Patrick Mahomes’ new deal with the Kansas City Chiefs is a major win for quarterbacks everywhere
The Kansas City Chiefs just helped Patrick Mahomes blow the doors off the annual average record.
Someone, finally, did it. And it shouldn’t really be a surprise that it was Patrick Mahomes.
For two years, the NFL’s quarterback landscape has started with the name ‘Prescott, Dak’. Prescott inked a four-year, $240 million deal with the Cowboys back in the summer of 2024, making him the NFL’s record-holder for highest paid quarterback (and player) from an annual average salary basis. That title survived salvos from names like Buffalo’s Josh Allen and Los Angeles’ Matthew Stafford on the heels of winning the MVP. But it did not survive Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs.
Patrick Mahomes inks new extension with the Kansas City Chiefs valued at $64 million per year in new money
The Chiefs’ decision to ink Mahomes to a 10-year contract back in 2020 continues to pay dividends for Kansas City. With the amount of years and the amount of money that the Chiefs had to play with to properly compensate Mahomes? It’s been seamless to annually transition money around within the contract to keep him near the top of the food chain.
But now? With the two new years of this current deal, Mahomes lands a striking $64 million per year in new money. It measures to $128 million in new money on two new years total. And Mahomes is now under contract in Kansas City through 2033. Look beyond Mahomes and the Chiefs, though. This also offers a major boost to the benchmarks that teams and players will negotiate with on future quarterback contracts.
Every quarterback extension that’s coming in the years ahead will benefit from the glass ceiling of the Prescott annual average being broken. That includes names like Lamar Jackson and Drake Maye, to start. It will raise the middle class of quarterback contracts from the mid-30 million range. We could now see it pushed into the $40+ million range. The upper middle class now consists of names like Purdy, Goff, and more — all north of $50 million in annual average.
Mahomes outranks them by nearly $15 million in new money per season, now. And because the Chiefs have all those years left on his deal? They’ll hardly be pressed to feel the implications of it. They’re spreading $128 million across eight total years of contractual control. Woopty doo!
The bigger question here is who doesn’t win? Because the Chiefs win, getting Mahomes locked up for presumably the rest of his career. Mahomes wins because he claims the title of the highest paid player in the NFL (per annual average). And the rest of the quarterback market will now have a new, higher negotiating point moving forward. That makes for a lot of happy folks right now.
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