The Eagles this offseason made Braden Mann one of the highest-paid punters in the NFL and the money is nice. Really nice.<\/p>\n
But Mann is just as happy with the commitment his four-year extension represents.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt really means a lot,\u201d Mann said this week. \u201cIn a world of headlines and how much people can get, everyone gets caught up in all the numbers. But just the commitment that you can get from a team or a general manager, saying that we want you here for another four years, it really does feel nice.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s kind of what they do really well here. They commit to their people, whether that\u2019s players or coaches or any support staff. I think that\u2019s the culture here, just really fully committing to everybody they have here and not treating it as a one-off year or anything like that. They just pour all their effort into you as much as they can. I felt that since the first day I got here in \u201923. It has just been nonstop commitment to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mann, 28, got to Philadelphia during the 2023 season and just finished off his third season as the Eagles\u2019 punter. When he hit free agency this offseason, Mann\u2019s goal was to rejoin the Eagles and the Eagles goal was to keep him.<\/p>\n
Mann ended up signing a four-year contract extension worth $14 million with $7 million guaranteed. That average annual salary of $3.5 million ties Mann as the fifth-highest paid punter in the NFL. The only punters who make more than Mann are Jordan Stout of the Giants ($4.1M), Michael Dickson of the Seahawks ($4.05M), Logan Cooke of the Jaguars ($4M) and A.J. Cole of the Raiders ($3.95M).<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the end goal for me and my family is we always wanted to be here,\u201d Mann said. \u201cWe really loved our three years here so far and I think that was the start of it. We really wanted to be back here and we were able to make that happen. Howie and everybody here did such a good job of communicating and everybody made their goals clear and we told them we really wanted to be here and they told us kind of the same, that they would like us back. I think it was all pretty smooth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before coming to the Eagles, Mann was the punter with the Jets for three seasons and there\u2019s no doubt he has improved since getting to Philadelphia. He credited the Eagles coaching staff \u2014 namely special teams coordinator Michael Clay and special teams assistant Tyler Brown \u2014 for his growth.<\/p>\n
It goes beyond the numbers, but the numbers do tell the story too:<\/p>\n
Mann with the Jets: 45.4 yards per punt, 39.3 net, 29.1% inside the 20<\/p>\n
Mann with the Eagles: 49.5 yards per punt, 42.9 net, 32.4% inside the 20<\/p>\n
While Mann doesn\u2019t think his leg is any stronger in Philly than it was in New York, he knows he has gotten better. He pointed at adding different types of punts to his repertoire, something that happened pretty quickly when he got to Philly.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, he remembered a game against the Cowboys in 2023. The Eagles beat their biggest rival on Nov. 5, 2023 in a tight 28-23 game and Mann remembers crucial end-of-half and end-of-game punts. He tried a different type of punt because Clay trusted him to do it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe needed something and I had never hit a certain type of punt in a game and Coach Clay comes up to me and asks me if I want to hit it,\u201d Mann said. \u201cI was like, \u2018If you trust me to do that, I\u2019m down.\u2019 We did it. And that was just the start of him fully trusting me to do different things and work on different clubs in my bag.\u201d<\/p>\n
That growth has continued in the years since and after just three seasons, Mann might already be the best punter in franchise history. This four-year extension gives him an opportunity to build upon that legacy.<\/p>\n
In the offseason, Mann trains in Dallas because it gets windy in North Texas in the spring. And for punters, especially punters who play in the Northeast, practicing in the wind goes a long way.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs much as going out to the field pains me at times to punt in that amount of wind and sometimes cold down there,\u201d Mann said, \u201cI think it has been good for me and my development.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Eagles this offseason made Braden Mann one of the highest-paid punters in the NFL and the money…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":824992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2068],"tags":[25,1537,7,6,242,109,2476],"class_list":{"0":"post-825208","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia-eagles","8":"tag-eagles","9":"tag-eagles-news","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-nfl","12":"tag-philadelphia","13":"tag-philadelphia-eagles","14":"tag-philadelphiaeagles"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825208","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=825208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/824992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=825208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=825208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=825208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}