Who is the highest paid rookie in NFL history?
Check out which player received highest pay during his rookie year.
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(Image via SI)
Being a professional athlete is not an easy task. Along with their talents, athletes have to be hardworking and have to sacrifice a lot to taste success in their field. On the other hand, they’re among the highest-paid workers in the world. Especially in the United States, athletes rightfully get paid a lot to play sports full-time. The National Football League also gives players expensive contracts depending on their talents and achievements.
Players of superstar caliber get paid a lot more money than the average NFL player. But still, a player could immediately become a multimillionaire after getting drafted by an NFL team and after signing a rookie contract. So the question arises, who is the highest-paid rookie in NFL history? Also, over the years, many young players have bagged the biggest NFL rookie contracts.
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How do rookie contracts work?
To find out who is the highest-paid rookie in NFL history, one must understand how rookie contracts work. There used to be a time in the league when the teams splurged money on the unproven rookie, which led the NFL to implement a rookie wage scale in 2011, which drastically reduced the salary of the rookies.
All the rookies will get a 4-year deal by default. The value of the deal might change, but the years remain the same. The higher the draft pick, the higher his salary will be. For instance, the first overall pick in the 2021 draft QB Trevor Lawrence signed a 4-year $36,793,488 with the Jaguars, while the 11th overall pick in the same draft QB Justin Fields signed a 4-year deal worth $18.8 million with the Chicago Bears. Just being 10 picks apart resulted in an almost $18 million disparity in the contract.
The highest-paid NFL rookie ever
As previously mentioned, before the NFL introduced a rookie wage scale in 2011, the teams used to splash money on talented rookies. Which helped the highly touted players to get paid handsomely. That helped the St. Louis Rams QB Sam Bradford to become the highest-paid rookie in NFL history after he signed a whopping six-year $78 million contract with the Rams in 2010.
Bradford might be the highest-paid rookie in the NFL for a long time since the rookie wage scale drastically reduced the salaries of the rookies. For instance, let’s compare the salaries of the first overall picks in the draft 2 years before the wage scale and 2 years after it.
Matthew Stafford was drafted as the first overall pick in the 2009 NFL draft by the Detroit Lions. He signed a six-year $72 million contract with the Lions. And then, in 2010, the St. Louis Rams made Sam Bradford the first overall pick and signed him to a whopping six-year $78 million contract. Now let’s compare it with the 2 first overall picks in the drafts after the introduction of the rookie wage scale.
In 2011, Cam Newton was drafted by the Panthers as the first overall pick, and they signed him to a 4-year $22 million contract. The next year, the Colts signed their first overall pick, Andrew Luck, to a similar contract. Yes, Newton and Luck were more than $50 million cheaper than Bradford.
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Aravind Raj
(2075 Articles Published)