Peyton Manning made $15 million during the regular season, but the Broncos QB is hoping to pad his pockets with another $4 million with a Super Bowl run.
CBS Sports has an interesting rundown of how much NFL players make during the playoffs, all payable from a pool of money distributed by the league.
Three things that stand out about this pay structure:
1. It doesn't matter if you're the best player on your team or the third stringer warming the bench, you get paid the same.
2. A good portion will be taking a paycut. For perspective, players making the league minimum of $435,000 for a first year player take home an average of $25,588 per week.
3. If you earned a bye, you don't get paid for a week of meetings, treatment and preparation. Sorry Denver, New England, Arizona, and Carolina.
But when it comes to getting paid in the playoffs and Peyton Manning, the rules are a little different.
Since the Broncos restructured his deal last off-season, Manning—still battling allegations that he used performance enhancing drugs in his past—has salary escalators in his contract that will add a whole lot of dough to his bank account should he lead top-seeded Denver to its third Super Bowl title. The Broncos will pay Manning $2 million for an AFC Championship victory and another $2 million for a win in the Super Bowl, potentially bringing his 2015 haul to $19 million, or what he was supposed to originally make before the restructuring.
The max a player can pocket during the playoffs is $198,000 or $3.802 less than Manning can potentially haul in. It's good to be Peyton Manning.
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