{"id":815692,"date":"2026-03-16T18:19:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T18:19:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/815692\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T18:19:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T18:19:17","slug":"seahawks-drake-thomas-gets-pay-adjustment-for-2025-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/815692\/","title":{"rendered":"Seahawks&#8217; Drake Thomas Gets Pay Adjustment for 2025 Season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t<img width=\"780\" height=\"439\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2243081168.jpg\" class=\"attachment-featured-image size-featured-image wp-post-image\" alt=\"Drake Thomas\"   decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\"\/>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGetty\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>Seattle Seahawks underrated linebacker Drake Thomas received a pay bump in the NFL&#8217;s performance-based pay system.<\/p>\n<p>Every snap counts in the <a class=\"wpil_keyword_link\" href=\"https:\/\/heavy.com\/sports\/nfl\/\" title=\"NFL\" data-wpil-keyword-link=\"linked\" data-wpil-monitor-id=\"194023\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NFL<\/a>. During the 2025 season, that was true in more ways than one for <a href=\"https:\/\/heavy.com\/sports\/nfl\/seattle-seahawks\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Seattle Seahawks<\/a> linebacker <a href=\"https:\/\/heavy.com\/nfl\/player\/drake-thomas\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Drake Thomas<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>On Monday, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/MySportsUpdate\/status\/2033597435746930912\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener external nofollow\">the NFL announced<\/a> its top 25 performance-based payouts from the 2025 season. The system is in place to reward players with low salaries who played high snap counts during the previous season.<\/p>\n<p>Through the system, Thomas received one of the top 25 payouts for the 2025 season. The linebacker received about an additional $1.022 million.<\/p>\n<p>The NFL announced their top 25 performance-based payouts, with former <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow external\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Bears?src=hashtag_click\">#Bears<\/a> CB Nahshon Wright leading the way.<\/p>\n<p>Performance-based pay is a system the league has in place for players for players with high snap counts and low salaries. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.spotrac.com\/nfl\/player\/earnings\/_\/id\/83036\/drake-thomas\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener external nofollow\">According to Spotrac<\/a>, that nearly matched his entire pay from last season. In his third NFL season, Thomas made roughly $1.039 million in 2025.<\/p>\n<p>The 26-year-old almost doubled his pay thanks to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pro-football-reference.com\/players\/T\/ThomDr00.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener external nofollow\">starting 14 games for the Seahawks elite 2025 defense<\/a>. After playing just 41 defensive snaps for Seattle in 2023 and 2024 combined, Thomas lined up for 763 defensive snaps last season.<\/p>\n<p>With the enormous jump in playing time, Thomas had 96 combined tackles, including 10 tackles for loss. He also registered six quarterback hits, eight pass defenses and one interception.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/heavy.com\/author\/dmholcomb\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Dave Holcomb<\/a> is a sports reporter covering the NFL and MLB for Heavy.com, with a focus on the Pittsburgh Steelers, Philadelphia Eagles and Detroit Lions. Originally from Pittsburgh, Holcomb has covered college and professional sports for outlets including FanSided, Rotowire and Yardbarker.  <a href=\"https:\/\/heavy.com\/author\/dmholcomb\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">More about Dave Holcomb<\/a>\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\tMore Heavy on Seahawks\n\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\tLoading more stories\n\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t<script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Getty Seattle Seahawks underrated linebacker Drake Thomas received a pay bump in the NFL&#8217;s performance-based pay system. Every&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":815693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2081],"tags":[7,6,238,237,261,2635],"class_list":{"0":"post-815692","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-seattle-seahawks","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-nfl","10":"tag-seahawks","11":"tag-seattle","12":"tag-seattle-seahawks","13":"tag-seattleseahawks"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116240239066490943","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=815692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/815693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=815692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=815692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=815692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}