{"id":996307,"date":"2026-09-09T18:48:34","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T18:48:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/996307\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T18:48:34","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T18:48:34","slug":"how-nfls-top-draft-picks-pay-compares-to-the-highest-paid-players","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/996307\/","title":{"rendered":"How NFL’s top draft pick’s pay compares to the highest-paid player’s"},"content":{"rendered":"

Patrick Mahomes’ salary tops the NFL. How his $63.1 million compares to salaries in past years<\/p>\n

\"DamaliWASHINGTON \u2014<\/p>\n

Each NFL season welcomes new faces to the league, players joining new teams and even star players renegotiating their contracts. <\/p>\n

For the 2026 season, there is a new player taking the title of highest-paid player \u2014 Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes. His reworked contract is valued at more than half a billion dollars, according to data from Spotrac. <\/p>\n

The eight-year, $504.7 million contract is the first NFL deal valued at more than half a billion dollars. It gives Mahomes an average annual value of $63.1 million, the highest in the league. <\/p>\n

Before Mahomes reworked his contract, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott had the highest average annual value at $60 million. <\/p>\n

Mahomes’ average annual value is more than four times that of this season’s No. 1 rookie pick, Fernando Mendoza. Mendoza\u2019s rookie contract is valued at $57.27 million, giving him an average annual value of $14.3 million.<\/p>\n

The pay gap between the No. 1 draft pick in the draft and the league’s highest-paid player was not always this large, according to the Get the Facts Data Team’s analysis of Spotrac contract data dating back to 1983. <\/p>\n

In 1983, the Denver Broncos awarded John Elway a five-year, $5 million contract, making his average annual value $1 million. In today’s dollars, that would be worth $3.4 million. Elway became the highest-paid player in the league that year. <\/p>\n

Prior to 2011, NFL teams decided how much to pay their top rookie picks and the length of their contracts. The St. Louis Rams awarded their 2010 No. 1 pick, Sam Bradford, a massive six-year, $78 million contract. <\/p>\n

The 2011 collective bargaining agreement introduced a standard four-year rookie contract with set salary values. Teams could no longer negotiate contract length or value for their top picks. Bradford was the last No. 1 pick to sign a massive contract. <\/p>\n

The rookie wage scale widened the gap between the league\u2019s highest-paid player and the No. 1 pick. By the early 2020s, the gap continued to grow. <\/p>\n

In 2020, the Cincinnati Bengals drafted Joe Burrow No. 1, giving him an average annual value of $9 million. Mahomes was also the league’s highest-paid player that year, with an average annual value of $45 million, five times that of Burrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Patrick Mahomes’ salary tops the NFL. How his $63.1 million compares to salaries in past years WASHINGTON \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":996308,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[130658,256,1370,257,258,3619,7,130656,1577,110,6,15,7828,15777,499,195,130657,37038],"class_list":["post-996307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-2026-nfl-salaries","tag-cincinnati-bengals","tag-dak-prescott","tag-dallas-cowboys","tag-denver-broncos","tag-fernando-mendoza","tag-football","tag-highest-paid-player","tag-joe-burrow","tag-kansas-city-chiefs","tag-nfl","tag-nfl-draft","tag-nfl-offseason","tag-no-1-pick","tag-patrick-mahomes","tag-rookie-contract","tag-rookie-wage-scale","tag-spotrac"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/117242580975243427","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996307","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=996307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/996308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=996307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=996307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=996307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}