The Kansas City Chiefs made Patrick Mahomes the NFL‘s highest-paid player when they signed him to a 10-year, $450 million extension — but that was four years ago.
That 2020 Mahomes contract has since been eclipsed many times over. Joe Burrow, Trevor Lawrence, and Jordan Love sit atop the quarterback market with $55 million average annual values (AAV). In total, 11 QBs earn more annually than Mahomes.
The three-time Super Bowl winner’s contract status is a logical disconnect, but how did we get here in the first place? Should we be analyzing Mahomes’ contract differently, and how will the Chiefs continue to make the NFL’s best player happy?
The Problem With Patrick Mahomes’ 10-Year Contract Extension
From the moment the ink dried, Mahomes’ 10-year deal was incredibly team-friendly for the Chiefs.
Quarterbacks — and NFL players in general — had moved away from contracts that tied them to teams for the entire prime of their careers. Shorter pacts allowed players to hit the market again sooner and kept taking more bites at the conceptual apple.
Mahomes’ decade-long commitment seemingly came out of nowhere. The next-highest-paid QBs — Russell Wilson, Jared Goff, Aaron Rodgers, Carson Wentz — all had four-year deals. Matt Ryan was on a five-year extension, but no passer had signed a 10-year agreement since Michael Vick’s $130 million pact with the Atlanta Falcons in 2004.
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Mahomes secured generational wealth; of course, it’s difficult to criticize his decision to sign.
He blew Wilson out of the water in terms of annual salary, receiving a $10 million increase over the then-Seattle Seahawks QB’s $35 million. Mahomes also has a rolling guarantee structure that will make it extremely challenging for the Chiefs to cut him without severe financial penalties.
Still, the 10-year length allows Mahomes to be overtaken by other quarterbacks in salary rankings. Is Mahomes actually underpaid, or should we evaluate his contract using metrics different from AAV?
Is Mahomes Underpaid?
The easy answer is: Yes, of course, Patrick Mahomes is underpaid.
He’s the best player in the NFL and is already in the conversation for the league’s greatest all-time quarterback. He has three Super Bowls and two MVP awards and won’t turn 29 until September.
By almost any measure, the Chiefs can’t pay enough to have Mahomes on their roster.
Of course, the NFL’s salary cap limits how much a team can reasonably give any one player. While Mahomes might be worth $80 million or $90 million per year based solely on his statistical production, we have to be realistic.
Still, Mahomes should undoubtedly be the NFL’s highest-paid QB — and by some metrics, he is.
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The Chiefs tweaked Mahomes’ contract in Sept. 2023, moving money from the back end of his deal into the present. Thanks to those maneuvers, Mahomes will collect more cash over the next four years than any player in the league, as Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk reported this week.
Mahomes is scheduled to earn $215.6 million from 2024 to 2027, per PFT. Burrow ($213.9 million), Goff ($193.6 million), Tua Tagovailoa ($186.1 million), and Love ($186 million) round out the top five quarterbacks in four-year cash flow.
So while Mahomes’ $45 million AAV lags behind myriad other QBs, he will bring home the most cash of any player over the next four seasons.
The Kansas City Chiefs’ Options With Mahomes’ Contract
Asked this week whether he’s underpaid, Mahomes replied with an answer that previewed how the Chiefs will continue to ensure he’s content.
“Not necessarily,” Mahomes said when asked if he was underpaid. “I think we do a great job of managing my money, to be able to pay me a lot of money and keep a good team around me. I know we’ve kind of restructured it a couple of times and got the cash flow up in certain spots and certain years.”
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Kansas City’s front office knows the terms of Mahomes’ original 10-year contract are no longer tenable. That’s why GM Brett Veach has been so willing to shift his star quarterback’s cash to ensure he’s at the top of the market in take-home pay.
The Chiefs can keep moving money around, or they could eventually give Mahomes a brand-new contract. While NFL teams are generally reticent to tear up an existing deal and start fresh, legendary players like Aaron Rodgers and Aaron Donald convinced the Green Bay Packers and Los Angeles Rams to give them all-new pacts.
Mahomes fits right in with those icons and could eventually push Kansas City to reset the quarterback market again. If Dak Prescott, Brock Purdy, and others soar past $60 million or $65 million per year in the next 12 months, the Chiefs might want to have their checkbooks ready.
