The Kansas City Chiefs continue their second day of team drills in pads today. Fans will undoubtedly enjoy the day as much as they did Friday. Yet, one of the day’s hot topics will be the new contracts Tua Tagovailoa and Jordan Love signed yesterday. Their latest deals push Patrick Mahomes out of the Top Ten paid quarterbacks in the NFL.
I’m the last person who will question the amount of money Patrick Mahomes earns in the NFL. Nor could I reasonably calculate the money he receives as a pitchman for significant companies and his brand reaching roughly $20 million in annual revenues.
I do know that if Mahomes was still in college, there’s no doubt that he’d receive more NIL money than any other athlete in history. As it stands now in the NFL, if you look at the recent deals of Tua, Jordan Love, and Trevor Lawrence, none have won squats at the NFL level. Combined, they have won a single playoff game to date. That was Lawrence, who capitalized on the Los Angeles Chargers’ second-half collapse in 2022.
Mahomes and the Chiefs restructured his contract and accelerated the payout from 2023 to 2026. In other words, based on the deal he signed with the Chiefs four years ago, the team is paying out the value of those years for $208.1 million through the end of the 2026 season. For those bad at math, that’s roughly $55.2 million, which changes yearly.
Add that to his endorsement, and Mahomes will earn roughly $75 million to play quarterback in the NFL in 2024.
So, if you’re feeling sorry for Mahomes, it’s not necessary. Yet, when you combine all the quarterbacks ahead of Mahomes in salary, none of them has ever won a Super Bowl. Only Joe Burrow left the bunch and lost that chance to the Los Angeles Rams.
Yet that’s not my rub. I don’t understand why NFL owners must pay their franchise quarterback record money with expansive guarantees when they cannot win a Super Bowl.
Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, Jalen Hurts, Justin Herbert, Jared Goff, Lawrence, Tua, and Love are in the $50 million club. They have been to three combined Super Bowls, going 0-3. Granted, they are facing Mahomes in his prime, but why not save the money and use it to build a more complete roster?
Granted, the quarterback play in the NFL is good, but as long as Mahomes is the starting quarterback for the Chiefs, they have less than a 30% chance of defeating him in the AFC Title game.
NFL owners don’t care; they keep hoping their overpaid quarterbacks, who each have significant weaknesses on the field, will magically have a single season of postseason greatness that will rationalize their expenditures.
I’m not knocking the quarterbacks who get paid, but in the case of Love, a one-year starter, you’re telling me he’s worth $55 million per season. Are you crazy?
Since Mahomes arrived in the NFL and signed his record $507 million contract during the pandemic years, his contract has been structured so he can always help the team in cap space should they need cash to pay other players.
Mahomes did that last season, giving the Chiefs over $20 Million in cap space to re-sign Drue Tranquill and Chris Jones.
Again, Mahomes views the higher pay for quarterbacks differently. He’s happy he could increase the position’s price and support other quarterbacks in the league in getting paid.
So, when you watch Mahomes this season, remember he is your quarterback. He is the Michael Jordon of football, and Mahomes could care less about the money because he wants to keep winning Super Bowls.
He also knows that with a massive cap hit in 2025, his contract will be adjusted at some point this season. Mahomes already has generational money, and his family has no financial worries for generations.
I can’t imagine the burden lifted knowing that for your family. After all, Patrick is the leader of his family, and it shows every day on the field what he sacrifices each week to be the very best, and that’s something the other quarterbacks understand as well.
Yet in reality, no matter what, they’ll never be as good, rounded, or successful in the NFL as Mahomes is today and tomorrow.
