NFL’s rookie wage scale explained: How much money do first year players make? (2024)

It is of course forgivable to focus on the massive headline salaries that are being touted in the 2023 NFL draft. For most people, the idea of a million dollars is hard to picture, and when it is multiplied out by a factor of twenty or thirty it is even more abstract.

But does a job in the NFL mean that you are instantly rich? Let’s take a look.

Rookie Wage Scale

In the good old, bad old days, teams would negotiate rookie contracts heavily. This has been eliminated with recent Collective Bargaining Agreements and even though the number one overall draft pick Bryce Young can expect a hefty pay packet estimated to be $41.2 million, most players will be getting far less.

The CBA lays out a set amount for each draft position, and while the details of the breakdown will vary according to each team’s salary cap space, in broad terms it is a descending slide from one to 259.

Bryce Young, as our example, will end up with a capped salary of $6.9 million and a signing bonus of somewhere in the region of $24 million. The details are yet to be worked out and the amount that is guaranteed is to be confirmed later.

This will slide slowly downward until 2023′s Mr Irrelevant will see a salary of $769,444 and a signing bonus of around $78,000.

League Minimum

The CBA also sets out minimum salaries for players in the NFL depending on their years of service. For 2023, a rookie will get a minimum of $750,000. This is a figure that is much closer to the reality for the vast majority of players in the NFL.

When you factor in that roughly half of that will go to tax, agent fees, and union dues, plus taking into account the fact that the vast majority of whatever number you settle on is not guaranteed, then NFL players are not at all rich. If you are on the bottom end of the scale, you could be making around $300k per year, which disappears the moment you get hurt.

The NFL has the shortest career of any professional sport, with the average time in the league only three years. So unless you set the world on fire, you are likely to retire at the age of 27 with a lifetime earning of less than one million dollars. Hardly set for life.