NFL players’ salaries are among the highest in professional sports. Including bonuses and incentives, average annual pay for NFL players comes in around $1 million. Wide receivers earn the most among all positions, with star receivers such as Calvin Johnson earning $18 million per year on average.
The starting salary for NFL players at their initial training camp can be quite significant. For example, wide receivers and defensive backs will earn as much as $2 million in their rookie season, while quarterbacks and running backs will start with bonuses of around $3 million or less. In general, salaries for rookies are much higher than salaries for veteran players
Athletes’ salaries vary depending on the type of position they play and the team they play for. The average NFL salary is around $1.9 million per year, but there are a few players earning significantly more than that each week. Following is a list of the starting salaries for professional football players, including those in the National Football League and Canadian Football League.
Starting Salary For NFL Player Overview
When it comes to how much a football player makes in a year, the answer is simple: it depends. The salary of an NFL player is determined by a number of factors, including the player’s position, experience level (rookie vs. veteran), and performance on the field. The average salary for an NFL player in 2021 was $2.5 million.
Of course, not all players are paid the same amount—just like any other job in the world. For example, if you work at McDonald’s as an entry-level employee and you’re new to the company, then you’ll probably make less than someone who has been there for years and has had time to climb up the ranks. On average, though, as long as your performance is good enough to keep you employed at McDonald’s (meaning that you’re not getting fired), then you’ll probably see your pay increase over time as you gain experience and seniority within the company.
The same goes for football players—they get paid more as they become better at their jobs. A rookie player may make $1 million per year while veterans can earn upwards of $20 million per season!
What is the minimum NFL salary?
In the NFL, the minimum salary depends on how many years of service a player has and is dictated by the almighty Collective Bargaining Agreement. If you kicked off your rookie season in 2021, you’re going to make a minimum of $660,000 (in 2020, that number was $610,000 and is slated to rise to $705,000 in 2022).
Once a player hits four years in the league, they’ll rest easier knowing their minimum salary is $900,000. However, if they can’t perform well enough to get a merit-based raise, they’ll have to wait until their seventh season to finally crack the million-dollar mark (a number that currently sits at $1.075 million). You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who’d complain about making that much on a yearly basis, but you’ve also Officially Peaked once you’ve reached that point, as you won’t benefit from any CBA-mandated raises for the rest of your career.
Who is the lowest-paid NFL player?
At the start of the 2021 season, there were over forty players making the league minimum. Chances are you only know one of these dudes if they play for your favorite team (and even, then it’s probably a stretch). How many Packers fans out there know who Chauncey Rivers is? Hey Lions fans, any of you big Charlie Taumoepeau heads? If so, I’d love to know how to pronounce his last name.
Now, seeing as how we’re talking NFL contracts, figuring out who the lowest-paid player is fairly complicated, as it requires you to wade in the murky waters of the practice squad ecosystem (a topic which I’ll elaborate on in a bit—and if you want to see just how murky they can be, there’s no better example to examine than the recent case of tight end Tyrone Swoopes.
Swoopes was first signed by the Seattle Seahawks as an undrafted free agent in 2017. He spent three years with the team that saw him repeatedly bounce back and forth between the 53-man roster and the practice squad, which ultimately netted him $495,065.
After spending a little over a week in Philadelphia in an unsuccessful bid to make the regular season roster in 2020, he headed to Washington D.C. to serve as a member of the Football Team’s scout team (and made $16,000 in the process). He did sign a contract worth $780,000 in the offseason, but none of it was guaranteed, and he all but guaranteed he’d receive none of it when he declined to show up to training camp over the summer.
To complicate the matter further, players with a multi-year deal can technically make less than the minimum NFL salary depending on how their contracts are structured. For instance, Patriots wide receiver Jakobi Meyers signed a three-year, $1.765 million deal with New England in 2019 that paid him $495,000 for his first year of service compared to $850,000, he’s slated to make this season.
I randomly picked Meyers to use as an example because he’s on my fantasy team (I would not recommend picking up a guy who just set the NFL record for most career receiving yards without scoring a single touchdown), but it just highlights the reality that trying to make sense of the intricacies of NFL salaries is easier said than done.
How much is the average NFL player paid?
Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs might be having a season that could best be described as “Not Great!,” but at least that curly-haired gunslinger is getting paid handsomely. By making a league-high $45 million a year, he sits on the Elite end of the NFL salary scale compared to the likes of Bengals linebacker Jon Bachie, who is pulling in $780,000 this season.
However, anyone who falls squarely in the middle of that range is doing pretty well for themselves. According to OverTheCap, the average NFL salary is about $20 million. Unsurprisingly, most of the highest-paid players are quarterbacks, which is why it should come as no surprise it’s also the most lucrative position in the league, as the average QB’s salary is $5.8 million.
As for the rest of the offense, you’ve got:
- Wide receivers: $2.5 million,
- Tight ends: $1.9 million,
- Running backs: $1.7 million.
- Offensive linemen: $2.8 million (it’s worth noting left tackle is the most lucrative position in the trenches with a $3.7 million average)
The best defensive players in the league don’t even come close to matching their offensive counterparts, as T.J. Watt currently leads the pack with his $28 million contract. However, as you can see guys, at every position on the opposite side of the ball do pretty well for themselves across the board:
- Defensive ends: $2.9 million
- Defensive tackle: $2.7 million
- Linebackers: $2.4 million
- Cornerbacks: $2.2 million
There are also kickers and punters, who earn an average of $1.8 million and 1.4 million, respectively—and no, I didn’t forget about long snappers and their comparatively paltry $900,000 salary.
How much are NFL practice squad players paid?
Ah yes, practice squad players; the ones you hear about from time to time when they get promoted to the active roster to make a brief appearance in our lives before vanishing into obscurity again.
Of course, a team’s practice squad can also be a landing spot for veterans looking to make a team. More often than not, it doesn’t work out all that well but every once in a while it does. For example, Le’Veon Bell joined the Ravens practice squad earlier this year and was then promoted to the active roster following a string of injuries to the team’s running backs.
Because we’re all about salaries here, Bell’s base is $1.075 million, but that’s obviously not even close to what your typical practice squad player will make.
Just like the real, actual players that they aren’t, practice squad players are separated into categories based on how long they’ve played. The first consists of rookies and players with less than two accrued seasons (defined as being on an active roster for at least six regular season games). If you’re part of that club, you’ll net a minimum player salary of $9,200 per week (or $165,600 over the course of a full season).
Those who’ve accrued enough time to reach the next tier will net an NFL practice squad salary of no less than $14,000 a week (or $252,000 per season). To make matters even more confusing, there are players who practice with the 53-man roster but aren’t on the active roster come gameday. While they’re technically practice squad players, they can get paid like active roster players (but you know, not like well-compensated active roster players).
Again, those numbers are nothing to scoff at, but when you consider Statista estimates the average NFL career only lasts around three seasons, it’s not going to hurt to have a backup plan.
