $75,000. The average salary for all 10 players is $2,075,000. So, which one of the players makes this average salary? Answer: None of them. The average pay of NFL players gets distorted because of the lofty salaries drawn by a few star quarterbacks and wide receivers.
The more practical metric to use is the median, which is the midpoint of a set of values. In the example above, the median income is $75,000. This makes more sense. Using the median incomes for comparisons, the lowest paid positions become clearer. The actual lowest paid position changes slightly each year as contracts change, but these three are always the among the lowest: fullback, tight end and long snapper.
The current position earning the least pay is the fullback, with a median income of $616,000. Why is this position the lowest paid? Today, passing plays dominate professional football. In the past, NFL teams used a fullback on 40 percent of their plays on offense. That number is now down to 11 percent. Fullbacks are paid less because teams don’t need them as much.
The next lowest paid position is the tight end, with a median income of $630,000. Tight ends are another victim of the increase in percentage of passing versus the decline in running plays. Quarterback would rather throw to their wide receivers instead of the tight ends.
The final member of the least-paid positions is the long snapper, with a median wage of $634,000. His salary is low because he simply doesn’t have many plays in a game. A long snapper is considered a member of special teams, because he has to deliver the ball farther on snaps, with accuracy and perfect timing. He is only in the game for kicking and punting plays, which means he has to snap the ball around six to ten times per game.
Years of Experience
Not only do fullbacks and tight ends have comparatively low salaries, they also represent some of the shortest careers in the NFL. The average playing life for a fullback is 3.9 years. A tight end plays an average of 3.8 years. On the other hand, the lack of constant physical contact gives the long snapper one of the longest average playing careers, at 5.7 years.
Job Growth Trend
Unless the NFL decides to add new teams, the number of active players is limited to 1,696. However, because of the short playing careers of most positions, around 250 new recruits get drafted out of college each year to replace the retiring players. Playing professional football in the NFL can be an exciting and financially rewarding career. A few positions do pay multimillion-dollar salaries, but even the lower paying positions are paid more than a half-million dollars per year.
