NFL

What is the average NFL player salary in 2024?

After another NFL salary cap hike for 2024 the size of players’ contracts is on the spotlight once again. But players’ earnings may be less that you’d think.

JAMIE SQUIREAFP

The NFL is one of the most widely-watched, closely-followed, and well-financed competitions in the world of spots. Top players can sign contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars, often receiving lucrative sponsorship endorsements on the side to compliment their vast playing salaries.

But those eye-watering sums are balanced out by a number of other factors, including the instability of a career in professional sports and the short duration of their time at the top level. Most NFL players have just a few years to earn enough money to set them up for life, often finding themselves essentially out of work by the age of 30.

With such high stakes, these elite athletes earning billions of dollars for the league are within their rights to demand appropriate recompense. Here’s how the average NFL salary looks for 2024...

What is the average NFL salary?

ProFootballNetwork reports that the average salary for an NFL player is around $2.8 million per year. However, this figure is not reflective of the wage that most players signed to NFL teams can expect to earn. The vast salaries offered to star players, particularly quarter-backs, drag the league-wide figure far higher than the majority of players will ever receive.

The most coveted quarter-backs are regularly offered nine-figure deals but that is not the experience of the majority.KEVIN C. COXAFP

For example, in 2022 the average salary for an NFL quarter-back was $7 million. The top ten most expensive contracts currently running in NFL are all for quarter-backs. The mammoth $450 million, ten-year deal tying Patrick Mahomes to the Kansas City Chiefs is the biggest of the lot.

The top ten highest-paid quarter-backs got an average salary of $49.4 million, and that figure will only have risen in the preceding years.

Which is the lowest-paid position in the NFL?

The discrepancy between positions can be seen right across the field. The top ten wide receivers earnt $24.8 million per year on average, another well-paid position. At the other end of the scale are members of special teams, who average $2.775 million per year. That is the lowest average in the league.

For the majority of players, with earnings around the average, a career in the NFL is not it goldmine that it may seem. Across the NFL the average career length is just 3.3 years, giving them a terrifyingly short window to maximise their earnings.

This, along with the instable nature of sports, combines to create difficult conditions for young athletes unaccustomed to the large amounts of money that they will receive upon signing for a team. Research from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that 15.7% of NFL players file for bankruptcy within 12 years of retiring, far higher than the national average. Far from setting them up for life, many professional players find themselves in significant financial trouble after reaching the promised land of the NFL.

Most viewed

More news