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Pro Football Average Salary

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Pro Football Average Salary

Football is one of the most popular spectator sports in the United States. The National Football League has 32 professional teams playing in cities all across the country. Each team's roster consists of 53 players, 45 of which suit up every week to play during the season. Given the large rosters and the immense popularity of the sport, it should come as no surprise that player and coach salaries consume a huge portion of teams' budgets. Of course, league salaries still vary significantly depending on performance, experience and myriad other factors.

  1. Coaching Salaries

    • The highest-paid coaches in the NFL earned around $7 million for the 2010 season, according to Forbes.com. Veteran coaches such as New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick and Washington Redskins coach Mike Shanahan fall into this top tier, while several other experienced head coaches also pull in upward of $5 million annually. Most head coaches in the NFL command salaries of approximately $2 million to $3 million a year, according to a 2009 article published by Fox Sports.

    Top Player Salaries

    • The best-paid players in the NFL boast huge salaries. Of the 118 elite players selected to the 2009 Pro Bowl (the NFL all-star game), more than half had contracts averaging upward of $4 million a year, according to USA Today. Additionally, 15 of the players in that Pro Bowl group held contracts worth more than $10 million annually. Superstar quarterbacks like brothers Peyton and Eli Manning and Tom Brady have historically earned the biggest paychecks, while defensive standouts like Julius Peppers, Ray Lewis and James Harrison also bring in huge salaries. Still, it's a quarterback-driven league, as evidenced by stats from Sports Illustrated citing the fact that four of the league's seven players with salaries above $10 million in 2009 were quarterbacks.

    Lowest Player Salaries

    • According to USA Today, the league minimum salary for players in the NFL was $285,000 in 2007. This figure has gone up slightly each year to adjust for inflation, but the league's more modest salaries still hover in this range. Special teams players and reserves tend to be the ones who pull in such paychecks. However, some prominent starters also earn relatively low salaries despite their impact roles on the field. This generally happens when emerging players earn spots in their lineups after being taken low in the draft or signing as undrafted free agents.

    Average Player Salary

    • The average NFL player's salary for 2009 was approximately $1.9 million, according to an article by Jarrett Bell of USA Today. However, the median income for players during that same season was $790,000.

    Outlook

    • Aside from the few enormous contracts held by veteran coaches, salaries for coaching in the NFL appear poised to taper off in the foreseeable future. John Czarnecki of Fox Sports notes that the once-common $5 million coaching salaries have been largely replaced in recent years by $2 million contracts handed out to younger and more inexperienced candidates.

      As for player salaries, the future has become cloudy. The NFL Players Association wants more salary security and long-term health coverage, while franchise owners and league officials seem to be looking for ways to cut down on expenses and limit the astronomical spike in salaries that has become increasingly prevalent. For example, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has proposed reducing rookies' guaranteed contracts so that teams spend less money on unproven players and avoid paying higher salaries to rookies than they do to more deserving veterans. However, negotiations between the league and the players association have not gone well. In May 2010 NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith predicted that there will be a lockout in 2011.

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