For the first time in the past three years, tonight’s Super Bowl 60 will not feature Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs, as the team suffered a disastrous year that ended with a 6-11 regular-season record.
Despite Mahomes being considered one of, if not the best overall quarterback in the NFL, his annual salary ranks No. 14 in the league at $45 million. His agent, Leigh Steinberg, has made a bold prediction about the direction of quarterback salaries.
Patrick Mahomes’ Agent Leigh Steinberg Predicts Continued Rise in Quarterback Salaries
Steinberg has been an NFL agent for years, representing athletes such as Troy Aikman, Steve Young, and Warren Moon, among others. However, none of his previous quarterback clients have carried the same value as Mahomes, who has a contract worth $450 million over 10 years, which equates to the previously mentioned average annual salary.
David Rumsey of Front Office Sports spoke with Steinberg about the state of quarterback contracts. Rumsey wrote that while Steinberg was not concerned with where Patrick Mahomes’s contract ranked — saying he would let Mahomes address that himself — the longtime agent predicted overall numbers would continue to rise.
“We’ll inevitably see a $70 million quarterback,” Steinberg said. “And they’ve caught up for the first time to baseball and basketball, but the revenue is there to support it.”
The quarterback with the highest average annual salary in the league is Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott, who earns $60 million per year. Following Prescott, there is a four-way tie at $55 million per year between Joe Burrow, Josh Allen, Jordan Love, and Trevor Lawrence. There is also Deshaun Watson, who earns more per year than Mahomes at $46 million, despite not performing well since joining the Cleveland Browns.
Steinberg added that the most critical position in football is the franchise quarterback, which he defined as a player around whom a team can be built for 10 to 12 years. He described such a quarterback as someone a team can win “because of” rather than simply “with,” and emphasized the importance of maintaining focus and elevating performance in adverse circumstances, such as after throwing interceptions or facing a hostile crowd.
“And without that player, it’s impossible to win in pro football today, and so that’s why that one position has achieved this explosive compensation level,” he said.
Before suffering his season-ending injury, Mahomes played 14 games. In PFSN’s NFL Quarterback Impact Metric, he ranked No. 17 with an impact score of 77.2 and a letter grade of C+.
