Tag: performance-based pay

Here’s why ex-Broncos QB Russell Wilson was paid an extra $40,018 for 2023 season

The NFL’s performance-based pay program gave QB Russell Wilson an extra $40,018 for playing 938 snaps in 2023.

Denver Broncos fans might feel that quarterback Russell Wilson was overpaid for his two-year stint with the team, but the NFL begs to differ.

Each offseason, the NFL hands out performance-based pay bonuses that essentially reward players for outperforming their contracts. The highest earners in the program are often every-down starters who are still on a rookie contract.

A brief explanation from the league: “Under the Performance-Based Pay program, a fund is created and used as a supplemental form of player compensation based upon a comparison of playing time to salary. Players become eligible to receive a bonus distribution in any regular season in which they play at least one official down. In general, players with higher playtime percentages and lower salaries benefit most from the pool.”

Denver guard Quinn Meinerz ($747,505) and pass rusher Jonathon Cooper ($738,916) received the largest bonuses among Broncos players in 2023, but they were not alone. A total of 64 players received playing time bonuses, including Wilson.

Wilson received a $40,018 check — this time from the NFL, not Denver’s front office — as part of the performance-based pay program. Wilson started 15 games in 2023 and played 938 snaps.

Jarrett Stidham, who only started two games and played 134 snaps in 2023, received a $41,814 bonus, a reflection of players on lower salaries getting a bigger reward for their playing time.

Five years ago, former Broncos backup quarterback Chad Kelly received a $354 bonus in 2019 after he appeared in one game for a kneel-down.

Wilson received $28 million from Denver last year and he will earn another $37.79 million from the Broncos in 2024 despite no longer being on the team. Playing nearly 1,000 snaps last year earned him an extra $40,000 on his way out of town.

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Cowboys CB DaRon Bland earns bonus for record-breaking season, nearly doubling 2023 salary

From @ToddBrock24f7: The CB earned $759K based on the league’s Performance-Based Pay system, designed to compensate lower-earning players for heavy playing time.

DaRon Bland had an exceptional sophomore season, etching his name in the NFL history books, earning a trip to the Pro Bowl, and being named a first-team All-Pro.

Now he’s getting a substantial financial bonus as a reward, one that nearly doubles his salary for a record-breaking year.

The Cowboys cornerback will receive an extra $759,756 on top of his 2023 salary as part of the league’s Performance-Based Pay program, a fund set up by the Collective Bargaining Agreement to provide extra compensation to lower-earning players who end up seeing heavy playing time.

Bland earned a base salary of $870,000 last season, plus a signing bonus of $76,197. In return, the fifth-round draft pick led the NFL with nine interceptions and established a new all-time record by returning five of them for touchdowns. He started 15 of 17 regular-season games and finished second on the team in defensive snaps, appearing on the field for over 90% of the Dallas defense’s plays.

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Bland’s PBP bonus was among the top 20 in the entire league for the 2023 season.

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2 Broncos among highest performance-based pay earners

Broncos G Quinn Meinerz ($747,505) and OLB Jonathon Cooper ($940,000) received some of the largest performance-based pay bonuses in the NFL.

Denver Broncos guard Quinn Meinerz and outside linebacker Jonathon Cooper were among the top 25 earners in 2023 as part of the NFL’s performance-based pay program.

“The Performance-Based Pay program is a collectively bargained benefit that compensates all players based upon their playing time and salary levels,” according to the NFL. Put simply, the program rewards players on low salaries who play significant snaps.

Meinerz and Cooper are still on team-friendly rookie contracts and they both started all 17 games last season. Meinerz received $747,505 in performance-based pay, a nice increase from his $1,095,078 salary last season.

Cooper received $738,916 in performance-based pay, which is not far away from his $940,000 base salary in 2023. The two players were rewarded for essentially outperforming their contracts.

Meinerz and Cooper weren’t the only Broncos players who received performance-based pay for the 2023 season.

The following players also got a boost to their salaries, according to KUSA-TV’s Mike Klis: cornerback Ja’Quan McMillian ($625,000), cornerback Fabian Moreau ($526,000), defensive lineman Jonathan Harris ($485,000), safety Delarrin Turner-Yell ($387,000), cornerback Damarri Mathis ($376,000), tight end Adam Trautman ($368,000), center Lloyd Cushenberry ($357,000), linebacker Drew Sanders ($356), safety P.J. Locke Locke ($343,000), wide receiver Lil’Jordan Humphrey ($342,000) and fullback Mike Burton ($339,000) also received performance-based bonuses.

View the full list of Denver’s bonuses on 9News.

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Steelers OT Dan Moore Jr. Gets over $740k in performance-based pay

Dan Moore Jr. got a significant bonus from the performance-based pay program.

In 2023, Pittsburgh Steelers starting left tackle Dan Moore Jr. made $1,114,476 in salary. But as a former fourth-round NFL draft pick still playing on his rookie contract, the league awarded Moore $740,319 in additional salary as part of its performance-based pay program.

This isn’t to say Moore played well because he didn’t. However, Moore played 951 offensive snaps last season as the Steelers starting left tackle. According to Pro Football Focus, Moore was one of the worst qualifying offensive tackles in the NFL in pass blocking with a grade of only 39.7.

Pittsburgh has been actively scouting offensive tackles for the 2024 NFL draft which is a good sign the Steelers aren’t sold on Moore as the team’s long-term solution at offensive tackle.

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These Broncos players earned big performance-based bonuses in 2022

After starting 11 games last season, Broncos CB Damarri Mathis was rewarded by the NFL with $437,666 in performance-based pay.

The NFL has a program that compensates low-paid players who logged playing time in the previous season.

The performance-based pay comes directly from the NFL and does not impact each team’s salary cap. Here’s a general explanation, courtesy of the league’s press release:

Under the Performance-Based Pay program, a fund is created and used as a supplemental form of player compensation based on a comparison of playing time to salary. Players become eligible to receive a bonus distribution in any regular season in which they play at least one official down. In general, players with higher playtime percentages and lower salaries benefit most from the pool.

For the Denver Broncos, six players earned significant performance-based bonuses from their playing time last season. Here are Denver’s players with the biggest performance-based pay in 2022, courtesy of KUSA-TV’s Mike Klis:

1. OT Cameron Fleming $544,459
2. CB Damarri Mathis $437,666
3. LB Alex Singleton, $424,516
6. OLB Jonathon Cooper $427,385
7. OL Quinn Meinerz $392,644
8. TE Eric Saubert $376,236

Fleming, Mathis, Singleton and Meinerz ended up starting most of the season, so it’s no surprise that their salaries did not match up with their playing time. The NFL is helping compensate for that with these performance-based bonuses.

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Chiefs RG Trey Smith leads team in performance-based pay for 2022

#Chiefs RG Trey Smith was the team’s leader in performance-based pay for the 2022 NFL season.

The NFL announced performance-based pay distributions for the 2022 NFL season and Kansas City Chiefs second-year RG Trey Smith led the way for the team.

The league announced on Friday that NFL players are set to receive a whopping $336 million in performance-based for 2022. This is a benefit that is collectively bargained between the NFL and NFLPA to compensate players based on their playing time and salary.

Smith, a sixth-round draft pick out of Tennessee in 2021, played the fifth-highest percentage of offensive snaps in Kansas City in 2022. His 1,037 snaps earned him a 90.25% share of the team’s offensive snaps last season. As a result, he comes in at No. 20 in the NFL in terms of performance-based pay with over $663K earned.

Smith has often been considered the steal of the 2021 NFL draft and this is just more evidence supporting his case.

Former Eagles S Marcus Epps (now with the Las Vegas Raiders) was the top earner in the NFL this past season with over $880K in performance-based pay.

If you’re curious about how exactly performance-based pay is determined, here’s an explainer and chart from the NFL:

Each player on the same team com­petes for his own share of his club’s Performance-Based Pay pool. The hypothetical example in the table below illustrates how the Player Index works, using a simplified four-player team and a club bonus pool of $1,000,000. Each player receives his share of the pool depending on how his Index compares to those of his teammates.

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Andrew Wylie is Chiefs’ top earner in performance-based pay for 2020 season

Wylie played the most snaps of his NFL career in 2020 and will be rewarded for it under the NFL’s performance-based pay system.

The NFLPA has announced 2020 performance-based pay distributions and third-year offensive lineman Andrew Wylie leads the way for the Kansas City Chiefs. He was also among the top earners in the league, receiving a total of $542,979 in performance-based pay for the 2020 NFL season. That number is in addition to the $750K base salary that Wylie already earned with the team last season.

The Chiefs first signed Wylie as a free agent toward the end of the 2017 season. He’s since carved out a role as a key depth player in Kansas City. He didn’t make his Chiefs debut until the start of the 2018 season and he ended up playing a lot that year because of a season-ending injury to Laurent Duvernay-Tardif. During his career, Wylie has appeared in 41 games while starting 35 for Kansas City. This past season he started a career-high of 14 games.

Wylie’s amount of playing time in 2020 is a big reason that he earned the most performance-based pay among Chiefs players. It’s not simply the players who perform the best as the name of the system would suggest. Typically, players with a lower salary and larger playtime are the ones that profit most from the league’s performance-based pay system. He played a total of 972 offensive snaps during the regular season, a career-high for Wylie. The NFLPA credited him with 92% of the team’s playtime in 2020.

The NFL and NFLPA agreed to defer the performance-based payouts this year according to NFL Network’s Mike Garafolo. He says it’s part of the agreement the two made on the salary-cap shortfall due to COVID-19. That means performance-based pay for 2020 will be paid out by the league at a later date. In total, Kansas City will pay its players an extra $8.5 million due to performance-based pay from the 2020 NFL season.

Tre Flowers to earn significant performance-based pay raise in 2020

Seattle Seahawks cornerback Tre Flowers earned a $533,784 dollar raise for his performance and playing time last season.

The NFL’s current CBA allows players — primarily late-round picks — to earn performance-based pay raises if they played a lot of snaps during the previous regular season.

NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero released the list of the 25 players who earned the largest chunk of that money, which is a combination of performance-based pay and the veteran pool, and Seattle Seahawks cornerback Tre Flowers came in at No. 11.

Flowers earned $340,118 in performance-based pay and another $193,666 from the veteran pool, giving him a nice raise of $533,784, sandwiched between Bengals tackle Justin Murray and Jaguars corner Tre Herndon on the list.

To get these numbers, the NFL takes a player’s regular-season playtime (total plays on offense, defense and special teams) and divides by his adjusted regular-season compensation (full season salary, prorated portion of signing bonus, earned incentives). Each player’s index is then compared to those of the other players on his team to determine the amount of his pay.

Those raises do not count against the team’s salary cap.

Flowers started 15 games for the Seahawks in 2019, racking up 82 combined tackles, eight passes defended, three interceptions and two sacks.

The 24-year-old played on 1,073 total snaps, seventh on the team, which was a big part of his bonus structure.

That number may be tough to reach again in 2020, however, with the Seahawks expected to look hard for more help at the cornerback position next season.

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Broncos OL Elijah Wilkinson receives bonus worth nearly 30% of his 2019 salary

Broncos offensive lineman Elijah Wilkinson has received a performance-based bonus adding an increase of nearly 30% to his 2019 salary.

The NFL will pay out $147.952 million worth of 2019 performance-based bonuses this month. Denver Broncos offensive lineman Elijah Wilkinson is among the veteran players who received the largest bonuses.

Wilkinson, who joined the team as an undrafted free agent in 2017, played 82.19 percent of the team’s offensive snaps last season, which earned him a performance-based bonus of $192,217, the league announced Thursday.

That’s an increase of nearly 30 percent to Wilkinson’s 2019 salary ($645,000).

“The Performance-Based Pay program is a collectively bargained benefit that compensates all players, including rookies, based upon their playing time and salary levels,” according to a press release from the NFL.

Only 19 veterans received larger bonuses than Wilkinson. Chiefs cornerback Charvarius Ward earned the largest bonus in the league: $654,750.

Wilkinson is scheduled to become a restricted free agent next month and Denver is expected to place a second-round tender on him, which would give him a salary worth more than $3 million in 2020.

The bonus for Wilkinson will be paid by the league, not the Broncos.

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